Neo Nemesis

I created the group on Facebook , linking it just so it's not an orphan....

I am a EECS (Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences) student at the University of California at Berkeley. started playing go on kgs in 2002 from a modest rank of 25k. There is nothing I like other than go. There is nothing I like more than go. There are no good people in this world.

Besides that... I dont really care about winning or losing, just as long as I get to play. I really hate escapers with a passion... and I never sandbag in tournaments. I always enter as a rank higher than my real level so i actually learn something.

I likes kgs a lot relative to other servers. KGS is god compared to IGS and it's more in a language I can read compared to TOM. Yahoo is not a go server. However, recently many issues have come up that made me extremeley disappointed at kgs. very disappointed at kgs.

Comments about different Go Servers. 1.KGS Best go server. Supports multiple languages, Some lag, supports rengo and many rule sets, and go boards from 2x2-38x38. Most friendly people. Has many ways to install (applet, webstart and exe.) It's really difficult to sandbag here, if only they took care of the escapers, it would be better. Minuses include: the more games you play, the harder it is to increase/decrease your rank. Too few strong players and it's usually hard to get a game. Admins dont realy care much for escapers. They'd rather spend their time moderating people not talking about go... something even IGS wouldn't doOther minuses described below.

2.TOM Friendly people too. This would be better than kgs if it weren' for its obscene lag and unilanguage support. The admins are all at least TOM 7d lvl and they actually care about cheaters. If there were an escaper, they would go into the game and determine the result of the game.

3. IGS Tweet's an ass, period. A dictatorship, totalitarian uberly corrupt server. If you mention another server even once, you will get banned. If tweet's pmsing, you'll get banned. Not that I got banned on IGS before, I saw people get banned for just mentioning another server and heard many stories about it. oOly plus is that it's really easy to get a game. that's all. That's probably the only plus it will ever have over KGS. KGS>IGS period.

4. Yahoo lol?

My rant about kgs:

Escapers and other dishonorable people are intolerable and IMO, kgs does a very poor job in handling them. I've been on kgs for 4 years and I am a pretty loyal member to the server. However, the server has only been going downhill since i've started there. Admins/assisstants would rather moderate and control what people talk about rather than help new people get accomodated with the server and catch escapers and such. 'arik' is proof that the escaper system does not work.

I have came to realize that parts of the administration are corrupt. There are some people you'd see on TV, or read in books that are so nasty in their ways, you'd puke just reading on them. I have came to realize that parts of the administration are corrupt. For example, they'd hack off the first few places of the tournament winners to give possibly their friends the prize, accusing all the winners of sandbagging. I nearly crapped out my mouth that day. Not going to mention who, not going to mention when, but this has caused many of my friends to quit kgs, and some to quit go permanently. The sandbagging label used in this context reminds me of the red scare. Who will play in tournaments anymore? There is really no way you can determine if someone's a sandbagger or not. Hell, I can go to every tournament and call everyone who wins all their games a sandbagger. lol. This is a tactic often used by evil politicians. During the cold war, the government used to label people they didn't like "communists." After 9/11, the government (hello mr bush) used the label "terrorist" to label people they didn't like.

I have no idea why, but most of my friends who used to work as assistants/admins on kgs have quit. There are too few strong players on kgs and the way kgs is treating the lag issue is probably the casue of all this. I have convinced a few strong TOM players to play on KGS, specifically 'yesniu' and 'langbu06'. Both of them have suffered a hit to their rank due to this lag. Again, I dont really care about my wins and losses, but I hate to see my friends and top players leave because of time losses which were really not their fault.... anyways...

Improvements I think can be made to kgs:

- if someone disconnects, give them 5 minutes or some amount of time to come back. If the game has advanced over a certain amount of moves, let's say 30, then award the escaper a default loss. If the game has progressed less than a certain amount of moves, set the game result as no result. Seriously... 5 minutes is MORE than enough time for a disconnect

- an adjourn system, in case someone suddenly had something come up and had to leave, they can request an 'adjourn' and it would require the opponent to accept. If the opponent is mean and wouldn't accept the adjourn request, they probably you shouldn't have started the game in the first place.

- rating system: change the system to only look at the games in the past N days or past N games. The current kgs system is poor. The more games you play, the harder it is for your rank to improve. I like TOM's rating system better in which it only samples the past 20 games, if you win 14-17/20, you gain a rank. If you win 18-20/20, you gain 2 ranks. If you lose 14-17/20, you lose a rank. If you lose 18-20/20, you lose 2 ranks. What I dont really like about it is that you have to set your rank. I'm sure we can take good ideas from other places, filter out the bad ideas, be a little innovative and voila, come up with our own.

- add a forum. senseis may be a good place to discuss complex ideas and such, but I think a forum would be better to discuss temporary issues. It would be a good way to make our community a bit more close knit.

Neo!; Don't know if I'm doing this correctly but I enjoyed your comments, and seeing them as a "friend". My latest, and only down play of KGS is 'jyem' and his unquestioned dictatorial actions. Anyway, all the best, and Keep Playing! ~Bill