This topic comes up often in discussions I have with chess players. I tell them I am 3kyu in go, and they say, "Well, what would that be if it were a chess rating?"

I would love to have a table similar to the world-wide rank comparison at http://senseis.xmp.net/?RankWorldwideComparison for comparing chess and go ratings.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

FYI, I am 3kyu KGS, and in chess I am about 1500 (blitz) on FICS.

It's not really possible. You could use the European GoR system to give a rough comparison, but the problem is that it's not anchored in the same way. I'm not sure what the lowest chess rating that a person might sensibly have, but it's a few hundred at least, while the lowest go rating a person could have is substantially negative (the EGF limits things to >100 iirc, but I don't think there's an argument that this is accurate--the US has players at 30k and even some below).

_________________
Occupy Babel!

The mean rank of go players on KGS is 6k, according to this http://senseis.xmp.net/?KGSRankHistogram

The mean rank of chess players on chess.com is 1200, according to this http://blog.chess.com/DrawMaster/uscf-r ... is-bimodal

I will go ahead and make a wild guess that these are roughly comparable - if you stick with the game enough to play it on a server, you will stabilize around that rank on average.

Edit: was looking at the wrong numbas

palapiku, I like your approach. What about the comparison between USCF and AGA ratings?

Comparing this graph for chess http://www.eddins.net/steve/chess/2008/06/06/131 with this graph for go http://senseis.xmp.net/?AGARatingHistogram is interesting!

Not just looking at means, isn't it interesting that these graphs have such a different distribution? The go one goes gradually up to 2k(casual players), then sharply up to one dan (serious players), then sharply down to higher dans (real go players). The chess one goes up in a similar manner as the go one to 800 (really casual players), then it slowly goes down a bit (casually serious players) to 1800, then goes down relatively fast (serious players).

I think this indicates there are more really casual players of chess than go, which may be indicative of a sizeable youth population. The 2nd article you linked to, palapiku (chess.com), said that the mean USCF rating among adult players was 1525. That greatly varies from the graph indicated above (which shows a mean around 1200).

Let's try to remove the youth from the equation. The relative peaks of the graphs are 1600 USCF and 1dan AGA, but if you take into account that a lot of youth are causing that peak at 1600 USCF, we could raise it a bit, and come up with the result :

1750 USCF ~= 1dan AGA

This seems much more realistic to me than 1200 = 6 kyu. I think 6 kyu represents more work than 1200 USCF.

From playing both to a reasonable-ish level, I'd say 3k in Go is about 1700 USCF

I've played chess for about 20 years but never seriously studied the game at all (only book I ever read the whole way through was "Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess," which btw is a very good book), and I am 1453 USCF. I think my trajectory in chess is similar to all the people at club who seem to just play casually but never actually seem to try to study, and they are typically around 3-6 kyu.

When I got to 1d in a year I thought it was probably roughly equivalent to 1800 USCF, but some of my friends who are ~2200 who got to 5k in a few months thought 1d was probably more like 1500 or 1600.

It's very difficult to compare, as most people aren't good at both.

What exactly are we trying to compare? Amount of work? Brute reading ability? Prestige? Probability of beating a pro in an even game?

There's chart on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_ranks_and_ratings

There are no human chess ratings as high as 2940, and also there is probably no reasonable way to differentiate between pro ranks. But I would say that EGG rank / elo chart confirms that something like 1800 elo would be equivalent to KGS 1 dan.

A-freaking-hem!

_________________
Occupy Babel!

I was interested in a generic comparison. A general rule of thumb type of thing.

Despite my last entry that compares the ratings graphs for chess and go (those graphs are hard to compare because more people play chess), my personal experience is similar to topazg :



Assuming that 3kyu = 1700 USCF, and assuming 85 chess points per rank, we have this chart :

USCF 1200 ~= 9k
USCF 1285 ~= 8k
USCF 1360 ~= 7k
USCF 1445 ~= 6k
USCF 1530 ~= 5k
USCF 1615 ~= 4k
USCF 1700 ~= 3k
USCF 1785 ~= 2k
USCF 1870 ~= 1k
USCF 1955 ~= 1d
USCF 2040 ~= 2d (expert)
USCF 2125 ~= 3d
USCF 2210 ~= 4d (master)
USCF 2295 ~= 5d
USCF 2380 ~= 6d
USCF 2465 ~= 7d (senior master / international master)
USCF 2550 ~= 8d
USCF 2635 ~= 9d/1p (grandmaster)
USCF 2720 ~= 4p
USCF 2805 ~= 9p (stong grandmaster)
USCF 2890 ~= 1p in China lol (international tournament winner / top pro)
USCF 2948 ~= FIDE 2848 = Magnus Carlsen ~= Lee Sedol (world champ)

* note - this chart has two very basic assumptions which make it very much a gross approximation.

** edited to add joke about 1p in china being so strong

Where does 85 points per rank come from?

That number has been created because it kinda works with the first assumption of 3kyu=1700 as you go up in rank.

Trust me, I have a degree in Science.

(You could calculate the ELO difference in chess ratings between one go rank by looking at the percentage chance of a win in an even game on average. I wouldn't be surprised if it were close to 100 ELO points for one go rank to get the same win percentage in chess. I believe the "spread" for go ranks is bigger than chess, so 85 approximates this spread for chess.)

This doesn't work. Until you specify what you're comparing, you can't even get a rule of thumb, because the right rule of thumb will vary depending on whether you want rarity, chance of beating the best player in the world, number of skill differences from a beginner, etc.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

When I read the first post I automatically assumed percentile. Top 50% of the players (casual, tournament, however you want to define it) or any other percentile you wish to consider. The fact that the rating distribution of the go players is significantly different to that of the chess players will make the analysis hard, but not impossible by just looking at raw data.

Clearly you are correct in that there are differences depending on which factors are considered. But how do we know there isn't a "rule of thumb" if we don't know how inaccurate such a rule of thumb would be? It seems like the guesses in this thread could be getting close to a rule of thumb.

Interesting mathematical discussion based on probability of winning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_ranks_and_ratings

Includes USCF vs go histograms based on "percentage of players" distribution
http://senseis.xmp.net/?RatingHistogramComparisons

The "old" go rank comparison page
http://senseis.xmp.net/?RankWorldwideComparison

The "new" go rank comparison page, uses ranges
http://senseis.xmp.net/?Sh%2Frankcomparison


Do we know it's a linear relationship (i.e. a constant conversion of 85 or 100 ELO points per go rank)? It looks like on the RatingHistogramComparison's page (in particular, the blue graph) that it is non linear when referring to percentage of players at a level. The USCF line is very linear while the AGA line (for example) is not. If they were both linear but not overlapping, it would indicate a different scaling between the left axis and right axis. But I think that since one is linear and the other is not indicates that a static scale (X points = Y ranks) is not technically accurate. I think that I read on the graph that such a static scale would be in error about 4 ranks in AGA (just a guess based on loosely eyeballing the graph).

Totally eyeballing the blue graph, it looks like about
2800-400 USCF (2400 Elo points)
23k - 10d AGA (32 ranks)

Declaring each of the above scales to be equivalent, it comes out to 75 Elo points per AGA rank. And if you used this rule of thumb, you might miss the equivalent rank by about 4 stones/300 Elo points depending on where along the scale you were observing, particularly in the 7d or 22k area.

The wikipedia link indicates that the EGF ratings are based on the Elo rating system, and both are based on chance of winning a specific game against an opponent.


Another interesting graph is the "Estimated probability of winning against players at specified rating distance".

_________________
Founder, Central Mississippi Go Club
Free tips and resources for clubs and teaching
Go Kit Club Pack - pack of 13x13 go sets for clubs
Go Tin - very portable go

I think we're only converging because people are assuming that the highest go ratings are equivalent to the highest chess ratings. For some conversions, that will make sense, for others it will not (a pure ELO scale with non-negative scores will have much higher top go ratings than others).

You could have worse assumptions for Chess vs. Go, but it would become a ridiculous assumption for a number of other games.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

I am not sure why there is this obsession with comparing chess with go. They both are played on a board with pieces and require thinking, but the structure of each game is totally different.

This is like trying to figure out how many points a pro futsal player would score playing basketball if his ability could somehow transfer to a pro basketball league just because both of these games uses a ball in a court and require athletic skill.

chance to win converts.
Either way, I don't think they compare linearly, because go has a steeper learning curve (see ogs rating system).