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KGS Wishlist / Game Handling
Path: KGSWishlist
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2. Game Handling
- [21] General Game Stuff
- [22] Editing
- [23] Score Estimator
- [24] Rule Systems/Time systems
- [25] Ratings
- [26] Game Start
- [27] Game End
[21] General Game Stuff
silly chat in games
- Kosh: I'm always having trouble finding a buddys game. Scrolling down the game list... where is it? Finally I find it. Is it possible to display games from your buddy's for example at the top? Listed buddy games just like in the names list would be great! The only possibility now is to view games of all your buddy's individually.
- (Sebastian:) Or add another "room" (like Open Games), called "Buddies", which shows all buddies in the right pane, and their games in the left, regardless in which room where they play.
- ilan: Hi WMS! The one thing I would like to see on KGS is the biggest possible go board (e.g., my KGS board is smaller than the Dashn or glGo boards). It seems to me that a lot of space is taken up by the chat window and other stuff which is not essential to playing. Maybe it's already possible to get a larger board, but I don't know how to do this.
- iLoveSai 7/16/2004
- Active Games Tab -- can we also see D & T games listed along with R and F? This would make it more convenient to find teaching game to view for beginners like me. Also, the ability to sort that list by D, T , R , F as well as already available options?
- Have an option to limit viewing privileges to D and T games for more than 1 other person. So, it can be sorta like a semi-private game.
- ziggystar: I like the idea of the teaching ladders. I would give teaching games more often if I would get more in return. Now can't you implement a credit system for teaching games? I bet that many more people would give teaching games if they would get something in return. (Even if only the credits). And I suppose that it would distribute the teaching games a bit better. (E.G. not only people asking for a review all the time get most of them because you could see that this person has already received an astonishing amount of lessons).
- Mef:You can just check a person's profile to see their history of teaching vs. being taught.
- When someone has a game to finish that is loaded by his opponent, he should not be allow to start a new one... Very frustrating for those that are waiting.
- wms: As a policy I never force anybody to play in a game they don't want to. Yes, it is frustrating when somebody escapes from you - but when they don't want to play you, I'm not going to force them to, and I'm not going to ban them from the server or prevent them from playing other games just because they don't want to. The server has a system for handling escapers, so when somebody doesn't want to finish your game, please just accept that. (PS - Requests like this come up on a regular basis, so perhaps this question & answer should be left up top here, where people will see it?)
- Nobody forced him to accept to play this game...
- jfc: different sound for moves in my game verses moves in an observe game. Rational: Yesterday I was teaching a newbie. She was taking a long time between moves (I didn't pressure her to play fast) so I was observing another game. I want to get sounds in both games but I also want to easily distinguish "move sound" in the game we are playing verses a "move sound" in an observe game. Obviously this feature is merely a "nice to have".
- During editing, after editing control is released, could there be an prominent icon to indicate that the other player can now politely take control of the game editing.
- Why must kgs stop at 9 dan ? Can't there be a 11 dan that is 2 stone stronger than a 9 dan ?
- Velobici: Hello, WMS. Could you add one line to the server stats display showing the date and time on the server. This would allow players to arrange games based upon KGS time...as in "Lets play on Monday September 20th at 7:30pm KGS time"...no need to convert from one timezone to another or to/from GMT/UTC.
- Game variants
- Hu: Support for team games.++
- One color Go game type. Perhaps so that only the ones playing sees it that way and the observers see the real colors.
- Ghost go game type. Players only sees their own stones and they're told if their move was valid or not. How many stones where put in atari (of both colors!) and how many stones that where captured after each move. Extremely exciting spectator sport and a lot of fun to play too.
- Make it possible for the players to swap stones during play.
- Allow to switch colors during teaching games.
- Put players at top of observer list and perhaps separate them with a thick line. +++++
- Immediately join an open game you were playing upon reconnection when you've been disconnected.++++
- A checkbox in New Game / Create Game windows that disables / enables Undo's + --
- Blake: I really don't like this idea. You already get a dialog asking if you will allow the undo; isn't that enough? Just put in your info that you only allow undo for misclicks--or that you don't allow undo at all. I have had my fair share of misclicking experiences, and I just don't think it's fair to say "Okay, you just clicked one space over and put your entire group in atari, but, since I don't allow undos, oh well." It's not a very friendly-seeming attitude, to me.
- Remember what type of game was last offered, just like the time and board-size is remembered? That avoids the situation of setting up a free 19x19, then canceling to change the 'Note' and re-offering, ending up offering a rated game.+
- Default to 'free' if your remembered board-size is non-19x19, or if you select that in the dialog?
- Uneven (asymmetrical) time limits, i.e. 1 hour for Black vs. 5 minutes for White. Don't know how you'd have a rated game with such a handicapping system, but would be fun for Free games or Simultaneous games.
- Sebastian: This is already possible. Just give your opponent additional time at the beginning.
- Jonathan Cano: "add time" only affects primary time. It does not allow for asymmetric byo-yomi parameters. Assymmetric byo-yomi would be nice but clearly this is not a critical enhancement.
- Allow to add custom time (Ex.: add 20 min)
- joelr Can you add a byo yomi period? (goes with above)
- When observing a game, make the panes for the observers list and chat box adjustable.
- marc: make 9x9 and 13x13 games rated! this is very important for beginners. for stronger players who are not-so-used to these board sizes, weight the rating variation as much as you like. also, perhaps allow only rated games for these board sizes to players up to 20k
- wms: Not practical, for the same reason ultra blitz is no longer rated. 9x9 and 13x13 are different enough that they don't belong in the same rank system as 19x19, and I have no plans on setting up multiple rank systems on KGS.
- Jonathan Cano: Drat! I was hoping to acheive a 9d rating for 3x3 Go!
- joelr not with the right komi.
- Make "menu" pane optional, so allow more space for the board +
- Add an extra column in the list of currently played and offered games, to show the available time and the time system. To avoid a clobbered game listing, perhaps show this info in a "tooltip" when the mouse hovers over the listing? Some mention of this is/was in KGS Plans. ++
- Indication of response time experienced by your opponent.-
- Don't mark current move with a circle in the SGF file, or have it as an option or preference option.
- Slider-bar navigation of moves.
- Replay option for client+. Wish granted for release 2.5.4.
- Some way for players to agree to delete their unfinished game. After an extended time has elapsed, people often have no interest in finishing a game from when they were many stones weaker.++
- Do not allow opponent to ask for undo multiple times for the same move. (wms notes that the solution is to minimize the undo request window and ignore it. It will remain blocking further requests until you make your next move.)+
- Then please give the undo requestor a notification when an undo is rejected, so they know the window was seen and acted upon. If a player makes a move quickly, sometimes you have to re-request an undo.
- Do not restart clock after an undo in the scoring phase. This can be disconcerting in cases of dispute over old "special ruling" cases. Besides, the game ended by agreement, already.
- holosys: When observing a game, allow user to select the level of chat they want to see - all chat, player-only chat or no chat. Would help immensely for studying without the distraction of idle chit-chat, and avoid having to use the current kludges of positioning the chat off the screen, covering it up with another window or censoring/uncensoring heaps of users.++
- [2130] rubilia: I'd like to have a personally adjustable "hide-by-rank" kibitz chat filter. Supposedly, the players' chat is welcome to everyone (if not, censoring them is just four clicks away), but often mid-kyu observers' competing assumptions and recommandations flood the whole chat area, making it really hard to discover valuable commentaries.
- (Sebastian:) This is indeed a problem that I'd love to see resolved. But, since I'm only a mid-kyu, I would hate it if my questions wouldn't be seen by people who care about the game. This counters the spirit of the Go community, in which better players try to be open to lesser players. One possible solution would be to filter for special stars and lemons[2510], which could be expanded by a special lemon for garrulous people.
- rubilia: To be allowed to hide all comments by observers below a particular strength isn't meant to be a matter of (un)justice but a way to ensure readability. The idea is similar to what was done in the recent Guo Juan lectures, but unlike the server-side filter there, users could adjust their personal filter by themselves. - Of course, some good comments and questions of well-behaved learners might get hidden then, and dan players sometimes chit-chat as well. However, ranks are best filter criteria for serious studies I can see so far. Currently in 50+ kibitzers games, I hardly follow the chat because that's just too straining. The same applies to reloaded games of strong players. I got an 6d friend who occasionally likes to review his own games later, getting useful hints from other high-dan's comments. Do you really want him to start attaching a lemon (or star, respectively) to each of the 72 kibitzers who have contributed to that 1468 lines mess? - About your concerns of (not) being read: I am quite confident there are enough observers more or less interested in comments or questions of any level. Why to incumber the other ones to hide our chat?
- (Sebastian:) You're right, this would put an inordinate burden on the players. How about this: Filter by number of people who censored a player? We would get this information for free. Only display registered users with less bad marks. Set it to 1 if you really want your calm. Or better yet, divide the number of bad marks by the time they've been registered.
- (Sebastian:) On the same vein, it should be possible to censor people by right-clicking on their message.
- Hu: Would like "New Game" button on the "Open Games" tab. (I think you have to be "in" a particular room to start a game. The "Open Games" tab is not a room. -Jared)
- Hu: Would like option to display all Global games, offered and played in the Open Games tab, which would be renamed "Global Games". Then I could stack the Global Games tab, and move all room window chat divider bars to the top.
- rubilia: When being in a game (no matter if playing, editing, kibitzing or whatever), let there be a way to find out the corresponding room from within the game.
- Open Games tab needs option to sort by game type (rated, free, teaching).
- Open Games tab needs highlight with rank mask. Ie. "highlight when a challenge by 1-10k appears".
- liopic: Create a new tab of high level games, listing all games now playing at KGS by high ranked players (dans and pros). I (and probably lot of people) have English and Japanese room opened, ONLY to look for "good games" to watch. It can be like "Open Games" tab, not for challenges but for high level games. + Wish granted for release 2.6.2. (Now there is a nice active games, thanks wms!!)
- eng60340: label the games with a unique ID (and allow sorthing via ID). so that when i ask for game advice, the advisers can locate the game quickly.
+ ZeroKun: Dunno if this was purposed, but I have a better idea for ctrl click, instead of ctrl click to paste the board coordinates, it should just be a double click, and depending on which button you use it would play a W or B next to it. I think this would make things alot easier than just ctrl click and then having to write the color of the move.
- If "seeking a game request" window is open with specific conditions indicated therein, and one is interested to find out that are the game conditions asked by a fellow player who also has an "seeking a game request" window open, one should be able to do so instead of an error message stating that "you are already playing a game.."+
- Sebastian: Absolutely! I would go even further and question if there ever is a reason why somebody who has a challenge open should be treated as playing a game. Another consequence is that, when you want to chat you get the message "x is currently playing" (see [1301]).
- wms: Please see KGS Status. I'm already beginning to fix this. By the way, the window is called the "Challenge Window" (because it is where you challenge other players to a game). It isn't labeled that, so you can call it anything you like, but it took me a while to figure out what the "seeking a game request" window was, and it's easier if everybody uses the same terms. :-)
- Joshual000: A feature I think would be nice is allowing a user with a currently open game to open a challenge window from the game list for the purpose of watching the game. The buttons could be disabled, etc. (I often like to watch several games while I play - if a player from a different room currently has an open challenge, and I'd like to watch, but am playing a game I currently need to: open the room they hail from, locate their game on the list and click (or find them on the user list)) Currently much easier to keep many rooms open to allow for watching games.
- Fwiffo: It would be nice to be able to kibitz our own games - that is, make comments that you and the observers see, but not your opponent (like on NNGS). I sometimes want to keep notes on game positions while playing and it would be much more convienient to do it in-game.+++++
- liopic: And it's fun (and instructive) to play a game, commenting your reasons for every move (but not letting to see by the oponent since the finish of the game). Some friends do it (manually), mutually censuring the other player during the game (and uncensuring at the end). You can really learn studing, after the game, the oponent's move reasons!!
- Degan: I have not tried this manual method. Is there confirmation that your oppenent has censured you? On DGS there is a <h> Comment </h> tag that you can add to games messages so they are not seen by your opponent, but are saved in the SGF.
- (Sebastian:) How about just preceding them with "//"? Or with the word "aside:" - I'm always amazed how in theater the other actors doesn't hear an aside, but the whole audience hears it! ;-)
- Lyon: It would be nice to be able to focus on one part of the rank graph, maybe just specfic months, or maybe just a magnification option for the part you click on. As people's accounts start getting older the rank graph gets real small :P.
- Daan: Allow observers to guess the next move by clicking on the board, instead of naming them in the chat section. The board could then display the number of clicks per location (either numericaly or through something fancy like a colour gradient though I wouldn't recommend that) allowing or course only one click per observer per move. It would require an option to turn this on/off of course.
- rubilia: If you just don't like to type coordinates (although thatīs something different, I know): it is already possible to ctrl-click at a point to paste its coordinates to the chat line. To (be able to) see the guesses at the board would be nicer, though.
- Warp: I like this idea. Currently when people guess the next move, they flood the kibitz window for that. I feel this is unnecessary and often annoying flooding. Guessing the next move by just clicking on it would be cool. I think a number of guesses in each intersection (of course except in intersections with no guesses) would be ok.
- Vlad I think it would be nifty with a "rematch" option after a game, which directly opens a new game.++
- Jonathan Cano: "New Game" option ... allow the creator of a game request to specify that game parameters (e.g. rated/free, time limits) may not be changed by the challenger.
- I believe this feature has been suggested (and rejected by WMS) in the past but I don't see it listed here so I figured I'd mention it for documentation purposes.
- Here is a variation that perhaps will not be rejected: When a challenger does change some game parameters, list them in red (or some other color) when I am presented with the accept/decline requester. This way, when I put up a "new game" request with the note "don't change the time limits" it will be easier to notice when someone has ignored my request.
- This exists. The color used is turquoise.
- wms: I just have to add, sometimes I'm amazed. Do people actually use KGS before posting their requests? The request here, to highlight changes, has been there for over a year! And it's not an option, everybody has it...please, don't go inventing problems that are already solved. :-(
- velobici: Once a player has an "open game" up on the server, that same player can not look at other game offers. That player must remove his own "open game" to see if any other games come close to the desired parameters that are not listed in the "Open Games" room. (time, rules, overtime, etc.). I end up putting up a game, taking it down, checking other offers, putting it up again....when there are relatively few people of my strength on the server. Please change it to allow people to look at the game offers of others even when they have a game offer of their own pending.+++
- Anon: When a user is watching a game and not at the last node (following the new moves), indicate when there is a new move played (perhaps by highlighting the fast-forward button).
- Anon2: If you get several information messages from games that finish as you watching them, add them all to the same message or information window.
- Anon2: When an information window for game end by scoring, resign or otherwise shows up, have a button that will jump to the game window.
- Anon2: Make sure all such information messages show which game has ended. Currently I think at least on of them does not.
- jocelyn?: have a list of game 'profiles' which would allow to create quickly and without any mistake the game you want
- Cheyenne: In the game chat window, make the text from the two players different (bold, different color, etc.)
- wms: Make the "review game" option always enabled, but if you click it during a free or ranked game, your opponent gets a "your opponent wants to review now, ok?" window, similar to the way that undo works. After reviewing, you must then return to the game to finish it.
- rubilia: The same applies to "clone game" option. Observers should always be able to create a clone.
- Chris Hayashida: The pop-up "tool tip" for open games on the game lists should include the time settings. It's annoying to have to open each game to see if it's a slow game or blitz.
[22] Editing
- Allow names to be set for Demonstration Games. This would cut out comments by kibbitzers wondering who was playing.
- Droste: One-Button-No-Extra-Key-Editing: To be able to hold a book in one hand and edit a SGF-File with the other, I propose some changes:
- edit tool: click on black changes it to white, click on white deletes stone
- clicking on edit tool in menu, while selected: reverses white and black as above
- clicking on move tool in menu, while selected: changes whoes move it is
- Grauniad: Document how to navigate between variations and edit games in CGoban 2.6.3 and beyond.
- Allow giving away ownership or control of a demo (including review), so a starter can leave. ++++
- Display of current move number and move you are looking at. [This is how it is now, is it not?]
- Edit window to become a permanent part of the main board window, switching back and forth is cumbersome. Dockable? Pop it up paired with the game board to second from the top? +++?++ Alternately, a way to visualize moves in the tree without deploying the edit window (e.g. display the current branch and a list of the coordinates of the child branch moves, or perhaps ghosted stones like gGo). It would be nice to be able to disable the "look ahead" for working on problems.
- Change the layout of the edit window to make it less tall, but maybe wider. Right now, fitting both game and edit window onto the screen (without overlap) is a bit of a squeeze. Maybe also offer two different edit window layouts, one vertical and one horizontal that users can choose from.
- Have undos delete moves, at least in demonstration mode. +++-
- Hu: A clue in the commentaries to distinguish between those made during the game and those made after. Perhaps a dashed line separating before and after commentaries.+
- Some way of distinguishing, in the comments/chat, what branch the comment/chat appears in. For instance, instead of labelling all 10th moves as "Move 10", label them "Move 10", "Move 10 (a)" and so forth.
- When saving SGF, add sequential numbers for all comments so they can be made sense of (followed through the file?), store comments with the move where typing started, not where the user hit enter. [This would seem to require extending the SGF format. It is unlikely all interested parties would agree.]
- Being able to clean up all comments from the game. This is especially useful for further reviewing (submitting to GTL, for example), or when one wishes to look at high dan game w/o all the noise. Similar functionality as
http://www.red-bean.com/sgf/sgfc/ +
- Another version of cleaning up final SGF: consolidate entire game to get rid of all undos and make one continuous string of moves. +
- At least make undos a variation rather than the main line (as they are today) in the SGF +++
- wms: The variations are all in chronological order. Undos are first because they happened first. I don't plan on changing that, more likely would be changing the editor to detect undos and automatically make the second variation the default one.
- dnerra: Please note that the way you are doing it is incompatible with the "official style guide" for SGF. See first paragraph in
http://www.red-bean.com/sgf/user_guide/#style. I don't think it is reasonable to expect SGF readers to automatically detect undo's, given this clear recommendation.
- Yet another suggestion for cleaning up the SGF: add a mode that steps through the game (including variations) as was done during the game. I.e. if a teacher started on the main branch with moves 1,2,3 and then jumped to another branch with move 4(a) and 5(a), then came back to main branch move 4, allow the user to automatically traverse the game through moves 1,2,3,4a,5a,4 without the user needing to work out the timings of the thing by looking at the comments.
- wms: This is not possible with SGF as it stands. This belongs more in the SGF Wishlist I think.
- Sebastian: Actually, this is possible with SGF because SGF explicitly allows the introduction of new properties. However, it doesn't even have to be done using SGF. I proposed a feature earlier to include sequential numbers in the comment text itself to clean up the current confusion with text that has been added during review of the game. (This was something like "{#123}". Unfortunately, that wish seems to have been lost during major rewrites.)
- Full FF[4] capabilities in the editor; area, line, and arrow modes added to the edit window (or the conjoined docked editing box). For an example of what this looks like see
http://jeanfrancois.menon.free.fr/rubygo/screenshots.html and go halfway down the page til you see the screen where these tools are used. ++
- Integration with SL: markup (such as [[ and ]]) that would allow making a clickable link to SL.
- Include game type (Free/Rated/etc.) in the SGF file, even if just as part of a comment entry.+
- Ability to change between the 8 possible orientations of a game to help compare openings. (Four rotations multiplied by a reflection of each make eight. 16 if you count reversed Black and White, as would be useful.)+
- Ability to rotate the board in the middle of a game. +
- Hu: Ability to Exchange Black and White, useful for joseki study.
- Possibility to turn the "number moves" feature on for whole branches of a sgf-file. (with or without all subbranches, from a node along the active game branch etc.)
- Expand and reduce variation-branches (explorer like: with a small "+" or "-" in front of each node with brach connections.)
- Additional cut and paste features:
- Cut or copy a branch from one file and put it into another open SGF file (clipboard).
- A possibility to copy part of a board. Mark several stones or mark a specific area of the board, nice for the preparation of Go problems from games.
- Fwiffo: Option to make the stones in the game tree window smaller so the tree can be more compact and fit more moves and branches on the screen.
- After a game has been reviewed, allow every spectator to save the game, not only the reviewer. Reviewers mostly quit without saving the game in their profile - such a review has most value to watchers. One should consider an option to let reviewer disallow saving the review.
- 'Up' currently only possible for node's direct childs. Allow 'Up' anywhere: implement by recursively applying the 'Up' action to the node (if any) of the current (sub)branch of the selected move.
- os: Right now it is painful to view a joseki/fuseki dictionary with many alternatives per move, because one must go back-down-forward to even see what each alternative move is. It would be nice to (1) be able to cycle through the variant moves at some point easily, (2) to see the variant moves available on the board (e.g., as transparent stones as the PANDA-gGo client does it:
http://www.pandanet.co.jp/English/setup/PANDA-gGo.htm). (1) could be achieved by making the up/down keys move between variations; i.e., move up/down in the variation tree as it is displayed. This is natural, because up/down move the cursor in the variation tree just like the left/right keys do (and easier to understand than the highlighting change that happens currently). It is a bit stronger than the preceding proposal, because it would always select a different variation at a preceding node, even if the current node had branches. In fact, it would do away with the need to highlight a variation (the principal variation can be defined to be the topmost one and edited in this way).
- Degan: Allow use of arrow keys to move through game:
Right=forward
Left =back
Up =previous branch (if exists)
Down =next branch (if exists)
- wms: Already done. Just use ctrl-arrow or shift-arrow. Seems not to work unless one of the arrow buttons has focus; not sure why this is the case, it looks like a java bug.
- small suggestion: instead of (during observe)
- Shift-Right=forward
- Shift-Left =back
- ...why not just left/right? (these keys do nothing at the moment)
- yoyoma: When a game finishes, observers cannot clone it or load it as a demo from the players info until after the game is deactivated (I think by everyone leaving it?), so there's no easy way to try to analyze something. Happens often in high dan games where players leave, lots of observers idling in there, but a few people want to analyze something.
- rubilia: Yeah, there's a gap in cloning possibility. As far as I can see, it only affects the period between finishing a game and starting to edit it. That's bad, anyway.
- wms: From ddyer: A little unconventional, but in the tree control, show the move position rather than the move number superimposed on the stone. Show the move numbers along the top (sort of as the x coordinate)
- danoontje: How is this usefull? I sometimes load a pro-game and play "guess the next move" with someone. This feature would spoil this little game.
- rubilia: You still could hide the tree.
- mgoetze: In live broadcasts with live commentary, people are often confused as to what is the actual game and what is a variation shown by the commentator. 3 possible solutions that I can think of:
- Allow the use of "Shift up" and "Shift down" online.
- Automatically insert lines played by the owner of the game above those shown by others.
- Make it possible to right-click a stone in the game tree with an option "Mark as game line" - then the lines leading to that position could be marked with a different color, e.g. red.
- mgoetze: When leaving a variation, grey out the comments pertaining to that variation.
Rakshasa: When editing the first node by removing/adding stones it should not affect the rest of the game. The game gets messed up when you edit away the handicap stones in a game.
- rfielding?: A Joseki/Fuseki feature similar to MasterGo/SmartGo. Minor patch to the way they do things: when a fuseki match fails fall back on a joseki match close to the last stone played - or show fuseki, joseki, thisGameVariation matches differently.
[23] Score Estimator
- Possibility to help the score estimator by manually specifying which stones are dead and which are alive (click to switch their status) where appropriate. wms isn't making any changes to the score estimator code any time soon; someone else wrote it.+. Any offers to take it on ?
- Option when reviewing editing SGF files: to have Score Estimate window available and updated on every move, irregardless of its inherent limitations to be used as a guide in this way. (see ScoringEstimatorConsideredHarmful).+ ("irregardless"??...)
- Good idea - not only for to be used, but also to make the limitations more obvious.
- liopic: I'm studing yose moves from my games, and this option will be very usefull!!
- Allow use of score estimator in Free games.+-
- Jochie: The score estimator seems to go into deep recursion or some endless loop on the end position of my
recent game against AndresD on KGS. While I can understand wms's wish to not touch the code, I hope he'll glance at this one and see if it's something easy/obvious.
- The score estimator seems to be confused by sekis. I think he counts the groups as dead thus leading to a false result. An example is
this game: Altough white won with 17.5 points, score est. thinks black will win with 30.5 points.
- How about being able to use GnuGo as score estimator like gGo does?
- ndkrempel: What would be great would be a graph of the score estimate after every move of the game. With the current score estimator, this would indeed be grossly inaccurate for most of the game, but would be interesting for the endgame, and would give an idea of how wrong (why be so negative? why not say "how close" - DrStraw) the score estimator is in various phases of a game. If the score estimator is ever improved or replaced, this would be even better.
[24] Rule Systems / Time systems
- Eggtimer (aka hourglass) time: An initial amount of time is specified and a player loses if the difference between the player's time and the opponents time exceeds that amount. ++
- Hu: Wild mode (W): An even game where the server makes the first three moves for each player randomly anywhere on third line or above. The players then continue playing from that position. See Wild Fuseki.+
- rubilia: Default komi for game offers with New Zealand rules now is correct, but when changing a different ruleset offer to NZ rules for a challenge, the komi doesn't seem to be adjusted.
- Neil: Let me override the default compensation for the ruleset I choose. My observations show that the 7.5 default for Chinese rules is very, very unpopular, with most players dropping it to 5.5 (or even avoiding the game altogether). Being able to set this to 6.5 would be nice. Someone else is going to ask for an auction, but I don't agree with that.
- JuhoP: There is currently the blinking 'blitz'/'ultrablitz' warning when the time settings are short. I think it would be good to have a similar 'fast overtime' warning when the overtime is less than 15 s/move. This is because some people seem to use settings like Canadian overtime 30 sec / 5 stones to mislead people to think it is byo-yomi instead of canadian time. 15 sec would probably be a good limit because it covers the cases of 1 min/5 stones and 30 sec/5 stones, which are the most misleading ones. The warning could appear in the same place where the blitz warning is now, and of course only if the game is not a blitz game already.+
- Rules and komi for new players could depend on language settings instead of defaulting to Japanese style.
[25] Ratings
- Jared: Rank field in User Info should be in decimal form. Alternatively, both decimal form and truncated form could be displayed.
- To me this just shows an unhealthy obsession with ranks. This will do nothing to address the number of people on KGS wishing to play opponents within a strict grade boundary. I can see no obvious benefit from such a change. WMS has already caved into enough moans over ratings.
- Show equivalent ranks in other systems, eg: AGA, BGA, etc, as well as KGS rank.
- mgoetze: I don't believe there is a simple formula for this, and if it were implemented it would be more misleading than anything else. +
- It would be nice to see statistics about how many people of a particular rank are playing at any given time. Maybe a graph? +++
- Hu: Change the "9d?" rating that gets awarded players who win a lot of games to something like "9d+". +++++
- Harleqin: AFAIK the "9d?" is not different from other "xx?" ranks - these players have not lost enough games that they could be given a "secure" rank. If they want a "secure" rank, they should play against handicap.
- Rewrite the ratings algorithm for ? ranked players, or perhaps cap their ratings until the ? is gone in order to avoid the accelerated drift ? ranked people can experience.
- Revert [xx?] ratings to [?] if their last rated game is unfinished.
- (Sebastian:) Display each lost and won game (or only rated ones) in the rating graph as little dots. The height is a function of the rating of the opponent, handicap and komi. Color codes win/loss (e.g. White = won, red = lost). This would show at a quick glance if the rating has been earned actively or passively (see mgoetze's example "if you only play one rated game" above) +++
- (Sebastian:) Display rank curve differently where questionable (rank with question mark). (This doesn't have to be as fancy as in some other servers which show error margins. Just using a different color should suffice.) +++
- Cheyenne: Do not use a game against a xx? player to recompute one's rank. As a rated player my rank should not be altered if I win or lose a game against a xx? player. If players know that their own rank will not be affected by playing an unknown I suspect they would be more willing to play such games (you would probably see fewer "no ?" requests). This will make KGS a more welcoming place for people who just joined and are trying to establish their initial rank.
- If this is already in place -- maybe having it alittle more visible in the online help.
- wms: Cheyenne, in general I cannot have a game affect one player but not another. It would make the whole rank system unstable. But why shouldn't playing a "?" player affect your rank? If your rank is solid, then it will affect your rank only a tiny bit, but even better, as the player's rank becomes known it affects your rank as if you had played their solid rank. For example, if you play a "4k?", and lose, your rank will change very very little at first because your rank will be much more confident than theirs; but if, a week later, this "4k?" has played (and won) a lot more, and becomes "1k", then your loss will have a greater affect, but it will affect you as a loss against a 1k, not as a loss against a 4k. So in general, there is no reason to treat "?" players special; the data returned has little affect when their rank is unknown, but when it becomes known, it is as valid as any other data. As for more info, the page in the help on the rating system says everything about the rank system - the algorithm is there.
(WME note: Leaving the following alone, numbers scare me. -TJ)
- Sebastian: Try to minimize rank drift during a hiatus and sudden jumps when users resume playing rated games after a hiatus. This can be achieved by the following:
When computing Rank_A at time t, do not use the current Rank_B(t), but a weighted average such as
Rank_B_Avg := w(t-t0) * Rank_B(t) + (1-w(t-t0)) * Rank_B(t0)
where
- t0 < t
- is the time when the game was played
- w(delta_t) !
- = exp (-delta_t/t_halflife*log(2)):is a weighting function. On second thought, maybe it shouldn't even be time-dependent. A constant, such as 1/2, might just do as well. IT would reduce such complaints as "I won a game and my rank went down". It's your call.
- t_halflife
- is a time constant, probably best something like 60 days
(I assume that if Rank_B(t0) is not available (e.g. because the player had a question mark) you already just reduce the overall weight factor for that game.)
- mgoetze: I don't see how this fits in with the current rating algorithm.
- meldroc?: I too would like to see ways to elimintate rank drift. After a month-long hiatus on my part, my rank drifted from 24k to 18k, now I have a difficult time getting games with players of my true skill level.
- Cheyenne: Get rid of the ~ tag (tilde) and replace it with a user rating defined ranking. When a game is finished, allow the players to optionally indicate if the game was helpful to them (put the question right on the same pop up that shows the "game done" and final score). Each player gets to make the selection and it is stored as part of the game record (doesn't have to be included in the SGF file). There would be two flags (one for each player). Then when processing one's rank, use the flag to determine how many games one has that the opponent marked as helpful. If a certain percentage of games are marked as helpful then give that person a "gold star" next to their name. +-
- wms: While this gold star system might be nice, I don't see it replacing the ~ because it is fundamentally different. If it were added, instead it would have to sit alongside the ~. The ~ was added because many strong players who would play weaker players complained that it was too hard for them to determine whether or not the weaker players they played were returning the favor (by playing yet weaker players). The gold star scheme seems more like a "who's a nice guy" thing, it isn't tied to playing weaker players, which was the reason for adding the ~.
- Cheyenne: Also keep the idea of having "gold star" as a separate request (apart from the ~ issue) +
- [2510] Sebastian: How about combining both ideas? Give special stars and lemons +:
- "gave me nice feedback" from weaker players; +
- "was polite" from any players; +
- "escaped" from any registered players, or so ... +
- "garrulous" - which would help address rubilia's concern about silly chat in games[2130].
- mgoetze: Quoth KGS Plans: Add icons next to names in name list. What do those icons indicate? Many different ideas, not sure yet what ones will actually be there.
- bocephus: For those who are interested in avoiding the '~', give some mechanism to display a metric on how close (or far), one is from getting this award. Also, maybe technical detail in one place (i.e., free/rated, game size, [?]/[x?] players) on how the adjustments are made. [All game types and sizes apply and you can also reduce tilde scoring by playing newly registered players or provisionally ranked players.]
- Rakshasa: This sounds like a feature to make it easier for greedy players, why not also implement a escaper meter? ;)
- Bass: If the game is not recorded (resign as first move), do not reduce "stigma counter"
- Reuven: Could you explain?
- Bass: It has happened at least once, that a player with a "~" rank requests games against weaker players, not to play with them, but to resing without making a move. This should not help them get rid of the "~". (actually, I'm not sure it does..)
- Don't show temporary ranks ("xx?"). They are most of the time wrong and misleading, in particuliar for beginners (sensen) -
- DragnSlayr: [2501] Show guest ranks as a G and not a ?. This would make it easyer for newly register players to get a game I think.+
- Reuven: Wouldn't "-" fit that purpose, without introducing anew symbol?
- Mef: It could, except that "-" players can't play rated games. Also the "-" shows that a player chooses to not have a displayed rank, as opposed to being simply unable to get a ranked game.
- Sebastian: Allow rated games of any size. (Well, at least 6x6). Use a weighing factor proportional to the size. It just doesn't make sense that you don't get a rating as a beginner when you play as recommended. This would be an important incentive for those newbies who currently play only guest accounts because they wouldn't get ratings anyway, to switch to a real account.
- wms: Not a bad idea, but the problem is that nobody knows how other sizewins/losses relate statistically to 19x19 wins/losses. KGS is based on a statistical system, you can't just weight them differently, then you will still have wrong data, just at a different weight. If somebody can find data on % wins for players who are x ranks apart (where 1 rank = 1 stone on 19x19), then I'll be able to include off-sized games, but until then, it would screw up the rating system.
- Neil: If ratings are made easier to get, then they are made less meaningful and reliable. Leave it alone, I say.
- Sebastian: This is a specious argument. On the contrary - any statistician will tell you that reliability increases with the number of samples taken.
- Neil: Yes, what I just wrote was very bad. It didn't communicate what I meant at all. What I mean is, right now to earn a rating you have to play full 19x19 games (usually with decent time, but that's another wish). To be able to gain a rating playing 9x9 allows you to get by with fewer skills. That's what I mean by making a rating easier to get.
- Sebastian: OK, I see your point. But I don't think this is an unsolvable problem. One way around it could be to set the weight dependent on the rank: Phase it out smoothly between 20 and 10k. (If someone really manages to beat 15k players consistently on a small board then she/he probably is at least somewhere around 16k. This player may be in for some surprises when he/she starts playing on a 19x19, but I don't think this harms the system.) Another could be to apply this only if a player has a ranking with a "?" (and it would not suffice to remove it). In this case, well he may appear a rank or two stronger, but it wouldn't do any harm.
- phenomene: 9x9 or 13x13 go is just another game. Rated games on small boards sizes for 30k-20k players may be a good idea, as they often rush into playing 19x19 without enough knowledge of the game in order to get a rating. But allowing 9x9 to be rated between say dan players is a very bad idea in my opinion ; it is another game, that shouldn't influence one's real go rating.
- Sebastian: I agree. That's exactly what I meant by "Phase it out smoothly between 20 and 10k": Use some weighting factor under 20k, and let it be 0 above 10k, with a nice transition in between. However, I'm not sure how much effort it would be to implement it. If it is more than wms can presently afford then I still would hope he finds time for the basic feature. As I said above, I don't see this difference as an unbridgeable problem.
- DrStraw: How feasible would it be to implement separate ratings for each of 9x9, 13x13, 19x19? The mechanics of rating should be easy but displaying the ratings would require some manipulation of the user info screen. The biggest problem would be determining the difference in strength for each handicap stone but there are commonly used standards which would be used initially (3k/stone for 13 and 5k/stone for 9). KGS could blaze the trail for comfirming (or contradicting) these numbers by permitting these ratings and periodically adjusting the factors to keep these ratings in sync with 19x19 ratings.
- Sebastian: I like this idea. Internally and on a user's home page, keep separate statistics. In the "ranking tag" (the short "[25k?]" added to a name and used for sorting) and the graph just display one value (This can be a weighted average or the most secure and significant of the three, with bias for 19x19. Conversion takes place at current "exchange rate".)
(Additionally, it may be a good idea to show in the ranking tag if is based on a small board rank. This can be either with an "s", similar to the proposed "g" for guest accounts[2501], or simply with a "?").
- wms: As Dr. Straw pointed out, the biggest problem with multiple rating systems for different sizes is displaying the information. Having one rating system, which is for standard sized boards, is much simpler and fits the needs of 99% of the people, so adding something more complex (whether it is making the rating system some bizarre 19x19 and 9x9 hybrid or adding multiple rating systems) doesn't seem like such a great idea to me. Rather than having multiple rating systems, I'd be more tempeted to have a tournament-like ladder system for 9x9 or whatever size you wanted.
- joelr: On the other hand, it sounds like KGS contains all the data and most of the code to do this off-line. You just run the rating routine on only the 9x9 games, and then see what scale factor (rank per stone) gives the best fit to the 19x19 ranks.
Even if the results aren't shoehorned into the current display, a summary could be published as a service to the community.
- Hu: I'd like to see in User Infos an average time spent per move in rated games. This would be make it easy to distinguish those who have earned their rating by blitz and ultrablitz from those who have been more thoughtful. The average time is easily computed if the database remembers the number of moves played and the time spent moving. The server can easily track the time since it keeps the time for both players.
- uxs: Why would that be useful?
- BlueWyvern: I don't particularly like this idea. I never play under blitz settings, but I almost always play at a fairly brisk pace, especially if my opponent is playing extra slow and I have already read out a response to thier move before they play it. The speed I play at is frankly my perogotive, and if my opponent is satisfied with the time settings, I don't think it's anyone's business how fast I play.
- Reuven: I play both.. It can be aproblem for those who play blitz mostly and a couple of reall long games - Getting blitz games'd become impossible for them.
- Vlad: This is a question (for wms), not a suggestion, but I didn't find a good place to ask it. Given the current rating system, how many wins in a row, with proper handicap, one needs in order to go exactly one rank up? That is, ignoring rank drift. Thanks in advance
- wms: The algorithm for the rank system is on the KGS help pages, any questions about ranking are answered there. To answer your question directly: Depends, could be 1 game, could be 1,000,000 or more. So many factors are involved, that even giving a typical value isn't very useful.
- Vlad: Thanks for the answer. The algorithm isn't very useful in this question without knowing all the coefficients involved, that's why I asked. Keep up the good work!
- rubilia: (restored, because not obsolete at all) Weight ratings according to the average time per move rather than to the total playing time of a game, and use a continuous function to do so.
- wms: This simply makes no statistical sense, rubilia. Either games are slow enough to predict the strength of a player in "normal" speed games, or they aren't. If they are, they should be counted. If they aren't, they shouldn't. I just don't see why I would add inaccurate information to the rating system at any weight. Making it weighted less doesn't make it any more accurate, just possibly less damaging - but leaving it out completely will be even less damaging, so that's what I intend to do.
- rubilia: I agree for the case that your sample is infinite. Then an element (that is, a game) either contributes useful data to the evaluation (correlation being positive) and can be included with full weight. Or it doesn't contribute useful data and should not get any weight at all (zero or negative correlation). However, ratings are calculated from a finite set of results. I don't think this is the right place to go into details of theory here, and I am not quite familiar with english prob&stat vocabulary either. So, I'll give an (artificial) example ...
└─► (Topic to be discussed at KGSGameResultWeighting)
- tasuki: After seeing "tom3d" on kgs this evening, I think that blitz games should not be rated. I have also once seen a player from russia (cant remember his name though), who played games with one minute sudden death. He was clicking just *completely* random, the opponents playing him were trying to play at least a bit reasonable moves in hope to force him to resign, but it was of course useles. He got a very high rank like this (7dan, or maybe stronger). It is not go anymore, it is something between competition of better response time and nearly random placing of stones. I think that these games actually don't tell much about one's strenght in go, they should be played only as a free games. I know it is a matter of choice, but it influences the rating of us all. I know wms will not change it instantly, so what about making a petition againts rated blitz games?
- I strongly disagree with the above. The player in question played games with 5 periods of 7 second byo-yomi. True - it is very fast and an element of randomness due to netlag is introduced. But it is entirely possible to finish games under these conditions, more than half the games he played did not end in a timeloss - even not accounting for resignation by letting the time run out. Also, looking through the games should convince you that tom3d is a strong player - most probably considerably stronger than KGS 3d. To sum up, if you dont like rated blitz games then don't play them, but do not force your preference on the great body of strong players who do like them.
- I think the decision by wms below is very rash. This is just falling into the trap of thinking that rating is the sole purpose of Go. If somebody wants to acheive such a rating in this way let them. I fear what you're actually going to do is punish the many people who can cope quite easily and actually enjoy playing with pretty fast Canadian time limits.
- tasuki: Of course rating is not the sole purpose of Go, I only said that fast games are rather irrelevant for your actual playing strenght. You can actually enjoy playing with pretty fast Canadiam time limits (I enjoy it sometimes as well, I only think that it should not affect ones rank). And many thanks to wms for doing a statistics and adjusting the things.
- wms: See KGS status (I'll make the change right after this). Just finished some looking into this. There will be changes.
- Ian Davis: I am fed up with the ? ratings being placed at the bottom of the rating list. This just makes new players feel unwanted. It makes it more difficult for them to get games. It encourages existing players to accept the notion that ? players are probably sandbaggers with wildly innacurate ranks. I'd like it abolished.
- Neil: But the ratings are wildly inaccurate. Not only can the initial data points be wrong, but the ? ratings often suffer from gross inflation. Besides, how will sorting probably-inaccurate ratings with the more trusted values solve the social problems associated with dishonest players?
- Of course initially the rank may be slightly inaccurate, that is neither here nor there. Demoting players to the bottom of the list does them a discourtesy, it hinders them getting a solid rank - which is just poor hospitality. Keeping the system this way maintains the impression that it is okay to choose not to play somebody with an unsolid rank because a they are too weak for you so the game is boring or b they are too strong for you and you will get crushed. Neither a nor b show any regard for the love of the game. If you can give me evidence that this creates a positive atmosphere on the server I will back down. At the minute though I am fed up it is still in place. To me it shows people are playing only to get stronger ratings.
- BrendenT: I agree that the ? could be considered "poor hospitaltiy." I think we should not concern ourselves overly much with dishonest players. They will find a way to cheat no matter what we do. I think it would be ok to allow guests and new players to set a rank for themselves. This should be shown as tenative ? but allow the games to be sorted in their proper place. I personally check out the history of any new player I play (a very nice feature of KGS!) and so I'm pretty aware when someone might be sandbagging or inflating their rank. It's no big deal really if you are just a little proactive.
- Cheyenne: This might actually be more of a question -- but.. here goes.. Add a < and a > flag to the rank. A < indicates that the player has lost more then 50% of their correctly handicapped games, while a > indicates that they have won more then 50% of their games. The idea behind this is to maybe help identify overranked and underranked players.
- Can't say I understand this idea.
- Any chance that you will let us play rated games up to handicap 9? Have you looked at whether they are statistically consistent with lower-handicap games like you did for ultra-blitz vs. normal time?
[26] Game Start
- Hu: Don't start the clock until the first stone is played. ++++++++++++
- Allow users to agree to change game settings before first move. +
- This can not go on infinitely, otherwise a game will never start. Perhaps one final adjustment change should be allowed.
- A chat area to the "Create Game" window, where offers can be commented and/or discussed. Might even replace the current "notes", which only the game creator can change (that can only be replied to by opening a new chat window with the user directly, or starting the game). ++
- Ansgar?: At least, there should be some kind of chat button. With the new Open Games list it is even no longer possible to look in the current room for the challanger.
- rubilia: I am not sure if it's a bug: when starting a game, not only komi (according to the chosen ruleset) but also the resulting ranking value of the game doesn't seem to be adjusted to any changes made by the challenging player in the game setup window. Recently, a 6k? was suggested (by kgs default) to take white against me (8k) with 2 handicap stones. Though, he took black himself with 2 handi, since he thought to be around 10k. He won the game and became 4k? wich seems much too high a jump for his actual win, even in the ?rank modus (but appropriate if the game was scored with the - not applied - default settings). Yet I couldn't verify this with more accurate ranked players because the influence of a single game's outcome to the rank is much lower then.
- (Sebastian:) (related to previous) When starting a game with a Guest and/or [?] account, give the guest black by default. Most guests and [?] accounts are beginners.
- Vlad: Since New Year (2004) I noticed that whenever I challenge someone with the same strength, the default is that I get black. Before that, it was a random choice. What happened? I think having the server choose at random as default is good.
- imho?: I would prefer server checks which one is the weakest even in the same rank to give him blacks as a default
- DrStraw: The latest version seems to have introduced a new feature. Not sure it is it intended or a bug, but it is certainly annoying. The game type now appears to default to the last type played. I'm getting tired of having the wrong game type up in game offers because the default is no longer consistent.
- JuhoP: Wms has said it is a feature, and at least I like it better this way. (Though it is more important to keep DrStraw happy than me :-)
- DrStraw If that is the case then I think it should be based on the account. I only play free or simul games with my admin account but play rated games with other accounts. I do not lile my serious account to come up as non-rated when the last game it played was rated.
- JuhoP: Hmm. First I need to admit I put it wrong. It is not the last game played, but the last game offer you made, with the same account, that determines the default game type. So it is exactly like with time settings. This is how it works for me, and I like it. But if you are correct, then there must be some bug or additional feature that I don't know.
- DrStraw: From the way it behaves it seems like it is in the user preferences, which are stored locally and the same for all accounts on a single machine.
- Grauniad: Make the open games lists more stable somehow, so they don't change while you are trying to select a particular game offer, resulting in you selecting the wrong offer.
- wms: The open game list will only "resort" itself once in every 2+1/2 seconds at most. When I first wrote KGS, I was worried about this problem, and put a lot of work into looking at different systems. I tried not resorting the lasts when the mouse was over them, but that got to be incredibly annoying - if you accidentally left your mouse over a list, it would become way out of date before you noticed. Anyway, I think the current system is a good balance between keeping up to date and making it possible to click on the game/player you intend, so I'll probably leave it as is.
- Starting a game (and finding someone who has the same strength and accepts the time control) takes too long, IMHO. Two Things:
- First (direct measure): more information (additional columns) in the list of open games (information about time controls especially)
- Second (more general): If you open your table you set the time controls you want, ok thats good, but then you often wait very long until someone _recognizes_ your table ---> better to challenge people directly with a match request (like on IGS)?? dont know if this is possible.
- Ian Davis: In my opinion the above is nonesense, I find few problems in finding a game. The only thing that can put people off is preconditions to a game or crazy time limits. Myself I normally receive a challenge within 2 minutes.
- I find it better to challenge people directly, so they know instantly that you want to challenge them, right in this moment. (Of course chatting can achieve the same result, although a lot slower). The objection to have to deny lots of match offers IMHO does not hold (toggle open/looking solves this). I'm not sure however whether the current architecture of KGS would allow to change this.
- rubilia: You _can_ challenge people directly whenever they are looking for a game. Just keep in mind that at kgs, "being looking" isn't shown by a flag but by a game offer. ;-)
- wms: Rubilia has it right. There is absolutely no chance that I will add the IGS-style "send a challenge to any arbitrary person" system. I hated on IGS/NNGS when I'd be watching games and get challenge requests. I'd point out to the people that I didn't have "open" set, and they would always say "oh well, I thought I'd just check and be sure." It drove me nuts, so I very carefully made sure that on KGS, there is: a) no way to miss when you are open for challenges (solved by having people open for challenges show up in the game list as an open game), and b) no way to send a challenge to somebody who isn't open for challenges.
- There are a few problems+their solutions (while staying within your philosophy):
- when i'm "open" (=waiting to be challenged) i can't look at what other open people are offering as time control etc ==> allow to look at others' game offers, while i have my own game offer open; the server must just control that i can give only one binding (that only my opponent has to confirm to take effect) statement at a time.
- I don't know whether they have set their time controls intentionally or they will allow me to change their settings ==> allow to not explicitly set the time control, just "quick", "normal", "slower" game; opponent sets explicitly
- I have my favourite time control; when i want to ask 5 people i have to set it manually 5 times ==> add a button to "use my time settings" when you answer to a game offer
- it can happen that i am waiting and they are waiting (you can't challenge sb. while you are open) ==> see (1) + show more columns what other players are offering as time control
- starline: Allow people with an open game offer to see the time limits of other open games - without first having to close their own.
- Ansgar?: It would be nice if there was a symbol for blitz and ultra blitz games. This symbol could also stay in the games list after the game started.
- Right side list of players (right click in context menu) --> Add Option to Observe the game he/she is playing.
- When I create a new game and start waiting for challenges and more than one person challenges me, there's no visual feedback of this (I believe a sound plays when a new challenge arrives, but I seldom have sounds turned on). You can see all the people challenging you from the drop-down menus, but you don't know there are more people unless you do so. It would be nice to have some visual alert that more than one person is currently challenging you. I might prefer not to play with the first one who challenges me if at the same time someone else (eg. closer to my rank) is challenging me as well.
- Not a very essential feature, but if your challenge is declined, it would be nice to have that game show in non-bold (or gray) so you don't forget and select it again after a while. Probably not happening very often, but players with "?" ranks do get a lot of declines sometimes (maybe also people looking for high handicap games) and it's possible to lose track of who you challenged already. It should still be possible to challenge again, though, as the opponent may want to play with his settings if you tried to change them.
- Create a link to user info of chalengers of your game proposition. Usefull to decide is the game is even or no or if you have to put handicap stones. Can be used to see if the player is correct too (currently we have to rewrite player name to see his informations with the menu option).
- glue: try the small "?" button next to your challenger's name in the create game window.
- Ansgar?: Make resuming the current game easier. After a disconnect you either have to look in the game list (of the right room?) or go all the way through User->Edit Personal Preferences->Games...
- rubilia: What about clicking at the "resume" button?
- Ansgar?: Ok, that works for games longer than 10 moves. After a beginner mentionen that the resume button didn't seem to work for him, I only tried to reproduce the problem with a very short game :)
[27] Game End
- It sometimes happens that when marking dead stones at the end of the game both players miss a hard-to-spot dead stone or stones and press Done, and thus the end score is wrong. I have even witnessed a game between very high dans where white should have won but because he missed one dead stone he lost the game. So I suggest some way of going back to the dead stone marking stage even after both players have pressed Done. (It probably would be a good idea that it's not possible to go back to the game anymore, only to the dead-stone marking stage.)
- Sebastian: My first reaction was "no - people should just treat the scoring as serious as any move in the game". Which, logically, lead to: This should simply be handled as an undo request. (Maybe it already is, never tried it out.)
- wms: I don't think this will happen. There must be some point where the result of the game is final. If people notice a scoring mistake 2 months after the game ends, should they be able to reopen and re-score? I don't think so. On KGS, the moment that you press that done button, you are saying "I am 100% happy with the score of this game and I won't ever try to change it." If you aren't yet certain of the score, if you might want to change it later, then don't press the done button. That's all there is to it. Up until both players press "Done", the score can be changed, the game can even be restarted by just pressing "Undo," but once you have pressed "Done" you accept the current score, and once both players accept the current score, that's that, the game is done.
- Sebastian: Good point. I'm convinced. Moreover, you have all the time you want before pressing "done". And it's only one button, so it can't be a clicko.
- Cheyenne: Possible solution, have the "done" processing do a check to see if it can spot any uncleared dead stones (maybe use some of the function from the score est). If there is, then indicate that there is a possible problem and require another click to continue with the "DONE".
- Warp: My idea was that spectators could tell the players that they forgot to mark some dead stone (this is why it's important that they can't continue playing after both have clicked Done). After they leave the game then that would be final... Another idea: How about marking non-scoring territory very visibly (I don't have any good idea right now how to do that but somehow which is very easy to see): This way if at some place they forget to mark a stone it will be very eye-catching that there's some non-scoring territory left there. (Of course it could be confused with unfilled dame points and sekis, so I don't really know if it would help that much after all... It would be necessary to test it in practice.)
- TJ: Done is done, that's why it says "done". It has to be final at some point. If you can't find dead stones in a game you just finished playing better than a mere observer or, heaven forbid, a computer, then you deserve to lose anyways! Never having played in a tournament or seen one even, I assume that opponents score games together and agree on a score (eventually) there too, final score being final, so why make things complicated in order to help the careless or ignorant remain so on a go server?
- Sebastian: Actually, Warp's idea is neat. Why not mark dame points with a red triangle, if it helps newbies? It doesn't diminish the fun for advanced players and should be easy to implement.
- Rakshasa: I'd rather not be distracted by colorful icons while checking the board for dead stones.
- Have the notice that appears when someone loses by time say the players' names instead of "black" and "white", like the other game-end notices.
- Jraitsev: I am not sure if this makes any difference in computing the rank or not, but often times players who lose by a sizeable margin, click 'undo' right after they see by how much they lost and than resign. Again if resignation and losing by 1/10/50/100 points bears the same weight in scoring, it makes no difference, however if this is not the case, someone may use this to abuse the system. Perhaps KGS should differentiate between resignation and loss by some points.
- rubilia: As far as I know, kgs doesnīt distinguish between several margins or ways of winning, and I donīt think it should. In traditional go, a win is just a win and a loss just a loss, no matter of the points difference, and therefore playing strategy is not intended to maximize the expectation value of points difference but to maximize the probability of winning.
- jeremiah: A dialogue box pops up to announce the final result. This takes application focus away from the text window where the user is often trying to thank his opponent for the match. The need to stop and dismiss the result box is an annoyance. Perhaps the result box could be generated without focus and/or backgrounded.++
- allow, when both players agree, to end the game as formally finished and rate it as a draw (for the game list and rating system)
Path: KGSWishlist
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This is a copy of the living page
"KGS Wishlist / Game Handling" at
Sensei's Library.
2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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