I mean it's either that or rankings have changed a lot, or my correspondence games are just way worse than fast ones?
I used to be 10kyu on kgs and 11kyu ogs in 2014 yesterday was a wakeup call after I noticed my rank had dropped to 18kyu on ogs. Managed to get it up to 16kyu with a couple of fast games and not much effort tho.
But really 10kyu to 18kyu????????? Help me I'm so confused
Yes, of course some people get worse at go. But OGS made significant changes to their rank system. 20 degrees Celsius is the same temperature as 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Why do you think a computer system that hasn't seen you play for several years [did I understand correctly you didn't play in between the rank drop?] can magically detect your playing strength?
Managed to get it up to 16kyu with a couple of fast games and not much effort tho.
So why do you think you won't get to 14 kyu with a little more, and so on? You could look for some accounts of people with not much improving ranks from when you last played on OGS and see what they are now.
Even without the changes in ranking system, I lost 4 5 stones on OGS (4k 3k-8k) after my daughter was born. At one point I was (IIRC) 6k and lost a rated correspondence game to a 10k player, as part of losing 12/13 in a row.
It's very easy to get considerably worse
(I still haven't fully recovered, though that is partly not playing many rated games - Crazy Stone claims I'm back to where I was.)
[edit: Looking at my rank graph it was actually worse than I thought. Had broken 3k for a while and forgotten.]
Last edited by joellercoaster on Sat Aug 18, 2018 1:24 am, edited 2 times in total.
Confucius in the Analects says "even playing go is better than eating chips in front of tv all day." -- kivi
I got back to within a stone (plus or mins ) on OGS within about 4-5 ranked games. That's happened to me everytime I've quit and come back. It might just be me.
Go servers are not omniscient. And they are working with a small sample size. So they are not going to be very accurate.
Then there is the far more interesting issue of how people learn. Go is a very complex game, and much of what we know as kyu players is wrong. So much of the process of improvement is tearing down mistaken ideas that keep you at a local maximum so that you can climb a higher non-local hill.
This process shows up as a zig-zagging rating.
I know what you mean, and I often interpret the phrase this way, too. You mean to "win less often than before" (perhaps against similarly ranked players).
But is that what "worse at go" means? Suppose, by coincidence, the set of opponents you've played recently have all been studying hard and winning more. By playing them, did you get "worse at go"? Considering only that variable, I'd have to say no. Suppose, on the contrary, that you play a handful of players having losing streaks. Did you get better? I'd again have to say no.
Maybe instead, by "worse at go" you mean lacking in go related skills compared to before. For example, perhaps it's harder to visualize stones in your head. That's certainly possible. A number of things could contribute - some are in your control and some are not.
Taking time to deeply concentrate during a game; taking time to study during an otherwise busy day... these are things you are able to control. Getting older, mentally deteriorating over time... these are things over which you have less impact - just as you cannot control your opponent's ability during a game.
It is my view, then, that if one wishes to be "good at go", it means optimizing those things over which you have control:
-study often
-concentrate hard
-focus
-be in the moment during the game
Whether or not you win all the time, if you truly do these things, I'd consider you a "good go player".
) on OGS within about 4-5 ranked games. That's happened to me everytime I've quit and come back. It might just be me.