I am a 8kyu on Kgs yet on IGS I'm unable to beat anyone better than 17kyu. Sometimes I even lose to people in the Beginner Class. What's with this ? What's with all the 17kyus that have 10,000 wins and losses? Are there lotsa sandbaggers or is IGS just screwed up?

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My Kgs Rank Graph

These are probably "go club accounts", lot of peoples of different rankings plays via such accounts.

I am 2-3k KGS and I reach 6-7 k IGS. I would say that's about the difference in level.
You may not be able to reach 10k IGS but you should be able to climb up the ladder a bit.
Maybe select your opponents to avoid players with too numerous games under their belt.
Anyway, if you get crushed, you are still getting games to learn from which you are getting more benefits than your opponent

haha.. my sparring partner in real life too.
he's 5k KGS and can't got beaten badly with 17k IGS..

I am 7 kyu on KGS and 11 kyu on IGS. The difference of about four ranks has remained constant for about three months, now.

I have also noted the accounts with several thousand wins and losses. I think that those must be go club or go salon accounts that are shared by many people - perhaps even used by the public in place of guest accounts. I have noticed that those get thin after about 12 kyu - most of the high-game-count accounts that I come across, these days, are numbered in the hundreds, not tens of thousands.

Another thing to consider: IGS uses a half-stone ranking system. Instead of a full-stone system where you are awarded one handicap stone for each integer rank difference, on IGS, you get half-stones. For example, an 11 kyu will get a "half-stone" handicap against an 11 kyu +. This equates to 0.5 komi (half a stone is roughly five points). A 12 kyu will get reverse komi against an 11 kyu - essentially equating to 10 points for a full-stone. I don't know how this half-stone system affects the rating system but I hypothesize that it makes it tougher to progress through the ranks - particularly those that are populated by players who are typically experiencing rapid increases in strength, as one would expect, around 10k.

EDIT: http://www.pandanet.co.jp/English/ratingsystem/

Finally, I should point out that the ratings do approach each other as one approaches shodan. I hear that, around 1 kyu, IGS and KGS are not more than 2 stones apart.

Clarification: Though KGS uses standard "full stone" HC (with 6.5 komi for even games), "behind the scenes" it maintains a full precision record of each players rating. Your "behind the scenes" rating is displayed on your rank graph. Seems to me that it is unlikely that that the different systems of awarding HC stones affect the rating vs true strength time lag. More likely the difference between your KGS and your IGS rating vs true-strength time lag is due to the time constant in the filter that computes your rank from you average win/loss ratio.

Reference: The KGS Rating System Math help page. I can't give a link to this help page right now because the server is down. But here is a link to the KGS Main help page: http://www.gokgs.com/help/main.html . This link will be active when the server comes back up. Look in the Index Box (in the upper right of the help page) for a link to the Rating System Math help page.

I wish I'd done a bit of research on this before joining IGS. I've just hit 6k on KGS, and started playing on IGS. I entered my rank as 8k when I joined, thinking evilly to myself that I'd have a couple of easy games as I got used to the server, and I'm seeing fire! My win:loss ratio is a dismal 2:7 so far, so I'm expecting a big drop after the required 20 games.

Seeing those guys with 15 000 games had me scratching my head; thanks for the explanation. I think I've come across about 5 of them already.

I have a different sample point: I'm 1-2k KGS and 2k+ IGS.
Both my KGS and IGS rankings have been very consistent and side-by-side for almost 10 years, continuously,
especially starting from around 10k.

I don't play on KGS often, but at the 2d-3d level, IGS and KGS seem to me to be within a stone of each other - perhaps a KGS ranking is a tiny bit stronger?

So how is this possible? How can 2-3k kgs be 6-7k igs, shodan within a stone, and 2-3d kgs be slightly stronger than igs? Does this mean 6k igs = 2k igs?

It makes no sense to me.

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- Brady
Want to see videos of low-dan mistakes and what to learn from them? Brady's Blunders

The 4 kyu difference from KGS to IGS is real at the 16k level.
I don't know about people sharing accounts on IGS, I've played several guys over there who were themselves.
What I can say about that is that 16k is a TEEN Kyu. people play magnificent games some days and horrible games on the other.
You might have found your opponents on a lucky day.

@wineandgolover

IMHO, it all has to do with whom you play with. KGS has several rooms. IGS has a big one and a no rated room.
DDKs on IGS have a different growth rate on their level.

It would be rather unusual and interesting if a person had played over 10,000 games yet was only 16k in strength. That such accounts are not unique does strongly indicate that the accounts are being shared.

Well, IGS is a payed service in Japan. So I can't guarantee that they aren't shared by a group of users for that sake.
But I've played games against 16ks with 3000 games and won some and lost others. They were people I've played a few times which had their own style (or at least I felt like so).

As I said before in previous posts, 16k seems to me like a teen kyu. I don't have fully understanding of the game, but there are parts of the game that I have more control than others, for instance, since I play 9h against higher ks I've got some feeling on how to live in the corner.

Also, I noticed that somehow I can beat a 12k with a 4h. So if I started playing against those guys, I would be promoted more easily, but as I reached 12k I would be demoted because my equal games are not that great, hence a yoyo effect that would bring me back to 16k, being called a sandbagger, etc.

Referring to the 1st post, I haven't seen that much worrying about sandbagging on IGS than on KGS. Actually, I learned what that meant on KGS, because I was called one. There is a sort of paranoia on KGS about that. Once a 1k refused to play a training game with me because he couldn't see my exact ranking (I had a "-" at the time).

I played some experimental games on IGS against 1k's when I was 1k-KGS. IMO it's kind of even, I didn't have the impression the 1k IGS was a lot stronger or stronger at all. One or two ranks difference doesn't mean much anyway. I did beat 2d's on KGS when I was 1k there - seldom but I did. So when we talk about screwed ranks it would have to be e.g. about a 1k KGS that loses to a 5k IGS without a blunder.