Life In 19x19

@daniel_the_smith : I see your point. One cannot get rid of counting completely, but I still do believe that a bangneki-no-money system reduces (not eliminates) the importance of positional judgement on the overall board.

Apart from counting, another advantage of bangneki-no-money system is that the games are more likely to be exciting until the very last move.

By the way, I am aware of the Hahn system but never tried it. But the system I had in mind is different than Hahn system. Hahn system rewards big wins, but still the term "win" is still more important than "big". What I had in mind is a different system.

For example I register to the server, I initially have 10,000 points. I play a game and end the game ahead by 30 points (I refrain from using the word "win"), I end up with 10,030 points and my opponent with 9970 points. New people joining the system, brings new funds. A difference of X hundred points means a handicap stone, etc etc etc.

I am sure anyone can come up with some objections on why such a system would not work. But if there is the desire one can make it work.

But what I understood from the reactions on my proposal, there is no such desire anyway

So, forget about all these and let me have a look at my dragongoserver games

entropi wrote:For example I register to the server, I initially have 10,000 points. I play a game and end the game ahead by 30 points (I refrain from using the word "win"), I end up with 10,030 points and my opponent with 9970 points. New people joining the system, brings new funds. A difference of X hundred points means a handicap stone, etc etc etc.

I am sure anyone can come up with some objections on why such a system would not work. But if there is the desire one can make it work.

Yes. Massive inflation. Maybe you could fix that by making your starting funds change over time.

hyperpape wrote:

entropi wrote:For example I register to the server, I initially have 10,000 points. I play a game and end the game ahead by 30 points (I refrain from using the word "win"), I end up with 10,030 points and my opponent with 9970 points. New people joining the system, brings new funds. A difference of X hundred points means a handicap stone, etc etc etc.

I am sure anyone can come up with some objections on why such a system would not work. But if there is the desire one can make it work.

Yes. Massive inflation. Maybe you could fix that by making your starting funds change over time.

Is this a problem? I don't see why it should create a problem but if it does, an alternative solution could be defining several leagues with limited number of players (instead of defining one league with unlimited number of players).

A further alternative could be defining a fix amount of total funds and a sharing policy.

Or, or, orrrrr orrrrrr what about putting real money in it, like a gambling site????

Another, maybe even bigger problem could be motivating people to play with stronger players. Several solutions are possible but need to be tried out.

But anyway the real big problem of this system is that it doesn't seem that there is a desire for something like that and I am way too busy to make some real marketing Just some ideas some potential for brain teasing

Kaya.gs wrote:The "have every rating everyone wants" idea is not so good. Ratings get better and more accurate the more people they have.

As far as I understood, each game would count towards every rating system, unless it was "free", of course.
This seems a clever idea to me; being able to track your rating in several systems would certainly end any kind of criticism. Ideally, with a sufficient amount of games, they should converge.
Auto-match could work similarly to KGS (match me with anyone within X stones in any of these rating systems: [selection]).

uPWarrior wrote:...
Auto-match could work similarly to KGS (match me with anyone within X stones in any of these rating systems: [selection]).

Simpler (and I think better): You just have a global option that determines which rating system you'll see.

uPWarrior wrote:

Kaya.gs wrote:The "have every rating everyone wants" idea is not so good. Ratings get better and more accurate the more people they have.

As far as I understood, each game would count towards every rating system, unless it was "free", of course.
This seems a clever idea to me; being able to track your rating in several systems would certainly end any kind of criticism. Ideally, with a sufficient amount of games, they should converge.
Auto-match could work similarly to KGS (match me with anyone within X stones in any of these rating systems: [selection]).

The biggest problem I see with this is that it further splits an already smallish population of players. If I'm specifically looking to play people with about 3k AGA ratings, I won't necessarily be able to figure out a good match versus BGA, KGS, or whatever ratings. It is essentially more accurate for everything to be judged by the same scale than to have to manually convert. And if people of different systems don't play each other, it will be that much harder to get a game. Like with online console games, any online play tends to die after X amount of time (where X is how popular the game is), because there are just too few players for matchmaking to handle capably.

On the other hand, I do like what was mentioned about having additional (opt-in) scales. In addition to the GTL example, it would be cool if ASR data was integrated into the server itself. That sort of thing is exactly what this server effort seems to be trying to do, and I am interested to see how it looks as it gets closer.

Chew Terr wrote:The biggest problem I see with this is that it further splits an already smallish population of players. If I'm specifically looking to play people with about 3k AGA ratings, I won't necessarily be able to figure out a good match versus BGA, KGS, or whatever ratings. It is essentially more accurate for everything to be judged by the same scale than to have to manually convert. And if people of different systems don't play each other, it will be that much harder to get a game. Like with online console games, any online play tends to die after X amount of time (where X is how popular the game is), because there are just too few players for matchmaking to handle capably.

just to correct probable misunderstanding, this wouldn't split the player population. simply someone would watch his and opponents' ELO ratings, someone Glicko or WHR or whatever and everyone would have a rank in all the systems. it looks interesting, at least for studying the rating systems, but it has not much meaning other than academical and in my opinion it has a low priority for starting a new server, not to mention possible confusion by several rankings used simultanously

for whatever ratings finally used, i would suggest to include option of a game with proper handicap (as it is called at DGS), ie. handicap and komi set to achieve very close to 50% winning expectance. it would make easier to get a new rank, because with traditional handicaps (like at KGS) your wins counts less and less (and loses more and more) as you are approaching the upper border of your rank, which can be very annoying and stressful and makes it harder to achieve your proper rank

Laman wrote:just to correct probable misunderstanding

Ah, now I get what you mean. Makes sense, though as you say, it's lower-priority for a new server than lots of other things.

Kaya.gs wrote:One thing im talking with my partner about the rating system which we will try is the following: "14 victories gives you a rank up". These is something that happens with some club-rating systems like in the Nihon-kiin.
This means that we would always adjust the strength difference of any game, so if a weak 5d plays a strong 5d, there will a difference in komi. It is a more granular way to handle the rating system, and also a very predictable one. Each game you play is basically worth the same.

You have some pretty good ideas, so I think I'll contribute despite being thrown off a bit by Patricio's musketeer-style facial hair. (But hey, if we all liked the same things the world would be a pretty boring place. We're lucky enough that we all like go. Truthfully, you had me at Fischer time. Finally, a real-time go server with that will be a good thing.

I think you're right about the advantages and disadvantages of the KGS rating system, but getting the right solution is a bit of a challenge. Maybe only experience will show whether your system is better. As for incremental komi, I'm not fan. When IGS switched to the +/no plus system with two ratings per stone, it got more transparent (and theoretically more correct), but I would often forget that I might be giving or taking reverse komi if I wasn't paying attention to who had a '+'. Komi that might appear to the player to be any random half-integer between -7.5 and 7.5 would be even harder to think about. So if you are going to do this, two suggestions:

1. Allow players to choose to play other komi and handicap than the defaults chosen based on rating difference.
2. Make the komi and rules very visible while playing the game. Having to select a menu item is too much indirection to check these values.
3. You may want to research whether this granularity really buys you any accuracy. For example, if you are allowing rated games with more than 1 stone handicap and you are also using small komi adjustments, it would appear that you are claiming to know precise komi equivalents for handicap stones. Although there is a little data on this, the real values are not known. It's fake precision, like quoting someone's height to 6 decimal places. Even if you do gain something, you lose something else in that new players will be confused and say, "What? 2.5 points reverse komi? Who does that?"

Good luck!

snorri wrote:You have some pretty good ideas, so I think I'll contribute despite being thrown off a bit by Patricio's musketeer-style facial hair.

LOL, I like Patricio's style! He looks cool.

Anyway, with ranking systems I think the easiest way to please most people is to make it so that

1) It doesn't change too quickly
2) It doesn't change too slowly
3) Isn't affected by somebody else's performances
4) You don't ruin your rating for the next six months by having a bad day

Let's take 6 games in a row as a kind of starting point and say 10 notches in each rank. If you think 6 games in a row justifies moving up or down, then let that be the criterion for promotion or demotion. After that, make it about percentages scored in last ten games. My suggestion would be

1) 8 wins out of ten, rank up
2) 7 wins out of ten, go up two notches within rank
3) 6 wins out of ten, go up 0.5 of a notch within rank
4) 5 wins out of ten - sorry, no change!!

This way, if people hit good form, they can get a tangible reward for it. But only being able to sustain the new level would result in a stable rank.

If you improve over time (or decline), then your rating within each rank would gradually creep up or down.

Anyway, regardless of what WMS has to say, the KGS system is obviously too stable. But, maybe better that than some mickey mouse system that was too much in flux. Definitely please don't make rank tied to other people's performances - that's just unfair - and please don't make a player's bad days hang over them for the next six months like some kind of criminal record.

snorri wrote:

Kaya.gs wrote:One thing im talking with my partner about the rating system which we will try is the following: "14 victories gives you a rank up". These is something that happens with some club-rating systems like in the Nihon-kiin.
This means that we would always adjust the strength difference of any game, so if a weak 5d plays a strong 5d, there will a difference in komi. It is a more granular way to handle the rating system, and also a very predictable one. Each game you play is basically worth the same.

You have some pretty good ideas, so I think I'll contribute despite being thrown off a bit by Patricio's musketeer-style facial hair. (But hey, if we all liked the same things the world would be a pretty boring place. We're lucky enough that we all like go. Truthfully, you had me at Fischer time. Finally, a real-time go server with that will be a good thing.

I think you're right about the advantages and disadvantages of the KGS rating system, but getting the right solution is a bit of a challenge. Maybe only experience will show whether your system is better. As for incremental komi, I'm not fan. When IGS switched to the +/no plus system with two ratings per stone, it got more transparent (and theoretically more correct), but I would often forget that I might be giving or taking reverse komi if I wasn't paying attention to who had a '+'. Komi that might appear to the player to be any random half-integer between -7.5 and 7.5 would be even harder to think about. So if you are going to do this, two suggestions:

1. Allow players to choose to play other komi and handicap than the defaults chosen based on rating difference.
2. Make the komi and rules very visible while playing the game. Having to select a menu item is too much indirection to check these values.
3. You may want to research whether this granularity really buys you any accuracy. For example, if you are allowing rated games with more than 1 stone handicap and you are also using small komi adjustments, it would appear that you are claiming to know precise komi equivalents for handicap stones. Although there is a little data on this, the real values are not known. It's fake precision, like quoting someone's height to 6 decimal places. Even if you do gain something, you lose something else in that new players will be confused and say, "What? 2.5 points reverse komi? Who does that?"

Good luck!

Polly's mustache is the #1 reason people support Kaya.gs .

As i said before, rating is something to be discussed very openly about. I am not a master of the different systems and there are too many options. When its time i will thread it.

I must mention the reverse-komi and such.

1 stone handicap has a the value of 2 komis.

I explain very shortly so i dont thread-jack myself.

a) If A and B play, of equal strength, and there is no komi, A wins by komi.
b) If A passes ,then B plays, now, B wins by komi.

So the difference betwen one starting and other starting is 2 komis. Of course , reality is more messy: 2h stones have some sinergy, so u cant apply the same value, but i think we can cautiously accept that.
That messines gets much bigger with more handicap, 6h stones have a combined value much greater than the value of each individual stone.

The granularity doesnt really add to precision, it adds to the value of each game you play related to your rating.
In Wbaduk, you need to win 10 games for the last 100 points, but only 1 or 2 suffice for the first 300. In kgs is similar, a strong 5d has to beat a weak five than 7/10 to rank up, and he does so slowly. However, if the strong 5d had no komi ,or there was slight reverse komi, winning that game would be worth just as much.

As i said before, a stone is worth 2 komis, so you have granularity to the 13/14 point based system you pick.

That said, such a point system is very plain, and lacks some sophistication. The reason why i didnt open the thread already is because i want to outline the exact issues i want to avoid (heavy accounts, irrantional number of games, psychological effects, etc).


Its an interesting, long, then boring subject . The feedback im getting from the community is very encouraging, not only from the fund-raising but on the information, hand-labour and overall help.

Why not just call it Kaya rather than Kaya.gs? You're almost intentionally going for a name clash with KGS. Also ".gs" looks pretty weird.

palapiku wrote:Why not just call it Kaya rather than Kaya.gs? You're almost intentionally going for a name clash with KGS. Also ".gs" looks pretty weird.

I invite you to reserve the kaya.com domain, then pass it on to me.

Naming it so makes it easier to find the website . Plus come on, Kaya.gs rocks. Very web 2.0.

Something I've learned about rating systems: A rating system based on anything like "14 wins to go up a rank" will do a decent job of grouping players of similar strength as long as the set of plays has good overall connectivity between arbitrary groups of players, but it will do an extremely poor job of predicting the proper handicaps beyond 1 stone. This may or may not matter to you, many people don't expect high handicap games to be close.

Another flaw with such a system is that if there are groups of people who mostly play each other (ie, whose games have poor connectivity to the rest of the population), their ranks can fairly quickly drift away from the rest of the server so that they become unintentional sandbaggers or unintentionally overrated.