How long are you suppose to lose for?

LordYunzi · **#21**

Wow, I would LOVE to gain 2 stones every fortnight!!

Just don't give up, the good games will come faster than you can imagine!

shapenaji · **#22**

Actorios wrote:

mayweed wrote:

Long...

I heard some ppl saying that you keep losing consistently on a regular basis til 8k...

In fact, you necessarily win more than you lose on the medium term as long as you improve.
What is true is that a go club is usually mostly visited by high kyu or dan players (because you don't stay very long DDK). Overall, as a beginner, you can feel that most games played would be with handicap but you shouldn't worry that much about it. Little by little the handicap reduces.
On my experience, I would say it could take between a few months and a year to get to 8-9k KGS (obviously depends on your investment in the game).

Not necessarily true, it's only true if you stick with a single account or never self-promote.

In general, it takes a long time for the system to recognize a significant jump in strength, so many players just make a new account and play that one, which usually ends up being 50-50 until they have another jump in strength.

Put it this way, you could make a new account and win 40% of your games for a while, creating a steady downward trend, then, suddenly (as often happens) you jump in strength, and start winning 60% of your new games. You still bear the weight of the older games, so your overall winning percentage is below 50%, but your rank is more represented by your games in, say, the last month, rather than the last year. You make a new account, jump up to the new rank, and then hang at 50%, you now have more losses than wins, and yet you are stronger.

jts · **#23**

Is that so? I thought KGS heavily weighted your most recent games.

mongol · **#24**

Joaz Banbeck wrote:

Go has the hardest learning curve of any game that I have ever seen. What you are experiencing is normal. Hang in there, it will get better. It will be worth it in the long run.

Exactly. It took me a while to even understand the objective of the game. When I first started to play online, it was a totally humbling experience, and I was thoroughly hammered, back in the day when they had 30k rankings.