KGS Wishlist / Game Handling

Sub-page of KGSWishlist

2. Game Handling

Table of contents


[21] General Game Stuff

  • Stormer: Games vs robots should not be factored into the ~ rank designator. Saw a guy the other day with 90% ofhis games vs gnugo and he had a ~ rank that was probably not deserved.
    • Ectospheno: I don't see how the stronger opponent being a robot negates the fact that he only plays stronger opponents. The fact of the matter is that he isn't playing lower ranked people and I think that more than justifies the ~.
    • Stormer: 2 players, both beginners, around 18kyu. Lets say both are learning to play 19x19, and are practicing vs gnugo a lot. Player1 is generally a helpful person and plays 9x9 in the beginners room with weaker players fairly often. Player2 Is nervous playing humans and just trying to get the hang of playing vs gnugo. Both will have ~. Are these the people you want to avoid giving teaching games to?
    • Ectospheno: They don't have to play ranked games against gnugo. If they just want practice and are still nervous they can play free games against the bots and never worry about the pesky ~ symbol. I maintain that if they opt to play ranked games then they have an obligation to play ranked games against weaker opponents as well. Otherwise they shouldn't be playing ranked games. I recognize that intelligent people can disagree though -- just my opinion.
    • Stormer: Well, we certainly can disagree, but I thought the underlying philosophy was that if you recieve a teaching game, you should also teach others. I don't think playing gnugo counts as being taught, furthermore it dosent take up any humans free time. Also, it is difficult for many players without a solid rank to get rated games, and many are now encouraged to play rated games vs bots in order to get a solid ranking. I guess I just dont think that playing gnugo should have any impact on ~, only games vs humans.
    • Ansgar?: I agree with Stormer here, playing against robots doesn't take anybody's time to teach/play weaker players and thus shouldn't give a ~.
    • dalf?: Both points of view are interesting, but another point should be considered: the more you play against a program, the strongest you become against it. Not (only) because you are making progress at playing go, but because you are learning its weaknesses. Hence, a player repeatedly playing against Gnugo is likely to get a distorted rank (and to learn bad habits). For instance, I am myself ranked one stone lower than gnugo, but I can beat it pretty consistently.
  • LithiumTwo: It'd be nice to edit in a white stone with the right mouse button, rather than holding shift and clicking the left.
  • Seidelin: I would like to have the option to make private notes (using the ingame chat window) while a game is played. With that i mean that only I can see the notes. A toggle activating the private notes/chat would be best i think. This would allow me to make notes when a teacher is using audio to teach a large group, without me bothering other players in the game. I could also use it to make notes in my own game, like: Must check variations laters. And: Why did he play here?
  • tderz: The ringing in chat can be very disturbing: The following situation occured: When looking for players or watching other players games many windows can have been opened.
    Then I had to play a game, reached byoyomi (of course) and there was a problem about the time setting (5s a move in a 1hr tournament game; should have been 20 or so) and other people (tournament director & other players) ringed me by the chat function. Now, with the many windows open, I usually have a problem finding the "main?" or "rooms?" window or where was the "chat"-tab? With 5 seconds of byoyomi I would not have had enough time to return to my game window in time, see where a move had been made, think and make my own move in time. The result was that I was playing in a byoyomi too short and it was ringing all the time - which I could not stop. My suggestion: add a button in the game window, which allows for stopping all chat at once. (if it exists already I apologize for my ignorance; I did not take the time to read the other suggestions here either).
    • LithiumTwo: you can get rid of the ringing on "Set Preferences"
  • bobulatorm: It's nice to be able to ctrl>click to put a coordinate into the chat, but it would also be nice to be able to do this in reverse? Perhaps if coordinates are displayed in the chat surrounded by a circle, and mouseover makes them highlight on the goban. This would be very useful when people suggest long variations using coordinates.+
  • LithiumTwo: I think it might be nice if one could, while watching a game, the "Move ###" headings to the chat would also work as links, so that you could right click on them, and you'd be taken to that part of the game.
  • 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.
    • RobertJasiek: Absolutely, I agree, bigger board views must be possible: a) full screen height, b) only title window above the board. When we play, we want to look at the board and not admire unessential game info windows.
  • 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.
  • ZeroKun: I guess it was deleted when the pages were made. Anyway, I hate having more than one window open for a game, and not knowing which one has a move played since I last viewed it. It would be good if there was an option for viewing games in a tabbed window, exactly like the simul window, but with a close button of course.
  • 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...
      • nemir Not originally, but there may be many valid (to his/her mind at least) reasons not to wish to continue the game now. I can think of a couple ranging from things like disapproving of an opponent's attitude through to not wishing to return to a game begun at a time when the strength of the players was drastically different. In any case, I must say I agree with wms' policy on this.
  • 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 ?
    • LithiumTwo: Most people (if not all) who are above 9d on KGS seam to be pros, and these can already get special ping ranks.
  • 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.++
      • Maybe observers could have a tabbed window, to decide which way they'd like to watch it (the tab would just be a nice alternative to a button that would look ugly and be less intuitive).
    • 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.++
    • Nemir: Really keen to see a server supported capture go game, including handicaps based on number of stones captured (stronger players need to capture more stones, obivously). This would be really great for helping to me teach some of the young folk I know the game, and could be fun for others. It would also be fairly unique!
    • None of these variants will be implemented (apart from team games, probably and one-colour - if you mean rengo by team that's coming in v3.0.0) for many reasons (mainly because it'd just clutter up the KGS system)... but I think maybe it would be interesting if there could be a primitive scripting language, that could define rules for these games... but this sounds like a lot of work for everyone
  • Put players at top of observer list and perhaps separate them with a thick line. +++++++++
    • LithiumTwo how about not put them on the observer list at all, allow their names to be clicked on (on the big boxes above the captures) and their names would be grayed if they left the game.
  • 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.-
  • Slider-bar navigation of moves.
  • 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.
  • mgoetze: Allow Handicaps beyond 9.+++
    • Especially under rules that allow free handicap placement.
  • 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)
      • [Nemir}: I agree with Hu. The server could decide to open the game in the most highly populated room that the requester is a part of, or perhaps check a profile to see if the user has entered a "home" room. I am sure cleverer folk than I can think of more elegant solutions to this issue, as well.
  • 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. Maybe on the Game Info bit, the "Location" property (this is PC and valid in all FF) in the sgf file could be "<room> on the KGS server"
  • 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".
  • 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.
    • LithiumTwo: This would be solved much more easily with the "Invite" function discussed above.

+ ZeroKun: Dunno if this was proposed, 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 censored 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.
  • Cheyenne: Once a game has finished (both players press done) allow the game to be "continued" as a teaching game. This would allow both players to try out variations, etc. As it currently stands usually during a review the one player has control, makes their move and then the other player says their move, etc. The original final score would be the one "officially" recorded.
  • I always wait so long to set up a rengo game! It will be much easier if I could automatically send message to all people in the rengo room. Or let them know in some other way. Now, there are so many people just "hanging" there, taking up space. {KOCMOC on KGS}
  • pwaldron?: It would be great if, for open games, there could be a flag indicating blitz games.
  • It would be nice if the floating tooltip for open games could also show the time settings. For example, "Free (1+3/25)", "Ranked (15+5Ũ10)", "Free (25)", "Ranked (-)" for games with Canadian, Japanese, absolute and unlimited time, respectively.
  • Naustin--I would like it if the game window box on the taskbar at the bottom of the screen could blink colored (like MSN) if it wasn't the top window and a move was made by the opponent. This would make it alot easier to manage multiple windows (especially without audio) and to select the correct window when going back to the game.
  • cocoon? It would be great if players had the possibility to choose to listen to the game chat (for friendly games only).
  • ilan: I would like the following option, which seems easy to implement: Have the tournament mode (no undo, no escape) available as a general game option in challenges, that is, along with teaching, simultaneous, etc. This would eliminate a big source of conflict and complaints by allowing players to clearly advertise their game preferences.
  • liquis: Allow the ability to challenge an opponent at any stage during a past (already completed) game. Such as that dumb mistake that really threw off the course of the game, could be replayed later, or challenge an opponent a Pro game at midgame. Does that make sense? It would probably be required to be a free or teaching game.
    • Mef: This is a really cool idea, and it sortof is possible, already, if you use a teaching game, use the edit tool to set up the board then just resume play, but it would be nice to have a more convenient way to do this, like "Challenge from SGF" then put in a move number or something.
  • Grauniad: Allow users to delete demonstration games from their game lists. This would be particularly useful if you save a game review (as a demonstration game), and later decide you don't want it cluttering your game list.

[22] Editing

  • LithiumTwo: There should be a way in demo games to set the title of the match (to appear in the top bar, and in the demo's title appearing in the game list) and the player's names... I am sick to the teeth of people entering a relay on kgs and asking every three seconds "who's playing, what're their ranks, what's the match?"
  • 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
    • LithiumTwo: I would prefer if right-clicking put down a white stone, if you had to click twice to get a white stone you'd be there setting up the game forever (as demonstration games/reviews are usually extremely laggy if you're the one setting it up)
  • 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? +++?++LithiumTwo: we've got this now, haven't we?
    • 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. +++-
    • Malluin would be great to be able to cut or delete a branch of demonstration game tree !!! Would be usefull in order to correct mistakes of kifu recording or correct teacher errors for exemple. (other things like node text editing would be nice too). + +?
      • I might be dreaming, but wasn't it possible to do this a few versions back? Anyway - it's really needed.
  • malluin Don't save without asking modifications of demonstrations games !!
  • 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. LithiumTwo: they never appear together, so there's no point? (the comments for a variation are stored in That node).
  • 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 [ext] 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 [ext] 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.
  • game tree Please put the main line on top. When drawing the tree, at every node with more than one child, sort the children by length. If the longest child is always on top, the main line will always be on top. Thanks. -meditation-
    • SirLyric: Not always the case. Consider a game where after 100 moves Black resigns on the main line ("what actually happened") but a variation goes on for another ten or twenty showing why Black didn't keep playing. You'd see the variation on top and not end up following the real game line.
    • Phelan: SirLyric is right, but I'd also like a way to avoid having undoed moves on top of the main line of play, for games played on KGS. I think that apart from Demo/Teaching games or reviews, meditation's suggestion might work, since the main line will always be longer than the variations caused by the undos.
    • Ansgar?: The mainline is not always the longest child. Think of a variation near the end of the game which could easily be longer than the original game. The correct solution would be to make undos in the game a variation instead of the main line (see wish above this one)
  • 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.)
  • I completely appreciate the integration of the "tools" window that we've had for some time now. However, one valuable asset that was lost was the "permanent text" window. No matter how much you moved around, if you needed to see what had been said previously at a move position, it was always available. Currently, the text that is at a position is printed ONCE and in light grey. I do *not* propose trying to create another window. I applaud the simplification of the interface. However it WOULD be nice to add a hotkey that would print in some styled text (italics? bold? help me out here... the light grey is SO hard to read with bad eyesight... there's got to be a different way to style this) all the current comment text. Perhaps only for the client in which th ebutton was pressed? Anyhow, here it is as a wish. To do a decent review, it's really nearly impossible to do it online anymore. The offline editor still handles the permanent text just fine. Remillard
  • 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 [ext] 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.)+-
    • LithiumTwo: if you are searching a database, the facility most probably automatically does this (as is the case with [ext] http://gobase.org). Otherwise, why can't you just do this with your brain, if spinning the board around is really required?
  • 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 (PilotGOne does this nicely - grauniad), (2) to see the variant moves available on the board (e.g., as transparent stones as the PANDA-gGo client does it: [ext] 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.
      • Ansgar?: I think the main line should just be at the top. This way no new property is necessary and other sgf editor would also handle this without problems.
  • 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.
  • Chris Hayashida: Uploading a SGF and uploading an SGF (P) should be collapsed into one menu item, possibly with a checkbox for Private? when selecting the game.
  • Chris Ball: Would it be possible to navigate the main line of the move tree via my mouse's scroll wheel?+?
    • Ansgar?: I would appreciate this too. Just let the mouse wheel behave like the previous/next move button when used on the board.
  • nachtrabe The ability to cut a variation in the tree by right-clicking at the point you want to cut (similar to how Cgoban1 does it with a contextual menu). Other good contextual menu items would be "raise/lower variation" and "autoplay from this point."
    • glue: Autoplay is already there. Just shift-click on the right arrow button. That will start the autoplay, you can set the speed of the replay with the slider.
      • nachtrabe: Well aware, I'm talking about integrating it directly into a contextual menu, which is something entirely different.

[23] Score Estimator

  • The score estimator always assumes Japanese scoring. It should use Chinese scoring in games played with Chinese rules.
  • LithiumTwo The idea of having a score estimator constantly on, and of helping it... could be both done easily by allowing observers of the game to switch straight to the "marking stones dead" stage of the game (even while moves are being added).
  • 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 studying yose moves from my games, and this option will be very useful!!
  • Allow use of score estimator in Free games.+--
  • 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 [ext] 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. +
  • Remove score estimator. +

[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.

iopq: Do you realize that in the Chinese ruleset the difference between the scores can be either 6 or 8?.. so komi of 6.5 = komi of 7.5 for all intents and purposes

  • 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.
  • Chris Hayashida: I'd like to change how the byouyomi timer works. I'd like it to beep when there is a set number of seconds left *per move*. This would help when I play Canadian byouyomi. If I could get the timer to beep at 60 seconds with 12 moves left, instead of only the last 5 seconds, it would be a great help. With "normal" byouyomi, it isn't a problem, since I know the beeping means that I only have 5 seconds left for that move.
  • Chris Hayashida: I'd also like to be able to add time with "add byoyomi period" instead of adding a fixed number of minutes and giving all of his periods back.
  • I often have trouble with my ISP. When I play game with time, often it will not accept my move immediately and I lose on time. It will be better to allow CGoban to estimate the time according to the local time on my copmuter, not according to internet. Thus, even if I get slowed or disconnected, CGoban will "remember" when exactly I played, and will later transmit to the server and adjust the "lost" time. {KOCMOC on KGS} -- using the local time instead of the server time would makes things more fair IMHO +?

Jade: Couldn't this be abused?

  • Pyv?: It'd be nice if we could resume a game that has been won by time. In a big fight, you could lose track of time and run out (opponent even misses the add time). Often, both players want to keep playing, but can't. The result wouldn't change, you could just keep playing (some people play for the game, not the rank, but time management IS part of winning.)

Ing Rules

wms: Ing ko rules cannot be implemented by a computer, because they sometimes require knowledge of whether a ko threat will always have an inside answer or not, which is well beyond the ability of today's computers. (You could argue that doing this perfectly is also beyond the ability of humans, but that's beside the point here). So a full ing rules cannot be done. The Ing foundation has shown willingness to switch to a superko system when necessary, but once you get rid of the ko rule Ing is close enough to other rule systems that having it as a separate bullet item seems unnecessary. Ing clocks, where you can buy more time by giving points to your opponent, are optional; not all Ing games are required to use this system. I'm against implementing Ing clocks because they are so very different from existing clocks (way more different than Fischer for example), in that they do more than control time use, they can also change the score of the game! Also, as far as I know, they have never been used outside of Ing tournaments, and lastly of course I think there are already too many time systems on KGS so I'm really reluctant to add another.

[25] Ratings

Anonymous: Have automated pairing. I know people aren't willing to give up selective pairing, but one should read [ext] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating#Selective_pairing regarding the effect on ratings. My ideal Go server would have only automated pairing in rated games, but of course free games could be whatever you want. This requires separate ratings for different rulesets, of course, and I would suggest a "blitz", "timed", and "untimed" leagues for each board size. Note that this also handles requests for rated games on other board sizes. I know this is not really going to happen, but this is a wishlist , and statisticians agree with me :-)

Iago: promoting this, as i dont see any answer, and i feel it is important... can someone bring some light here ? thanks :)

cocoon? When you have a lot of game on your account, the rating changes too slowly. Why consider the games played during the last 160 days ? if someone plays regularly, his rating will inevitably get stucked. It would be better imo if the limit for a game to be taken into account wasn't the number of days since it was played, but instead simply the number of games played after that one : for example only the 160 previous games of a player would count for his rating. Then ppl would n't change they account so often. +

  • Iago I'd like to second cocoon on this, if you played a lot of rated game, your ranking can get stuck which does not seems logical. why not keep the "160 days" limit, but also add a "last 25/100 games" limit. this way ranking would not get stuck. hope this has not yet been answered elsewhere... couldnt find it.
  • anonymousPerhaps game history could "decay" by days AND/OR number of games played, whichever happens faster. And there ought to be a way to reset your rank (start afresh as "?" without being forced to change your account name). Now people are registering several accounts just to do this - and if you're a KGS Plus subscriber, you can't just dump the old account either.
    • Phelan: I like the idea about resetting the rank. It seems to solve the problems I read about here, although I'm not sure how much it would mess with the rating system already in place
  • Mef: Just a couple comments - First, the weight games have on your rank does have a decay factor in it so that older games count less than newer ones. Second, the reason it is easy before your rank to become "stuck" is because let's say you've played 200 games as a 10k, and those 200 games have anchored you at mid-10k, you now go on a 15 game winning streak, which is more likely, you've gone up in rank? Or are you just having a good day? Winning streaks are not uncommon against people of a like rank, and I hardly think the results of a few recent games should overrule the findings of an entire history. There are several threads on RGG where someone did the math of how often winning streaks should occur so I won't repeat it all here, but let's just say they're much more common than people would like to think. Besides, if all else fails, you can challenge people to games at the rank you think you are, and the server will compensate for that.
  • Iago : Well i understand what you are saying about winning streak, but isnt there a limit to how solid we want a rank to become ? some people play 10 rated games a day, so... we are talking around 2000 games, 500 of which could have been 3months away, when he was 3k weaker... I still think a reasonable limit on the number of game taken into account should be used.

Mef: Someone may want to double check my math but I think It's at least close: Let's assume you play 10 games a day. That's 1825 games in 6 months. Worst case scenario (mainly for upper ranks) the halflife for a game's weight is 45 days. The first half of the games you've played (i.e. the 913 games you played 3 - 6 months ago) account for 1/5 of your rank. games that came in the next 2 months (608 games) will account for another 2/5 of your rank, and the last 2/5 of your rank will be based on games in the most recent month (304 games). That sounds pretty reasonable and it's a worst case, for lower ranks the halflife is shorter so the more recent games would have even more weight. Best case scenario, The most recent month would account for more than 3/4 of your rank.

Iago: I agree with the math but i feel we are not talking about the same thing... what if we have someone who play 15games a day ? or 20 ? my point is, your rank may not be stable for 200 games (especially for low/mid kyu). or maybe it's 1000 or... but adding a limit on the number of games taken into account would make the ranking system more reasonable. why let a player who is very motivated (he played 15 games a day for month) and who got from 20k to 10k in 2 months get stuck at 10k because he lost 500 games when he was 20k ? with time, when the game disapear due to timout, he will skyrocket in rankings, but in the meanwhile, he is stuck to be a sandbagger. or urged to make a new account.

Bottomline is : people DO get stuck, and make new account to bypass it. so i feel this is a problem. please let me know if i misunderstood.

Mef: From my experience, weaker kyu ranks are usually rather volitaile, and the main problem is people who think a winning streak constitutes them being grossly underranked. Also alot of people like to cite stories from back when the ranking system was admittedly flawed and no one's rank could increase, but this has been fixed now. With only a few exceptions, most of the people I've seen do the new account thing may have gotten a nice jump at first, but usually settled back down to where they would've normally been (The exceptions being people who hadn't been playing regularly rated games, and they knew they were sandbagging because they hadn't let their rating keep up.). If all else fails, like I mentioned earlier, you can play games at the rank you think you are, and they will be scored as such, and they can help you correct your rank faster, and always remember: patience is a virtue, and go is about fun,not rank.

  • Iago: Well, this is about as far as i will go, my ranking is not stuck, as i hardly play 2 or 3 rated games a month. I still think that making tons of new account could be avoided by adding a limit ot the number of games, but if no one else feels that way then... I would appreciate to have wms point of view sometime, but nothing urgent i guess.

thx for your time Mef, see you on kgs maybe ;)

  • EdwardHammerbeck: I'm much less concerned about what my rank is than that pesky question mark. If I feel like I am a 25k, I will challenge a 25k to an even game and settle the question like a gentleman, but if I have a question mark, s/he might not even respond. A win against a 25k? or whatever hardly counts as a win at all. I have something like sixty rated games with about a 20%-80% win-loss ratio. I'm 27k? last time I checked. My problem is that I don't play that often. Needless to say I think the time factor should be scrapped.

  • 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) +++
% Someone changed this so that it didn't make sense anymore. You can't color a day for lost or won - you only can do that with games. Also, I proposed deliberately that the dots should be small, and offset from the graph - there's plenty of black space around.
%[TJ]: This isn't possible/feasible. The x axis is by time, in units of days. That means, every 24 hours, your current rank is plotted as a point and a line is drawn between it and the last point. It could be possible for the x axis to be games, but that would make for a different sort of graph entirely; I don't think such a graph would be as useful, since it would do little to show your progress over time, but would rather show the internal workings of the ratings system and weights of won/lost games. Perhaps the OTHER suggestion was that days in which you win/lose at least one game be plotted differently than days in which you didn't play?
%ethanb: I think his idea wasn't to replace the rank graph, but to add additional info to it in the form of a dot graph plotted alongside the line that's already there. It would effectively combine the rank graph and games list into one chart.
%[TJ]: Pretty much impossible given problems of scale. A chart alongside or contained within the current chart would retain a day as the unit of the x-axis. Given the largest possible size the graph is likely to be shown in, how many pixels width your monitor has is how many games you could possibly fit between one day and another one; the big problem is that the smallest you limit the graph to (and you'd have to limit it) would dictate the number of pixel/games you could show per day. This problem expands when you consider a person may play many more than one game every hour, each game requiring its own space between day and day to be plotted within. Visualize it (read ahead!), it's not do-able.:)
%ethanb: Why separate them lengthwise? It's not like you'd need to know what hour a certain game was played at. Just show the dots at the same x-coordinate as the daily update. All you're looking for from this is the distribution of opponent's ranks and whether you won or lost against them.
%cheyenne: Just to throw in my 2 cents worth... one should not become that obsessed with one's rank. A point here, a point there. At a kyu level, your game playing isn't really steady on a game by game basis. Ever notice how close dan games are (when they are played out the whole way), most of the time it's within only a few stones. Ever notice by how much a kyu player can win or lose a game by, 30, 40 points one day 2 or 3 the next and back to 30 or 40 again? -- but anyway Personally I would just focus on my play, and ask myself -- am I enjoying the games that I am playing? The rank graph should be used to view one's long term progress and not as a measure of how well I slept the night before ... end of my 2 cents ...
  • (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.
    • Remillard - Let's just get rid of the question mark altogether. If something needs to be published, put a statistical correlation number on their user page.
  • 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.
  • hboehm: Do not include games against robots in the '~' calculation. I play quite often against bots who are a few stones stronger than me - when playing against humans the ration of games between stronger players and weaker ones is quite okay. Nevertheless I have a '~' in my rank. +
  • 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) -
  • 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.
    • (anonymous:) In practice this is just going to produce another reason to discriminate against your opponent. Wow that guys on some winning streak, no way i'm accepting his challenge. Oh no he has a ? get out of here. Heh this game is losing like crazy, you'll do.
  • PAG?: I like Cheyenne's idea. Why not having a "12k+" to indicate that a player is "12k?" but probably stronger, and "12k -" meaning "12k? but likely weaker". This would help adjust the handicap when trying to help newcomers getting a firm rank
    • Can't say I understand this idea.
      • Fuchsnoir: Consider someone playing 3 games against a solid 12K. If he wins all three games, you still don't know how strong he is, but it's probably stronger than 12k. So he gets a 12k+. If he loses all three games, he gets a 12k-. This is how I understand it at least. Enter the statisticians to tell me how wrong I am.
      • Xela: I'm not a statistician, but here's how I see it: '12k+' is the same as '11k?' (or maybe '10k?' or similar), and '12k-' is approximately the same as '13k?'. The system already does what you want, so there's no need to change that part of it.
  • 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?

cyberain?: I think that rating is growing too slow... For example, look guys how many games this user win and when I'm writing this words he's still 15k... [ext] http://kgs.kiseido.com/pl_PL/gameArchives.jsp?user=keiru

  • You may well have a point. There are 4 ways around this.
    1 Change handicaps so you are 14k
    2 play very few rated games indeed to make your rating lighter
    3 Make a new account
    4 get a picture

  • Dan: The rating system has gone through enough upheavals that it's a little hard to tell when someone's rating has changed through their results or through a rating system redesign. Perhaps on the rating graph the line could be made discontinuous at the points in time at which the rating system itself changes. Then you'd see a line segment, another line segment 1 rank higher, and another line segment 1 rank lower (for example), instead of one line that jumps up and down.
  • Dan: Make games against bots not count towards ~ calculation.
  • kokiri get rid of the ?, or at least make it only appear on the game window like the ~ symbol. The worst thing about KGS is the unwillingness of people to play against ?-rated players - presumably because it affects their rating less. Frankly this is pretty rude, and reflects badly on the otherwise very friendly atmosphere. When you start a new account it is practically impossible to get a game. Making it harder to see who is a ?-ranked player would stop this, if there's a better way of encouraging people to play ?ers then fine, but for now I can't think of one.
    • xela I agree. I have played 57 ranked games so far on KGS (over a period of about 18 months)--but my rank still has a "?" because I don't play often enough (however often that is). It often takes 15 minutes or so to find someone of equal strength who is willing to play with me. I don't think that I am either a beginner or a sandbagger, and it is a very frustrating situation.
    • Edward Hammerbeck I concur with xela. Same situation with me. I have played a lot of ranked games, but I have not played often enough to lose my ?. As xela says, I am neither a beginner nor a sandbagger, but who would want to play me because winning against me barely counts as a win. I agree that there should be some way to identify users without a statistically significant number of games with which to generate a reasonably accurate rank. I just disagree with there being a time element associated the algorithm that decides whether or not to assign a question mark. 2005.06.23
  • Cheyenne: One of the frustrating things with the current ranking system is that I believe that there is a problem with "anchors" that keep ranks from reflecting the true strength difference between two people. Some of the factors that I think contribute to some rank freeze are:
    • You have a small group of players who play against each other, they are all advancing fairly equally within the group. SO their ranks stay flat, however when they do on occasion play someone outside of their group, the game sometimes ends up very uneven.
    • Sandbaggers who keep I believe also keep the overall rank system locked

There is a rule of thumb that basically states that if the game is "even" according to the handicaps, then the end score should be within 10 points (in either direction). (Yes I know that for weaker kyu players this will not always hold true, but as one gets stronger it does). So in determining the ranking, when taking a look at the rated games, factor in the score difference. If someone is consistently winning by more then 10 points, or if most of the wins are by the opponent resigning, then the player is probably stronger then they are ranked. If they are consistently losing by more then 10 points or if most of the loses are by them resigning, then they are probably weaker then they are ranked.

  • DrStraw: This absolutely not true. If I am 20 points ahead I will ease off so as to ensure the win, thus winning by only 10 points maybe. On the other hand if it is a close game I will make every effort to find a winning sequence and may end up winning by more that 10 points. Are you telling me that I should be penalized for playing so well that I can take it easy towards the end? As a general rule, only weaker players win by very large margins (yes, I know there are expections). Perhaps we should say that a win by more than 20 points counts for less as the player clearly did not have enough feel for the game that he eased off towards the end so as to guarantee a win. Of course, this does not make sense, but it makes as much sense as counting the winning margin when computing ratings.
  • Cheyenne: If you would play the same person say 3 or 4 times and each time you beat that person by a large margin (say +10 points) I would say that you are stronger then that person. In playing that person you should probably give them an extra stone. I think that that type of information should be somehow captured in the rating algorithm.
  • Mef: There are several problems with trying to take into account score for ratings. The first is the one DrStraw mentioned. Or how about the reverse of that situation, instea of realizing you're ahead by alot, you count the board and realize you are behind by a little. So instead of accepting the loss you take a risk and it fails, so you lose by 20 points instead of playing it safe and taking the 4 point loss, should you be punished for taking a risk? Or how about TheCaptain's games, where his games are more likely to be won by one liberty instead of one point. The score might be a difference of 30 points or more, but anyone who watched the game can see the players are of comparable strength. Not to mention winning games by resignation would be impossible to factor in for this, since some players will resign if they see they are more than a few points behind going into yose whereas others will continue to play if the opponent has killed most of the board...

nachtrabe: I'm not even sure that the theory about it ending close is true for strong players/pros in general. How many professional games end by resignation? Of those, how many of them are within ten points versus more than ten points? What about games between players like Takemiya and Cho Chikun, where the entire game can come down to whether Cho can find a way to live inside of Takemiya's moyo. This is further complicated by how would you factor it into the rating calculator: Are you going to punish someone for resigning when they are five points behind and see no way to catch up? Or are you going to let someone who is 200 points behind resign in order to avoid the penalty? One or the other has to be allowed.


Let beginners play 13x13 or 9x9 ranked?

  • BramGo: Is it possible to let 27k(and weaker) players play 13x13 and 9x9 RANKED? This would encourage beginners to learn the basic tactics first, instead of hopping to 19x19 right away. (Since beginners only know about tactics not about Strategy or Wholeboard judgement, it may probably be even more reliable to base ranking on 13x13 games.) On top of that a lot of beginners asked me before: "why can't we play 9x9 ranked?" I think we shouldn't pressure them to play 19x19 if they are not ready for it. Ofcourse I understand that we can't allow all players (for instance 10k players) to play 9x9 ranked. But for absolute beginners (27k+), why not?

[26] Game Start

  • aokun: I am frustrated by not being able to see other players' open game settings while I have an open game on the list, and by not being able to watch a KGSPlus lecture while waiting to get a game. It doesn't seem like a limit on game windows, since one can observe a game at the same time as playing one. Perhaps we could either allow more than one game to be open at a time (maybe limit to two?) or else have unstarted open games not count as "you are playing in a game."
  • 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.
    • revo: The most simple way would be if one could change the comment line when challenging an open game, just as you can change handis and times.
  • 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
    • atila: When I create a game, maybe 80% of the requests that I get are for me playing white. Not only from people of weaker ranks, but also from every player of my same rank. This happens because in these cases the algorithm assigns white to the player that created the game (me), no matter if the accepting player is stronger or weaker _within my rank_. KGS internally knows which player is stronger, why doesn't it assign white by default to the stronger player? I believe that many people shy away from creating games for fear of playing too many games as white.
  • 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.
    • The feature you wanted has been in IGS and NNGS for as long as I can remember: if you set yourself to "closed", then there is no way to challenge you.
    • Ah right, I had slightly misremembered. People would often (for good reason) first ask somebody if they wanted a game before issuing the "game" command. Sending challenges is broked when you are marked as "closed", but I would still have to fend off a new "Want a game?" question every few minutes. Grrrr.
  • 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.
    • revo: I thought I read this point somewhere on SL but can't find it no more: It would be nice if the time settings of open games were displayed in the open games list, at least as a tool tip. So you could even see it with an own request open. And you don't have to open several requests to find out that they all want blitz while you're just looking for a slow game.
  • Allowing multiple open games in general would be good too. Especially demonstration games shouldn't prevent you from playing a game simultaneously.
  • 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.
  • Also show somehow that a player is playing (with an icon or coloring the name differently, maybe). This would combine nicely with the right click --> observe feature. And it'd be nice if the game would be shown in the player's game list without any delay. IGS-like ability to "trail" a player would be nice too.
  • 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.

  • Add a nigiri function to decide which player plays Black and which White in even games. This may be difficult to implement and a lot of work, but it would be nice. As it is, many of us end up playing White too much when we post game requests. At the very least, some sort of randomizer that choses which player plays which colour would be welcome.
    • wms: This is actually not hard at all. It is already on my "plans" page, and will hopefully be done before too long.

  • Florian: I think a "fix settigs" button for game offers would be a good idea. So nobody can change time, rules or defauld HC.

[27] Game End

  • After both players pass, one player can just click undo and play again - this is against the rules! (for sure in Japanese rules, not sure about Chinese rules). The Japanese rules clearly state that after both players are past one player can demand that the game be resumed, but the other player moves first when it is (and this move can, of course, be a pass). Could we please change it? I think the other one is much better.
  • 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) - LithiumTwo: I think this is a good idea, but a no-result option might also be good.
    • Allow to resign disconnected games, even when the opponent isnt online.++
  • Implement any of the dispute breakers below to let players come to a (more or less) Japanese result without referee:
  • Once a game ends and one of the players "reviews" it for a few moves and leaves it, allowing the opponent to take control as the new "reviewer" would be a very usefull feature. (Or maybe add "Review separately" to open a review of this game in a separate window, and ask each user with a msgbox wherether s/he wants to join the new review window... O

ff course other alternatives or variations are also possible... Any ideas?) Reuven

  • In the "review" (and other demonstration games in general) it'd be nice to be able to continue playing (like in a teaching game) if both players want to. Now it's difficult to do this. "How would you have played if I'd done this?" is one form of review, is it not?
  • When "closing" certain game windows, a pop-up window appears asking the user whether or not he wants to save the game. The options are "Yes", "No", "Do not close". I always have to stop and think for a few seconds at this point because although I asked to close, I am being prompted whether or not I would like to save. It would all be much smoother is the options were "save and close", "close without saving", "do not close" or, at a minimum, "save", "do not save", "do not close". - Migeru
  • Coronalis: In many case, opponents want a "revenge". Then why not a button "Propose a revenge at your opponent ?" and so a party can be create with same game parameter in the case of handicap game or with reverse stone (black->white, white->black) if the opponent are the same level. Another option could be open the parameter window with the previous game parameter whith a switch stone...
  • NickGeorge: Perhaps some sort of ray-gun, to facilitate swift retribution on opponents you think ought not to have been able to beat you.


This is a copy of the living page "KGS Wishlist / Game Handling" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2005 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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