Life In 19x19

About notation of multiple ranks (blitz/slow or whatever) -

Only one rank should be displayed behind your name to avoid cluttering, it would be the rank you achieved in 'slow' time system.
If you haven't played any slow games (or maybe also if your rank still contains a question mark) then your next faster system's rank is shown with, say, a '*' in front of it to indicate that it's a non-slow rank.
All of your ranks would be visible in your personal info, since there's lots of space in there.
When you join/open a game offer the rank that fits the time setting would be displayed in it. Possibly with a '*' if it's a non-slow rank just for easy recognition. (If you don't have the according rank yet but have another non "?" rank then the slowest non "?" rank would be taken instead, duh.)

So you'd see..
Rapyuta [*8d]
Artem92 [7d]

rapyuta[8d]
artem[7d]

Araban wrote:rapyuta[8d]
artem[7d]

Really? I loved watching Rapyuta play. But, were there ever any slow games?

Araban wrote:rapyuta[8d]
artem[7d]

Colorblind people are common.

hyperpape wrote:

Araban wrote:rapyuta[8d]
artem[7d]

Colorblind people are common.

But this is not a vital enough distinction to pose a significant hurdle on colourblind people. Moreover it's easy enough to make it optional (colourblind mode adds characters instead of colour).

In any case there are plenty of perfectly good methods to deal with the problem of how to display rank in a multi-rank system, so that should not be a show stopper.

amnal wrote:I don't really understand the perceived problem with the ranking system here. Why am I not a real 2d if I only play blitz games?

Ok, so i will explain it to you, gently.

1. First of all - what is 'real 2d'? There is no such animal. Ranking is there for a purpose - to match people with approx the same strength and to set up proper handi. It makes sense to call yourself a 2d (real or not) only in the context of 'I am of about the same strength as everybody else with the same label in my group.' If you are saying that 'I am a real 2d but not really of the same level in a certain game that this other guy who is also a real 2d' then you can probably see that something is broken.

2. It is all fine and well if you only play blitz and are 2d except in two cases:
- when you decide one day that you want to try a longer time-control game. Your opponent will expect to get a good game from a 'real 2d' and he will get bitterly disappointed. or not.
- when some other slow-game-2d decides to try a fast game and you will be disappointed at his level. or maybe he is a 'real 5d' who seldom plays blitz and you will get clobbered? might not be a problem to you, but still - the rating system will fail to match your respective levels.

3. If we agree that the various game speeds require slightly different skills, in other words - there are people playing well at some setting and not others, the whole system loses precision since all such people are never really ranked properly (say: they are always slightly under-ranked in slow games and slightly over-ranked in fast games.)

And so on... there are other reasons but I assume you can see where I am going with that.

The bottom line is that, under the assumption again that fast and slow games require slightly different skills, your reasoning only makes sense if you think of two closed and distinct populations: slow players and bitz players. Once we assume that most people play all kinds of games, not differentiating makes the rank less meaningful.

Now - if this is really a problem or not, I am not really sure. It seems the world is rolling around nicely as is...

The thing is, even if everybody DOES play an even mix, which I don't believe is true
(but for the sake of argument.)

Blitz, lightning, and slow games are different skills, and I believe it's of personal value to track those rankings.

In chess, when I used to play online, My best rating was my blitz, with a somewhat weaker lightning and standard rating. As I studied, certain ranks might go up or down. (For example, when I picked up the King's Gambit for a while, my blitz and lightning went up, my standard went down)

It was not unusual to see "Blitz" masters, who might only be Experts at slow or lightning games.

This helped because, for their blitz games, they were given an opponent who could match that level of quick reading, but they had things to work on in slower games and so were not automatically placed into a player pool way out of their depth.


Imagine the following person in go:

Strong fighter, quick reader, weak opening, weak endgame. Imagine also that this person plays equal numbers of blitz, standard and lightning.

I would imagine this to be a conceivable set of ratings for them:

Lightning: 5d
Blitz: 5d
Standard: 3d

Now, under the current system, that person might end up as a strong 4d. But it's unfair to them and other players to treat them like this:

If they play a standard game they are at a stone disadvantage, and if they play lightning or blitz they have a stone advantage. Hence they will deflate the rankings in Lightning and Blitz and inflate players playing standard games.

EDIT: Consider that they won't be able to move up to 5d easily:

if they move up, they will win 50% of their lightning and blitz and only maybe 15% of their standard, this will result in them having a 38% win rate at 5d, as opposed to a 55% win rate at 4d. They will never equalize.

Just let them have multiple ratings, and let them display whichever one they prefer.
if color codes are not an option, how about a prefix?

Sandalphon[b-4d]
Bantari[s-4d]
rapyuta[l-8d]

or they can just display the weighted average of their games, which would appear the old way:

Sandalphon[4d]

shapenaji wrote:Just let them have multiple ratings, and let them display whichever one they prefer.
if color codes are not an option, how about a prefix?

Sandalphon[b-4d]
Bantari[s-4d]
rapyuta[l-8d]

or they can just display the weighted average of their games, which would appear the old way:

Sandalphon[4d]

As much as I think this sounds cool in theory, I worry that with the current rate of decay to getting a ? through not playing enough, there are a lot of players who wouldn't be able to keep all of their ratings out of ? range. Also, by dividing the data set into 3 categories, it's possible the rating sytem would not have enough data to maintain its current accuracy.

Then there are these KGS tournaments that require one to enter with one's strongest account. I assume that would be the the standard one in this scheme. But maybe not everyone who wants to play is maintaining a standard one?

Despite these drawbacks, any scheme that makes it easier to distinguish the primarily blitz accounts/ratings from others has some value.