Undeservedly 5-1
Sep. 28th, 2009 02:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
danalwynI went to a Go tournament on Saturday, and came out with 5 wins and 1 loss, which I think is mostly due to my low rank, which makes me feel awfully embarrassed. To tell you why though I'll have to explain a bit about both Go and ranks.
Go has a ranking system which is very precisely calibrated, at least on a local level. You don't even need to know the rules (which are here for the truly interested); you just have to know that, at the end of the game you add up the territory you control and subtract the number of pieces that you've lost to come up with a total score. You and your opponent both have a score, but that's usually ignored; the only thing that matters is the difference. So if you have sixty-five points, and your opponent has sixty, all that would be reported is a five point win.
The way the game is played, two players, black and white, take turns placing pieces, known as stones, on the board. By tradition, black always plays first. This was simply accepted as the way things worked until the nineteenth century, when people began to suspect that there was something decidedly non-kosher about all of this. The introduction of statistics to go let people confirm their fears; without adjustment black wins far too much of the time. In order to balance this out, the komi was introduced (we use Japanese terms in the US), which is a number of points granted to white at the start of the game. Although people were experimenting with the komi for a long time, significant statistical fine-tuning has been introduced, using the data from thousands of games, to place it at current levels. It was found that by giving white 5.5 points, black still won the majority of the games. The current komi granted by the American Go Association is 7.5 (which has been accused of being too high and favoring white).
But even if the komi evens the game, it does nothing about the bane of all strategy games: individuality. Some players are just better then others, either through study, talent, or quick thinking. It does no good for two players at tremendously different skill levels to play each other, the one getting beat on doesn't learn anything, and neither does the one doing the beating. In order to even things out, the weaker player gets a handicap, a system that is now tied into the complicated ranking system for go players.
Anyone who has taken an East Asian martial art in the west probably recognizes some of the ranking system. It consists of two hierarchies, lower-ranked players (kyu in the AGA, gup in Korea), and higher-ranked players (dan). The lowest of the low, a player who has just learned the rules, is a 30-kyu. From there, she ascends through the kyu ranks until reaching 1-kyu. If she succeeds at that rank, she is promoted to 1-dan, and from then on the higher the number, the better the rank. A 20-kyu (written as 20k) has some familiarity with the game, a 15k has been playing a year or two, a 5k has not only played a lot but has studied openings and life-and-death problems, a 1d is a fairly dedicated player, and a 6d is one of the best players in the US (AGA rankings stop at 6d, although players with higher foreign rankings sometimes use theirs). The highest official rank is a 9p, a 9-dan professional, although professional ranks tend to be a bit stranger then amateur ranks because of the rules (perennial favorite for the World's Strongest Player title, currently ban-inated Lee SeDol, was awarded the 6p rank for clinching the LG cup, and didn't have it going in).
When the ranks were formalized, a rough order came out of things that went something like this. In an even game, the player with the higher rank should win by about 10 stones per each difference in rank. So a 12k player should beat a 14k player by about twenty stones, on average. In order to account for that, the stronger player should give the weaker player a number of handicap stones equal to the difference in rank (up to nine). The placement of these stones has been calculated very precisely over several centuries of experience (although debates still rage about 3).
Practically, in small clubs, these arrangements are all ad-hoc. You just remember what your last handicap was against an opponent. In my club we use the rule-of-three; if you win three games against an opponent you give them another stone. If you lose three games, you reduce the handicap by one.
The AGA though has no truck with this informal method. They determine your rank by how you perform against other AGA ranked players in formal tournaments. This is understandable, but it creates something of a mess because depending on where you live you may not get to play that often. So while most serious players (thanks to the invention of the internet) have a KGS or IGS ranking that gets updated by their win-loss statistics every day, their AGA rank can sit for months or years, and it doesn't get changed until they play in tournament again. This can have interesting consequences.
Years ago I went to my first tournament, tried enlisting as a 10k, and lost all my games. I haven't been to a tournament since, but that ranking has stayed on the books. Now I'm at least 9k (I would have gone at least 2-4 as a 9k player), but I'm stuck at 10k until they readjust their rankings. So I generally had an advantage on Saturday, except for one game where I made a significant early mistake, which makes me feel guilty because it means that I was really not offering a fair fight.
Of course, due to the rules, there's nothing I can do about it. Until the AGA readjusts my rank, which I think they will after this, I have to keep playing people at a more advantageous handicap then I should get. It's the only way forward. So I'm just going to keep feeling guilty for a while. I blame statistics. It's usually to blame for things like this.
Go has a ranking system which is very precisely calibrated, at least on a local level. You don't even need to know the rules (which are here for the truly interested); you just have to know that, at the end of the game you add up the territory you control and subtract the number of pieces that you've lost to come up with a total score. You and your opponent both have a score, but that's usually ignored; the only thing that matters is the difference. So if you have sixty-five points, and your opponent has sixty, all that would be reported is a five point win.
The way the game is played, two players, black and white, take turns placing pieces, known as stones, on the board. By tradition, black always plays first. This was simply accepted as the way things worked until the nineteenth century, when people began to suspect that there was something decidedly non-kosher about all of this. The introduction of statistics to go let people confirm their fears; without adjustment black wins far too much of the time. In order to balance this out, the komi was introduced (we use Japanese terms in the US), which is a number of points granted to white at the start of the game. Although people were experimenting with the komi for a long time, significant statistical fine-tuning has been introduced, using the data from thousands of games, to place it at current levels. It was found that by giving white 5.5 points, black still won the majority of the games. The current komi granted by the American Go Association is 7.5 (which has been accused of being too high and favoring white).
But even if the komi evens the game, it does nothing about the bane of all strategy games: individuality. Some players are just better then others, either through study, talent, or quick thinking. It does no good for two players at tremendously different skill levels to play each other, the one getting beat on doesn't learn anything, and neither does the one doing the beating. In order to even things out, the weaker player gets a handicap, a system that is now tied into the complicated ranking system for go players.
Anyone who has taken an East Asian martial art in the west probably recognizes some of the ranking system. It consists of two hierarchies, lower-ranked players (kyu in the AGA, gup in Korea), and higher-ranked players (dan). The lowest of the low, a player who has just learned the rules, is a 30-kyu. From there, she ascends through the kyu ranks until reaching 1-kyu. If she succeeds at that rank, she is promoted to 1-dan, and from then on the higher the number, the better the rank. A 20-kyu (written as 20k) has some familiarity with the game, a 15k has been playing a year or two, a 5k has not only played a lot but has studied openings and life-and-death problems, a 1d is a fairly dedicated player, and a 6d is one of the best players in the US (AGA rankings stop at 6d, although players with higher foreign rankings sometimes use theirs). The highest official rank is a 9p, a 9-dan professional, although professional ranks tend to be a bit stranger then amateur ranks because of the rules (perennial favorite for the World's Strongest Player title, currently ban-inated Lee SeDol, was awarded the 6p rank for clinching the LG cup, and didn't have it going in).
When the ranks were formalized, a rough order came out of things that went something like this. In an even game, the player with the higher rank should win by about 10 stones per each difference in rank. So a 12k player should beat a 14k player by about twenty stones, on average. In order to account for that, the stronger player should give the weaker player a number of handicap stones equal to the difference in rank (up to nine). The placement of these stones has been calculated very precisely over several centuries of experience (although debates still rage about 3).
Practically, in small clubs, these arrangements are all ad-hoc. You just remember what your last handicap was against an opponent. In my club we use the rule-of-three; if you win three games against an opponent you give them another stone. If you lose three games, you reduce the handicap by one.
The AGA though has no truck with this informal method. They determine your rank by how you perform against other AGA ranked players in formal tournaments. This is understandable, but it creates something of a mess because depending on where you live you may not get to play that often. So while most serious players (thanks to the invention of the internet) have a KGS or IGS ranking that gets updated by their win-loss statistics every day, their AGA rank can sit for months or years, and it doesn't get changed until they play in tournament again. This can have interesting consequences.
Years ago I went to my first tournament, tried enlisting as a 10k, and lost all my games. I haven't been to a tournament since, but that ranking has stayed on the books. Now I'm at least 9k (I would have gone at least 2-4 as a 9k player), but I'm stuck at 10k until they readjust their rankings. So I generally had an advantage on Saturday, except for one game where I made a significant early mistake, which makes me feel guilty because it means that I was really not offering a fair fight.
Of course, due to the rules, there's nothing I can do about it. Until the AGA readjusts my rank, which I think they will after this, I have to keep playing people at a more advantageous handicap then I should get. It's the only way forward. So I'm just going to keep feeling guilty for a while. I blame statistics. It's usually to blame for things like this.