I meant:
30k is actually 30k +/- 15.
1d is actually 1d +/- 3.

3k ranks are more accurate than 15 stones and less accurate than 3 stones.

Besides why not think you could possibly actually be stronger than 3k?

Yes, of course teaching is very important. But I'm not asking how strong people remain after a few hours of good-quality instruction, I'm asking how strong they are as absolute beginners.

I may have confused matters by referring to “one of their very first games” and “3 games out of 3” instead of “their very first game”. This was shorthand way of clarifying that I’m talking about brand new players who nevertheless understand the basic rules.

Sure, that does sound weird, but scientific experiments are often weird in their efforts to avoid contamination. (In this case, contamination by instruction.) Certainly, anyone expressing interest in the game could be offered real teaching after the experiment was over. And it doesn’t have to be an invasion of foreign homes, it can be willing volunteers.



Well, you started your post by saying, “Short answer: yes, there are 30 kyu players.” In other words, you think someone is asking whether anyone is so weak as to be 30 kyu. Who’s asking that? Certainly not me -- I'm convinced that most people start a good deal weaker than 30 kyu. (Look at the last paragraph of post #9.)

The questions I am asking are about the history and accuracy of 30 kyu as an average new player’s rank, as indicated in this thread’s title and first post.

While I agree with you that the computer’s style of play would have some effect, I tend to think the effect wouldn’t be very large. Can you describe a reason why it would matter a lot? Like, maybe computers in general have greater potential to play effective tenuki than human players of the same rank, which might make it harder for their opponents to keep track of the board?

This is both over-sensitive and a poor reading of my post.

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Occupy Babel!

30 kyu assumes a player knows the object and rules of the game and little else. If a player fits that, they're said to be 30k. A player who can give such a player 3 stones comfortably is said to be 27 kyu.

If we change the system and say a player who knows the object and rules and little else is 20 kyu, then we're anchoring the system there. So a player who can give such a player 3 stones would be said to be 17 kyu.

This dictates that a 1 dan under the second system would be weaker than a 1 dan under the system anchored at 30 kyu, since the steps between ranks are theoretically the same under both systems.

That's theoretical. In reality, if you're 25 kyu and on a losing streak against other 25 kyu players, your rank will dip. On a hot streak, the rank will come up a stone or three and the pure confidence boost that gives might keep that rank up while you're learning. And stones in handicaps lower than heavy handicaps mean little until you know how to use them. So, in truth, it's an open system, arbitrarily set with a bottom at 30 kyu which is convenient enough because it's far enough below the level of skill where handicaps begin to make sense. As your level comes up, it's like watching someone new appear out of the fog, bit by bit: hey, it's a new player!

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I write Go-ing Shodan, a blog about trying to get through the sdk's. If you want to check it out, tenuki.

Kyu ranks are a pretty modern thing, right? When did they start? What was their meaning and goal originally?

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Revisiting Go - Study Journal
My Programming Blog - About the evolution of my go bot.

The dan ranks came about in Japan starting with Go. The strongest player was given the rank of 9 dan, with the handicap system seperating ranks the way amateur dan ranks do today, down to 1 dan, is my understanding. Below that, there really wasn't a ranking system.

This from reading about it on sensei's and wikipedia and such over the years.

I seem to remember that they kyu system did come to go much later ... yep, checking wikipedia it came in the late nineteenth century, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/kyu.

So, this is a good reason to put the lowest rank to 30 kyu, combined with some ideas in my last post. The strongest players are given a rank ... 9 dan on many online servers, 7 dan in AGA, whatever ... a rank so low that ranks get muddled at that level is a convenient place to put the bottom, but you could put the cut-off anywhere. For instance, on IGS (pandanet) there's a cut-off at 17 kyu or something (it's changed at least once, I think), and anyone below that is ranked BC (beginner's class) or something like that, meaning there's a lot of variability in that class, I would imagine, though I never played there as a beginner.

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I write Go-ing Shodan, a blog about trying to get through the sdk's. If you want to check it out, tenuki.

Even though the top rank was 9 dan, the strongest player was not always strong enough. Also, there was at most one 9 dan, so that there were times when some players were nominally 8 dan, although they had 9 dan strength.

The handicap difference began as two ranks difference per handicap stone. Over time, the range tightened, so that now there are about four ranks per stone. (With the end of the oteai system, I don't think that pros take handicaps anymore.)

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The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Let's say we freeze time, and also freeze the brains of every person in the world who knows how to play go. We don't have to worry about any learning, and we have all the time we want. We then have everyone play a 10,000 2-stone handicap games against Lee Sedol. Whoever can win 5000 of those games we declare 7-dan. Then everyone takes 2-stones from that person for 10,000 games. Whoever wins 5000 of those we call 5-dan and so on. Eventually this chain has to halt somewhere: we will find someone who cannot give 2 stones to anyone.

How many steps do we have to go through to get to that person? Will they end up 20 kyu? 30 kyu? 100 kyu?

(There are numerous complications to this scheme: strength isn't fully transitive, you could define ranks with no-komi games or 9-stone games and get a different result, etc. But it's fun to think about anyway)