Not that strong...

[Dusk Eagle]

I once asked somebody how it was possible for these players to have played dozens of thousands of games and still be stuck at 10k. He offered an interesting possibility -- many Go salons in Japan, Korea, and China will have a couple of common computers hooked up to an account on a Go server that patrons can use at any time. Thus, it can be kept occupied playing games all the time, and the average strength will stay constant.

That seems to be a likely explanation for some of these.

Wow. That makes a lot of sense, especially explaining why Asian servers have so many "sandbaggers" compared to KGS.

[Kirby]

I'd also add that the system is different than KGS. In particular, you set your initial rank on Tygem, and it is calculated on KGS from games.

When I made my first account on Tygem, I set my rank several stones weaker than what I thought it should be, because it didn't feel right to skip to what I felt my rank should be. It wasn't really that I got pleasure from sandbagging, but rather that I wanted to "earn" my rank.

[red_z06]

IGS has strong players at BC (beginner class = 18k) and at 17k and start to stabilize around 15-16k. So, real 17-18ks have tough time rising above that to 15-16k level. But, once you make it past that, it is extremely consistent while being much stronger than kgs at the same level.

My son is at 13-14k level at IGS but could easily pass as 8-9k on kgs.

While you can set at any rank initially, and require 20 rated games to have a solid rating, computer will adjust several ranks with only few win/loses during that stage to settle you in. After that, usually 10wins or 1000 points to move up to next kyu. So at 2:1 win ratio, it would require 30games to move up 1kyu at ddk level. At 3:2 win ratio, it takes 50games to move up.

While one can suspect a BC with 10000 games to be of a sandbagger of sort, it may not necessarily be true. Easterners typically do not study the game like the Western players. My wife for example, have logged over 700 rated game and pretty consistent at 15-16k level and have not improved at all for the duration of past 600 games or so. So, without any study, I doubt she will get 1k stronger with another 1000 games.

For amount of go players there are in Korea, actual go book sales ratio maybe close to 1000:1 ratio with players here. That is 1 in 1000 would buy one book as opposed to every player buying a go book here.

While sh loves playing the game, she hates studying. She has more than 30 Korean books at every level available in the bookshelf (mine), she would not read a single page to improve. She just enjoys at her level.

[snorri]

IGS has strong players at BC (beginner class = 18k) and at 17k and start to stabilize around 15-16k.

According to this link, BC is below 22k:

IGS Promotion / Demotion Bands

[red_z06]

In IGS it is very very difficult to play even games until you are 16k. At BC and 17k, too many fake ranks with more than 1000 rated games.

You almost want to play elsewhere until you can play even games with 16k on IGS. Once you get there you have dozens at equal level at any given time.

If you want to play at BC or 17k, you must screen the opponent and make sure he has less than 100 total games on his stats.

[karaklis]

They changed that in Mars 2007.

Didn't know that the Martians know this game. Maybe we could arrange a competition Mars vs. Earth