Hello.

I'm a total beginner at Go, but I'm a 1750 Elo chess player.

I would like to know what each Go rank (kyu and dan) corresponds to approximately in terms of chess Elo rating.

In other words: if someone invested as much time in chess as in Go, and he had a rating of X Elo in chess, what would be his rank in Go approximately? (for different values of X)

Thanks in advance for your answers.

How many pears is an apple worth?

I'm a total beginner at Go, but I'm a 1750 Elo chess player.

Hi Alcadeias, (adding to jeromie's post) if we look at the level distribution bell curve for chess, where's the peak of the curve ? Around 2100 ELO ?
Maybe for Go ( curve ), it's around 1k or 1d ?

I think this is a good idea. But the curve you cite is only for KGS, which means that it does not really accounts for most of the really strong players in the world. Actually, in mainly accounts for western players, I think. But in general, I think it is an excellent approach.

I had in mind something simpler, and less exact, but easier to evaluate (you don't need much data) and possibly sufficient for this application.

Just look at bottom levels of both scales, look at top levels of both scales, and evaluate any level based on how far any given rank is from those ends on both scales.

For example:
Let us assume ELO goes from 500 to 3000 or so. 1700 can be said as roughly in the middle, maybe little less.
Go goes from 20k to 10d (10d being all the pros and other strong players.) roughly half-way through is what? 5k?
So, as a gross approximation, ELO 1700 corresponds to (KGS?) 6k.

Not sure this is exact enough, but might be sufficient to get an idea.

PS>
I know that both scales are not really linear. But bell curves might also be slightly misleading since they do not take into account that both games can have major stumbling blocks at different levels, which affects any curve. Ultimately it *is* like comparing apples to oranges, but it you need some kind of comparison, there is one or two.

Go ranks start from 30k. The 20k start adoption is seperate from what we are trying to this with elo/kyudan comparison. Whole it's possible to be weaker than 30k/500,

When I was starting, many years ago, I was told that Go ranks start at 20k. Anyways, it is a attribute of a particular system, which makes things more confusing.

When I started I was not given a rank at all. I played my first tournament about 10 months after I started and so I had to be assigned a rank to enter with. The stronger players I had been playing against put their heads together and decided on a number. I forget what it was: somewhere between 5k and 10k. I do remember them saying that DDK ranks (a term not used then) were pretty much pointless and people's playing strength had a large random element until at least 10k.

Kaufman and I have had closely similar chess ratings for four decades. However, in the last game we played he gave me odds of rook and bishop and beat me handily. Then he told me that the world champion could probably beat him giving the same odds.

This was not Western chess, where I would be pretty confident of beating anyone given just an extra bishop. It was Japanese chess, called Shogi. Shogi has no piece with the power of a queen, and the armies have just one rook and bishop each, so the odds I received were maximal. The main difference from Western chess is that captured pieces become their taker’s property and can be “paratrooped” back into the game. This prevents the odds receiver from winning by attrition through exchanges as prevails in chess, and throws upon the leader a burden of attack.

It also makes Shogi deeper than chess in a way that can be defined mathematically. Say two players are a class unit apart if the stronger expects to score 75% against the weaker in a match. In chess, this corresponds to a difference of almost exactly 200 points in the standard Elo rating system. László Mérő, in his 1990 book Ways of Thinking, called the number of class units from a typical beginning adult player to the human world champion the depth of a game.

Tic-tac-toe may have a depth of 1: if you assume a beginner knows to block an immediate threat of three-in-a-row but plays randomly otherwise, then you can score over 75% by taking a corner when you go first and grifting a few games when you go second. Another school-recess game, dots-and-boxes, is evidently deeper. We don’t know its depth for sure because it doesn’t have a rating system and championship format like chess does.

Chess ratings in the US go all the way down to the formal floor of 100 among scholastic players, but I concur with the estimate of Elo 600 for a young-adult beginner by a discussion of Mérő’s book which I saw in the 1990s but did not preserve. This gave chess a depth of 11 class units up to 2800, which was world champion Garry Kasparov’s rating in 1990. If I recall correctly, checkers ({8 \times 8}) and backgammon had depth 10 while bridge tied chess at 11, but Shogi scored 14 and yet was dwarfed by Japan’s main head game, Go, at 25.

About DDK players: the old-timers are mistaken in this case. The EGF and AGA offer plenty of evidence that ranks below 10k can offer meaningful information.

Hello,

2000 +/-50 ELO for a 1d, 2800 ELO +/-50 for a 9d, 100 ELO per dan: simple and probably closed to the reality.