what is the ASR doing wrong?

[Nathan]

Ok this is a very minor problem but it should be an easy fix.

For the Results page I think it would be best if the placement of the overall win/loss was moved so it appeared as KGS / Score / (W/L) / vs1

Also the KGS link doesnt seem to work for me, not sure if thats for everyone.

Thanks

[stalkor]

hey ez4u, how about you make some stats now that delta is in this huge form for its 3rd month.

i feel that active players are playing more while the dropout rate is worse and maybe you can prove or disprove this feeling.

[ez4u]

Let's take a look at a few things...

First here are the same weekly statistics format posted for earlier months in various threads. This is the first 11 days of January and the full weeks for November and December except for the short period at the end.

January Week 1 and First Four Days of Week 2

December Full Month by Week

November Full Month by Week

Second here is a comparison of the class participants in a previous format. These stats are as of the end of January 11th (UCT 23:59) for this month and as of the end of week 2 for November and December, which affects comparability.

Now that is a lot of numbers in a quite user-unfriendly format. So what the heck does it mean? Even I do not know yet and I collected the info.

Nevertheless, let me speculate a little. Obviously we have had a varied experience in the 2.5 months so far. But notice several things. Look particularly at the week-by-week "games played per day per active participant" ("G/D/Act." in the top three charts). This adjusts for the size of the classes and ignores the inactive players. Since the change to combined delta, it (delta) has always had a higher G/D/Act than the combined rest of the league ("Sub ABG") except for the month-end rush when the other classes play lots of games to qualify. In the first week of January that was not true for the first time (although sub ABG is falling back in week 2). The change was mainly due to a sharp increase in the activity in ABG classes. Delta was only slightly lower than previously. I speculate that the combined delta makes it smoother to move the more active players out of delta and into the other classes. After two months of doing this, we may be getting the benefit in terms of a higher level of activity in A, B, and G. In addition, even more of the active players in delta were moved out in December in order to increase the size of Gamma. On the other hand, maybe it is just a random fluctuation.

In terms of overall activity, so far January is between the active November and the significantly slower December. So how are the inactive players doing? If we look at the second graph on the players by class, we see that the total number of inactive players is 80 after 11 days. This happens to be exactly the same number that we had in December after 14 days. Will the number be higher or lower for January at the end of week 2? That depends on how many people activate versus how many new comers join the league and do not finish their first game by Saturday. At present, though the number is falling day by day and it looks like the number will come in a little lower than December, against an overall membership that is already slightly larger than December. From this I can not see that there is a particular problem with the level of inactive players.

[stalkor]

i found 2 mistakes, the total players for november and december are 323 and 333.

what i meant is that the number of drops before the delta change was lower then the number of drops since it was changed. If this is true then it's not a matter of geography but a matter of laziness and then we can view why people drop out in a whole other way (yes i like to think as if everyone is the same hehe).

the point of the big delta was that it would create more activity, and it did in a way. But is it the right one? The idea is/was that more players could be active because there was a bigger selection of opponents and what i tend to see now is a bunch of players who played 50 or more games and still about the same dropoutrate or worse then before. what's the cause of this? demotivation by seeing someone with 100 points ahead of you? maybe they had other things to do or maybe they advertised a game and never got challenged (or played games with guests or whoever challenged them without looking if its a league member, this seems to be a new trend)

Since i can remember a lot of nicknames ive seen that about 5 or 7 from last months gamma IV have signed up again for the league explaining that they simply could not find time to play because of the holidays so it seems a particular month can spell disaster for the league and we should work on a system for a 1 month exclusion (one of the many long term site plans i guess)

[ez4u]

i found 2 mistakes, the total players for november and december are 323 and 333...

This is not a mistake but rather a reflection of the changes during the month as you sign up new members. For example the December total players at the end of:
Week 1 = 271 (ABG = 139, Delta = 132)
Week 2 = 303 used in tables above (ABG = 141, Delta = 162)
Week 3 = 332 (ABG = 141, Delta = 191)
Final = 333 (ABG = 141, Delta = 192)

One problem with looking at Delta especially is the large change in membership. I fail to capture the beginning number on the first day in my spreadsheet so the real change during the month is even larger than shown here. IIRC, this month there were only about 70 people in Delta when you opened the January league on January 1st. As I write this post there are 138. We should keep that in mind. My "per active player" stats are the same way. They are all calculated using the number of active players at the end of a period rather than, for example, the average number of active players (which I do not capture).

As to the cause of what we see, we do not know. We can speculate, as I did above. However, until we have many more months of statistics we can not be confident about what they may reveal. Meanwhile the best approach is to ask the membership. Where do people see the ASR as of January 2012? Have the changes actually improved their experience? What else are they hoping to see?

[BobC]

I don't think there's much wrong with the way ASR is set up (only been on it ten days). It's friendly and I get high quality games.

Having said that I only intend playing about 10 times a month. Delta is good because you get fresh, newbie Dans who take the reviewing seriously and they are willing to play without fear of losing rank etc. I don't get much sensible review on Tygem and I have to do it myself..

One add on I'd like is a download on the ASR site of all members in each part in alphabetical order. At the momnet I use I use a spread sheet to sort and check players and updating is a little of a pain. I dream of a button on KGS that says " update buddy list to current ASR league"...

Good work Stalker

[stalkor]

I don't think there's much wrong with the way ASR is set up (only been on it ten days). It's friendly and I get high quality games.

Having said that I only intend playing about 10 times a month. Delta is good because you get fresh, newbie Dans who take the reviewing seriously and they are willing to play without fear of losing rank etc. I don't get much sensible review on Tygem and I have to do it myself..

One add on I'd like is a download on the ASR site of all members in each part in alphabetical order. At the momnet I use I use a spread sheet to sort and check players and updating is a little of a pain. I dream of a button on KGS that says " update buddy list to current ASR league"...

Good work Stalker

For that button we need 1 of 2 things:
- KGS to recognize the ASR as a serious party they should help or invest in.
- a bot who uses your account briefly to execute this.

Both of these things did not happen yet but im open to talking with wms or whoever else is managing kgs for a cooperation.

P.S. bots are neither allowed or disallowed so until someone uses/abuses a bot on KGS (obviously advertising or spamming by bot is disallowed) i really dont have a clue how they will respond to that.

[spbloom]

This seems like the place to raise this idea, although maybe it's better as a question:

What would the drawback be to going to a negative komi handicap system in ASR? It does seem to have some advantages, including helping weaker players not get so depressed with losing all the time (an issue that's been raised to me in reviews several times -- I'm a 1d newbie in Delta, btw), and keeping stronger players from chalking up wins despite slacking off.

But of course this has to have been thought of or tried before.

There is the sandbagger issue, significant because there are prized involved, but it seems like there should be ways to deal with that in Delta. There might need to be some sort of minimal requirement for ranked game play, but possibly that could be done within the league, say as a percentage or a minimum of games played in order to qualify for prize or promotion.

I do realize that a possible drawback would be that strong players would not be able to self-segregate so much at the top of the league, but would discouraging that be a bug or a feature? A further thought is that there might be a 9-stone-equivalent cap put on the komi, which would allow a degree of self-segregation. It would also allow the stronger player to conduct more of a teaching game when playing out-of-handi games.

Feedback, please!

[Koffein]

What would the drawback be to going to a negative komi handicap system in ASR?

why reverse komi, and not handicap stones? handicap stones are much better than reverse komi in teaching games, since they help to teach how to fight.

...including helping weaker players not get so depressed with losing all the time...

when you want to improve, you must play with stronger players. losing is a natural consequence.

There is the sandbagger issue

not only sandbaggers, but some people have no solid rank at all. others improve very fast - 2 stones improvement within a few weeks for a 10k is very likely to happen.

I do realize that a possible drawback would be that strong players would not be able to self-segregate so much at the top of the league

strong players also need strong opponents. they want to improve too, and it already takes a long time until they get to alpha.


you also forgot many players don´t like handicap at all. handicap changes the type of game - your fuseki knowledge is almost useless.

[topazg]

If you really find a long time control game + review in the ASR depressing, my immediate gut reaction is you aren't there to study your game and improve (which is the purpose of the league). Although the league and competition are fun, the whole point of the ASR, in my opinion, is to get a really good chance to play serious games against much stronger players and improve - handicaps and negative komi to make the games more competitive would conflict with that I think?

[stalkor]

There are a few issues with handicap and most of them have been pointed out by koffein already.

The most concerning is that i, as organiser, cant trust ranks. A 10k can be 2d for all i know.
I also think dynamically the league would not improve since most strong player work themselves up to play other strong players (or the very active) and this would become rather hard since the negative komi would become rather insane.

Also consoder that at that point ANYONE can more easily get promoted if that person is no strong the playing field is leveled, is this really something we want?

Imo strong players and active players should be at the top and all players should get there by using their own strength, if youre not strong enough then study, get better, try again! That is all lost by using negative komi

[Kotomi]

I agree with stalkor you get a lot of players in the league with uncertain ranks and not to mention there are more kyu who dislike handicap than their are kyu who agree with taking handicap a player will improve more through even games even -komi will change this because this means the dan player or the stronger player will have to play out of context as well... I also think its a bad idea because also as bas said if your going to be in the top you should be active or strong or something around those lines -komi will make it difficult for every player -komi is a okish idea but i dont think its a good idea for this league

[Oceandrop]

Hello,

I'm very new in the ASR so don't bash me pls

When I understood the scoring system right, you're also heavily rewardet for losing a game right? Or better said just playing and being active, nothing wrong with that, but why not adjust it so that in Delta no change, because new players etc. but then in gamma maybe youre more rewardet for winning score more points or just less rewardet for losing, beta then even more, until Alpha where youre nearly just rewardet for winning? So if you did not make enough improvment on your game, you just fall back after Delta? So first rewardet activity and then with every time less, so if you did not improve enough but just played enough you may eventually fall back again.

Greetings,

[jts]

When I understood the scoring system right, you're also heavily rewardet for losing a game right? Or better said just playing and being active, nothing wrong with that, but why not adjust it so that in Delta no change, because new players etc. but then in gamma maybe youre more rewardet for winning score more points or just less rewardet for losing, beta then even more, until Alpha where youre nearly just rewardet for winning?

You're right that you get points both for playing games and for winning.

People have proposed the system you're suggesting before, and there are I tend to think it's not necessary. Winning your games already becomes more important, relative to just playing as many as possible, as you move up the leagues. This is because there are fewer games to play (Alpha is smaller than Delta) and because participation is generally higher (so in Delta you can beat someone just by playing twice as many games as them, but in Alpha many players play almost every possible game each month, and the winners are the players who won the highest percentage.)

[stalkor]

there are a few issues with your idea.

first of all, there is only 1 league and there should be 1 rule set to go with that (bash me on this if you like ). Making multiple rule sets for each layer in the league would overcomplicate things and make it harder to understand.

the second thing is that decreasing the reward for losing (or making it less significant) has a negative effect on their activity. the thought that they could play 30 games and not get anywhere beyond last place is very demoralizing. on the other hand a strong player that is passed by a weaker player might spark this strong player his activity because surely, low level player shouldn't pass a high level player like him(or her)! This generates activity and maybe they will even play a bit beyond what they would normally play because of this.

in your case alpha would have the insei league effect. Only find the ppl you can surely beat and play them, the rest isn't worth the time because you might lose and would gain you nothing but competition.

rules are that what should motivate a player to play actively against everyone not the opposite