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| The Dreaded Question MarkI really hate having to "maintain" my rank on KGS. I play rated games as a way to track my progress, but KGS ranks are a constant moving target, so unless one plays there regularly there is no way to really track one's progress.
First, when you don't play there often enough, you get the dreaded "?" attached to your rank, which makes it nearly impossible to get a match with someone, because everyone is so afraid of losing a game to a sandbagger and dropping their rank.
Second, even if you don't play any games, your rank continues to drift upwards on its own (until it reaches the dreaded question mark phase again). Heck, if I really wanted a good rank, all I have to do is quit playing. I understand the logic behind the design - even if you're not playing here, you're probably still playing elsewhere and improving (as compared to your previously matched opponents). But somehow, the actual implementation seems a little faulty.
I like the rating graphs of turn-based servers such as DGS or LittleGolem, where I can actually compare how well I'm doing with when I first started a number of years ago. I can see, for example, the spikes in the graph for the time when I was unemployed for 3 months (I gained 3 stones). These graphs are always the same and my rank doesn't change if I don't play. But these ranks are also about 3 months delayed since it takes so long to finish most games there.
But I'm also tiring of playing so many simultaneous games at once. Its not easy to do. I lose track of my strategies in each game and make too many mistakes, or I don't think long enough about certain board positions in any one game and end up playing slow motion blitz games.
I've never really enjoyed playing real-time games online. I think various anxieties starting with the time pressure of the clock, being afraid of clicking a wrong button somewhere and not being able to get back to where I was (and I'm not talking about misclicks and undos here), and other pressures of people wanting to chat with me, and popup windows everywhere, and me missing out on whole conversations because I'm a slow typest and poor speller. But I'm getting used to a few of those things now, having run several online tournaments and having things fall apart on me right in the middle (whew, the pressure!).
So anyway, I've decided I want to try and better maintain my KGS rank. I think I can be playing at least one game a week there. That shouldn't be too hard. I usually spend hours staring at the computer anyway, freting about starting a game thinking that at any moment might get interrupted, so I just don't start. When actually, I could have played a couple of games already. I was thinking about joining the AGA shodan challenge this year. Maybe I can make it to 5kyu by next Congress. Also if I want to play in various online tournaments, I would need a stable KGS rank.
So let's see how it goes. One game a week.
I've already got 4 games in for these past 2 weekends. First, I had to catch up my lagging 12k? rank (because I'm never afraid to lose ranked games when playing my friends, or beginners). So I sandbagged a couple of automatches (even though I won, they were horrible games. I made way too many mistakes), and also played a couple of friends who saw me online. But now the rank drift has set in again and I'm up to 5k? even though the highest ranked player I've played so far was only 8k and I was only 6k? after that game (and since no loses yet, I still have the dreaded question mark).
I guess being automatched with another 5kyu once or twice will be a good thing. I'll probably lose, and will probably have a game I can learn from. And I need a few legitimate losses to lose the dreaded question mark.
I hate having to "maintain" my rank.
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| I'm 8 Kyu now - thanks SolomonInterrupting my walk down memory lane of this year's Go Congress... I played in Tacoma's rating tournament on Saturday. Not a huge event - mostly beginning players, and only 3 boards were setup for the 2 round tourny.
I was playing board 1 as an 8 kyu -- now that's a first!
Round one I gave 7 stones to my opponent. Having watched him play a warmup game earlier, I wasn't expecting much difficulty. Nevertheless, I tried to play carefully and not make too many overplays, patiently waiting for his mistakes. I still made a few bad mistakes, and in spite of my poor poker face, he didn't see them. I won handily.
Then Solomon (3 dan) showed up. Now, either the TD (3 kyu) was going to play in the last round or I was going to have a really tough opponent. Another latecomer and the pairings were even again.
I was offered an unrated 12 stone game, but I came to play rated games - even if I lost. Let's see how I do with 9.
I was determined not to get pushed around, to play safe moves, and yet try to keep the pressure on white keeping white seperated as much as possible. Solomon likes to attach -- a lot. I had to keep deciding, do I hane, or extend? And which side do I want, and how do I play so as to get that side and not lose both? I screwed up the first corner and gave him too much. I was determined not to do that the next time.
After the game, Solomon felt he played too honte, not making any trick plays. He didn't kill anything so he was never able to completely catch up. Near the end with one byo-yomi period left, and at least 20 points behind, he resigned.
The ratings were in by the next day! Its official - I'm 8 kyu now!
And still climbing.
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| Day 6 - US Go CongressWednesday, 1st August
Wednesday, the traditional "day off" for US Go Congresses. For an extra fee, there are various sightseeing trips available touring the around the surrounding area. And the fees this year seem quite reasonable. I've been wanting to see the Amish, but I also wanted to play some Go. The Diehard tournament is a one day 4-round event for those not wanting to take advantage of the sightseeing trips. But I still remember playing in it last year and being completely wipped out afterward. I didn't want to play Go that badly.
Oh wait, I didn't remember seeing the signup sheet for the trip to Philadelphia and Independence Hall. That sounds very interesting too. But I just can't make up my mind. I never signed up for either, so I'm just hanging by the buses thinking at any minute now, I'll just my the fee and hop on at the last minute.
Just then Chuck shows up, getting ready to run the tournament, but there's a snag. He thought he was going to have a helper, using the fancy new PyTD to run the pairings. "Well," I say, "if I had the lastest code, I could help." Oops, did I just volunteer? I Can't use my computer though - which is what I would have preferred - because the Mac version hasn't been kept up-to-date. So Chuck borrows a Windows laptop and asks if I've ever used WinTD, and he shows me how to start entering the player's names.
Round two starts after round one.
I never knew so many people could ask the same "dumb" question over and over again -- "When does round two start?" Ok, I'll admit, it should be reasonable to want to know how long a break they can take inbetween rounds, but we're trying to squeeze 4 rounds into 6 hours, so there's no time for breaks. As soon as round one is done, I'll run the pairings and start round two. "But when will round one end?" they ask. Are you kidding me?!? I'm not even sitting in the playing room to see who is still playing!
I'm having fun though. And I hope my responses weren't too rude. I tried to keep a smile at least.
By the time round 3 gets underway, Chuck decides I'm doing fine and he'll take a long, late lunch (though he forgot to tell me it would be a long lunch). This is when things start falling apart. We're still waiting for a couple of games to finish before I can pair for the last round. Its getting late, and people are getting impatient and starting to drop out. I find out the last pair of players are still playing and without a clock. So I drop them and pair round four -- 1st mistake.
I should have talked with them myself, but didn't. When they discovered they had been dropped, they were upset and showed me where they had actually reported their game results already. Oops! Right there in front of me, and I just didn't see it. Ok, my fault completely -- re-pair (that's always a mess).
Next mistake. Several players were unable to find they're opponents. You see, in the main playing area, the table numbers do not start with "1". Those are in the strong players room downstairs. Unbeknownst to me, there was an apparent informal and verbal rule to add 40 to one's assigned table number, then go to that table. So after I repaired a couple of the unmatched players with each other, and dropped their missing opponents, one of those missing opponents eventually showed up wondering why they had been dropped. By now the round was well underway, not much else I could do but apologize. I felt bad too, because one of the dropped players was a little Japanese girl with a 3-0 record so far. I should have yelled out the players names, but I didn't. They were already sitting at their table waiting.
By the time round four had ended, Chuck had left to go to the pro dinner. I couldn't figure out how to print out the final results. And the girl's father, still upset about his daughter's lost chance to go 4-0 in the tournament, comes to talk to me again. I still can't help.
But after telling my story and getting some advice from some friends, I decided that maybe I could help. Let's see if I can find someone about the same rank who would be willing to play one more round with this little girl. I found one of the two boys who were re-paired together. He had overslept and missed the first few rounds, so he was eager to play another round. He was the same rank and lost to the girl's original opponent, so it was perfect - she now has her chance for a perfect 4-0 result.
Now I've got to figure out how to get the game into WinTD.
Diehard round 5 - Seth Wax vs Yukino Takehara
Yukino lost. | | |
| Day 5 - US Go CongressTuesday, 31st July
By now, all the days are starting to run together into one big blur. I'm having trouble remembering which day it is and every day is almost the same as the day before.
Everytime I try to go by the vendor's tables, they're closed. I rush from recording to eating and back to recording, and eating, and recording -- sounds like I'm doing a lot of eating, but I fell like I'm rushing through the meals too.
Will I get a chance to buy any books? Will I get to play any games myself?
US Open round 3 - I'm recording two of my favorite players (I'm getting a lot of favorite players) - Michael (ZhaoNian) Chen vs Young Kwon on board 4. I'm starting to relax and have a little fun with the colorful commentary.
The game didn't last too long. Afterwards, they started to discuss the game a little. Michael, who is used to playing online a lot, wanted to use my computer to review. So I pulled the game offline and we went into the next room and let Michael use my computer. They showed each other some of their mistakes, and played a few variations to see how they could have imporved the game.
Wow, an early lunch. I almost don't know what to do with myself. I wandered over to the main playing area to see if I could find and meet any GoDiscussions people. Looked up a few names on the pairing sheet to see which table they're sitting at. so I could at least learn to recoginize them for later.
I had a lesurely lunch, and with some of the other EJournal staff. Chris remarked how impressed he was with my game recording ability and offered to let me record board 1 for the Ing games later this evening -- cool!! I already know its going to be a Jing Yang game!
After lunch, I was finally able to browse the bookstores a little, and start putting together my wish list. I went back to see who might still be lingering in the main playing area. Didn't see anyone I knew or wanted to meet, but was asked by an older Japanese lady if I wanted to play a game. I kinda didn't, but her English wans't all that great, so I didn't have the heart to tell her no.
So then I thought, ok, my first self-paired official game, but no, she just wanted to play a casual game. That's ok too. She's 1 dan. I'm 9 kyu. She didn't want to give me more than 4 stones. Ok, I'll probably lose, but maybe I'll still learn something.
I screwed by my joseki in one corner early on, then for most of the rest of the game felt I was way behind. She had a large moyo that I waited too late to invade. The best I could do was to try and reduce it a little. I was surprized at the end to have won by 4 points.
We did a brief review at the end - in broken English/Japanese - and she showed me how I should have played that joseki that I messed up. Its a very common mistake that's been discussed recently here on GoDiscussions, and is also described on Bantari's site.
Then I got to go to an afternoon lecture by Xuefen Lin 1p (yet another favorite of mine). But I don't know why I go to afternoon lectures, because I keep nodding off and feeling guilty for being disrespectful to the lecturer. But my friend Trevoke was there and he kept elbowing me to silence my snoring. He also wanted to see Yilun Yang's Ing game that didn't get broadcasted from the day before. Since I was now the keeper of the Ing game records, I pulled it out and transcribed it to sgf for him.
Now for the Ing games, round 3. I mentioned to our usual board 1 recorder about Chris telling me I could record board 1 tonight. He seemed really disappointed that he would miss out on a chance to record a Feng Yun game (it was to be Jing Yang 9d vs Feng Yun 9p), so I relented and recorded one of my other favorites, Xuefen Lin vs Eric Lui on board 3. Given my choice, it was hard to choose because all the boards were going to be great. Then it wasn't until recently (almost two weeks later) that I realized that our usual board 1 recorder had been recording Feng Yun's games all week - so far, she's always been on board 1.
I should have stuck to my guns. I still had fun. I enjoy recording any of these great players, and I have so many favorites now.
Tonight, Jing Yang suffered his first loss of the week (in both the US Open and the Ing) against Feng Yun.
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| Day 4 - US Go CongressMonday, 30 July
Round 2 of the US Open, I got to record board 2 - Jing Yang (my new amateur hero - having swept the two internet Ing qualifiers that I ran) vs Jie Liang.
It was by accident really, that I was promoted to board 2 already. You see, we've been having all kinds of network issues -- dropped connections, weak wireless signals, heavy lag time, etc. This morning, none of the Windows machines could get connected, but Todd and I had Macs and we had no trouble with our connections. So with time running out before game time, we quickly demoted the Windows recorders while our tech support guy quickly scrambled to resolve the networking issues. They had to record theirs offline (still not sure if we have those records or not)
Already Mac users had an easier time logging on to the school's network, because the school firewall wouldn't allow any Windows machines to logon until after they had all their latest updates installed and virus software turned on. The Macs just plugged in. Yea!
The game recording team is working well together. Sweety setup a private room on KGS for all the USGO's to gather and chat. She monitors the room from the EJournal staff office next door and helps us boot obnoxious kibitzers or sends someone to relieve us when we need a break. I brought two computers to the congress, and she's using one of mine to monitor.
At lunch time, the players decide to break and Jie stays to make his sealed move. He tells me and the TD that he wants to return to continue in 30 minutes, but Mr Yang has already left and they forgot to mention the return time to each other. So while I rushed through lunch and barely remember that I even ate anything, we had to wait for Mr Yang to return from his lunch.
Later this evening, the US Open TD staff (all two of them) decided to merge their office in with the EJournal staff office, leaving their space available for the top board game recorders. That also helped give the remaining strong players some more elbow room by spreading out the remaining tables. It turned out to ba a much nicer arrangement for all involved.
Tonight's Ing game (round 2), I was back on board 4. But at least this time I was on a board, instead of training and monitoring other junior recorders. This time, with all the additional recorders (and many of them with their own computer), we created some more USGO accounts and managed to broadcast a record setting 8 games, with only 7 accounts.
Why 8 with 7? Well Eric Lui and his dad, I-Han, were paired together and finished their game in about 10 minutes, so that recorder then shifted to the next available board.
Rumor has it, that the Lui's saw their pairing the day before, and already played their match beforehand, only replaying it for the official match. Or else, they just played really, really fast.
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