Rank Conversion

[emerus]

I'm necroing this thread because I'm hosting a tournament next month with several Korean players who only play Tygem along with a lot of unfamiliar faces who may only have KGS ranks. Has any consensus been reached on rank conversion between these two servers?

In my experience, Tygem low-dan ranks are 1 or 2 stones weaker and it seems to be about even at 3kyu. Anything below that and I'm unsure.

Where would you rate a Tygem 9kyu in KGS?

[Charlie]

Meh. Tesuji. Everyone knows tesuji.

"I know Furikawari" would be a far more memorable quote.

[Li Kao]

If I remember correctly I played a bit on tygem as 5k KGS, and lost more than half at 9k tygem. But perhaps that was just caused by me being unfamiliar with their style, so it's hard to say.

[lobotommy]

Not playing too much serious games on KGS and Tygem lately: actually 1d kgs, 2d tygem (where 3 dan should be a no problem but I play so rarely...). I think two stones difference mentioned earlier by Manastin is most adequate way to determine correct rank on both servers. But still, it is all messed up because it is 4 or more stones of difference of my real life ranking (or maybe Polish kyu's are sooooo strong?...)

[Sumatakyo]

If I remember correctly I played a bit on tygem as 5k KGS, and lost more than half at 9k tygem. But perhaps that was just caused by me being unfamiliar with their style, so it's hard to say.

I agree. " KGS Rank = Tygem Rank - 2 stones " appears to me more applicable to dans and higher kyus, but not mid to lower kyus.
I would say 9k Tygem is much stronger than 9k KGS (if memory serves).

At 5k KGS, I had a hard time playing 7k on Tygem.
Now that I am 3k on KGS, I am about 1k Tygem.

[otenki]

Here is my stats:

I'm 5-6k on kgs and about the same on tygem.

I'll probably get harder games around 10-18k though but I guess we all know the reason for that

Cheers,
Otenki

[sefo]

There's a 'social' reason behind the Tygem sandbaggers.
In China, NO serious player should have a starting rank below 5k-1d.

Serious player = You're a kid and your parents have a teacher coming once a week or you're a little older, you played at school and took some lessons.

So if you're a 2k KGS and 2d Tygem it means you played against kids whose teacher told them to register as dan level.
(that's why you hear a lot of people saying Tygem dans are weak)

In the ddk range you will only find people messing around and trying stuff. They are not sanbagging to get easy wins like you find in the west. They just try stuff or play randomly because they are bored.
You can find anything: the real ddk who never played or the high dan messing around.

So for a KGS player who wants to play on Tygem:

-If you like to play at your own level, register at a higher level than your kgs rank, even start at 1d if you're in the sdk range.

-If you like to play strong &| tricky players, register at 20k-10k (or even lower). You will get some garbage but eventually you will play against a strong player.

No amount of statistics will help create a rank comparison for Asian servers.

Actually it's the same for new go servers like Kaya or Nova. I don't know why sdk like to register as 30k

PS: If you like to know my stats, I'm 7k KGS and 15K Tygem (started at 10K and I'm going down steadily)

[Uberdude]

I'm Tygem 6d, but that's not really solid as I'm on 20 wins out of 22 games since 5d, 5 wins of 6 since 6d. I was KGS 4d or so, but maybe I've got stronger? My mindless KGS blitz account is 4d not 3d now.

[HermanHiddema]

No amount of statistics will help create a rank comparison for Asian servers.

No amount of statistics will help create a rank comparison for servers that allow players to choose their own rank.

[oren]

Since handicap games are not used in the rating systems for cyberoro/tygem, I would expect there to be quite a lot of difference from kgs/igs.

[bleep]

What I battle to understand is how the discrepancy between Tygem and KGS ranks seems arbitrary for some players, and not for others. I'm 10k on Tygem, and 5 or 6k on KGS. Several other people have noticed this difference. However, an almost equal number of people report their ranks as being similar across both servers.

How can that happen?

[Kirby]

What I battle to understand is how the discrepancy between Tygem and KGS ranks seems arbitrary for some players, and not for others. I'm 10k on Tygem, and 5 or 6k on KGS. Several other people have noticed this difference. However, an almost equal number of people report their ranks as being similar across both servers.

How can that happen?

No amount of statistics will help create a rank comparison for Asian servers.

No amount of statistics will help create a rank comparison for servers that allow players to choose their own rank.

The ranking systems are fundamentally different. If a similar type of ranking methodology was used between two servers with different groups of people, maybe you could compare them. But the systems are very different.

Like people have mentioned, you can specify your starting rank (up to a certain level) on Tygem, which leads to variation particularly for people not having played many games.

In addition, Tygem's system is not as sensitive to history.

[bleep]

That still doesn't account for the people who play a reasonable amount of games on both servers, such as the posters here. How do some have the same rank on both servers, and others are vastly different?

[Kirby]

That still doesn't account for the people who play a reasonable amount of games on both servers, such as the posters here. How do some have the same rank on both servers, and others are vastly different?

In theory, as the number of games increases, the ranking systems should become more similar. However, there exists the phenomenon in real life, aside from go servers, where player A consistently beats player B, player B consistently beats player C, and player C consistently beats player A. My hypothesis is that this could be due to style. Perhaps player A plays in a style that player B is weak to, player B plays in a style C is weak to, and so on.

If style can contribute to such a situation, then I don't find it unreasonable that Tygem and KGS would as a whole have different styles, and therefore you can see cases where we have players of "type A" who can consistently beat the dominant population of "type B" players playing on Tygem, but also have players of "type C" who can consistently lose to the same group of people.

Theoretically, the distribution of player types, A, B, and C, could vary between tygem and KGS. KGS could, for example, have 50% type A players and 50% type C players, with maybe Tygem having, theoretically, 95% type B players. In such a case, when the KGS players play on tygem (obviously contributing to the 5% that aren't B players), then we would have half of the KGS population consistently beating Tygem players, and half consistently losing to them.

These player types, A, B, and C, are of just made up, and we have no idea of the distributions of "player types" on the servers. But it is a hypothetical explanation for the behavior that we see here.

[jts]

That still doesn't account for the people who play a reasonable amount of games on both servers, such as the posters here. How do some have the same rank on both servers, and others are vastly different?

Tygem's rating system isn't designed to match equally strong players, just to create some amusing noise.

... player A consistently beats player B, player B consistently beats player C, and player C consistently beats player A. My hypothesis is that this could be due to style. Perhaps player A plays in a style that player B is weak to, player B plays in a style C is weak to, and so on.

Hypothesis aside, do you have an evidence of actual triplets of players with large numbers of plays who exhibit a dominance cycle like this?