KGSRating Discussion

   

Frustrated by my lack of progress in the wake of the ratings system changes in the fall of '04, I had a look around on KGS to see if the effect was general, or whether I just stink. The latter may, of course, be true, but a brief exam seems to indicate that few mid-kyu players are going up and many are going down.

I went through the list of folks online about 11 p.m. West Coast time picked out any who were from 4k to 8k, no ? and at least one year on KGS, and looked at the change in their rank on the rank graph from Jan 05 to late May 05, and also from Jun 04 to Jan 05.

Of the 44 people I found, here were the changes from Jan to June

 change  num
 +3       1 (drimgere)
 +1       3
 +0      14
 -1      20
 -2       6

For June 04 to Jan 05, the changes were

 change  num
 +2       1
 +1       2
 +0       7
 -1       5
 -2      22
 -3       5
 -6       1, poor chap

The effect of the two rating system changes seems nearly universally to have been a two-rank decline, so it may make sense to add two to each level in the second list.

Three things jump out at one. First, in the earlier period, the dispersion of results was greater, with more people changing ranks quickly. Second, the earlier list (adding two to compensate for the big shift) tipped toward people being promoted. Third, the current chart tips hugely toward people being slowly demoted. Almost no one is going up at all and those who are are mostly going up slowly. Almost everyone is declining gradually.

This seems odd. If, as I assume, the math is working the way it is supposed to, about the only explanations I can come up with are a net influx up higher grade players or a big improvement in the playing skills of lower grade players.

What does anyone think?

ilan: My observation from the ranks of people who started playing at the same time as I did, and who were in the range 5K to 1D before September 2004 is that ranking immediately went down about 2 or 3 ranks, and then were frozen. Since people were still improving, but their ranks weren't, this meant that people who weren't improving were losing ranks. This caused another rank or two of inflation (ranks are stronger). I think this has changed recently and ranks are going up again.


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