Should blitz games be rated?

[Tryss]

If it's not broke, don't fix it...

And what's the problem if someone is 5d at blitz, 3d at slow games and is rated 5d if he only plays blitz?

[snorri]

Chess keeps track of lightning, blitz, and standard ratings... They are considered different skills entirely.

Why don't we do the same?

... but on KGS, you can! Just make separate blitz and main accounts and you're good

This is just for personal use, though. The complaint seems to be one regarding a kind of rank faking, intentional or not. Maybe if it were a little easier to see a user's most frequently used time settings at a glance without clicking on their games one by one it would be easier distinguish the blitzers from the slow game players. It wouldn't prevent people from becoming 9d using time gimmicks but at least such users would be easier to spot.

[mw42]

I think your assumption that users with inflated ranks who play mixed games (standard and blitz) will soon drop down to a normal rank is wrong. A user can play in the way described to attain an inflated rank then play a couple slow games and (probably) lose then go back to the SD to balance those losses. He may not advance any more ranks, but he is certainly capable of maintaining an inflated rank relatively easily.

If it's not broke, don't fix it...

And what's the problem if someone is 5d at blitz, 3d at slow games and is rated 5d if he only plays blitz?

Think of it as reverse sandbagging. Sandbagging is a practice forbidden by KGS policy. Also, the problem is not rated blitz, per se, but a certain type of blitz that increases randomness in the result. So having a threshold for a reasonable amount of thinking time for a rated game seems the easiest solution.

[Mr. Mormon]

To add some perspective, maybe only 9d's on turn-based servers are 'true' 9d's. Not a good argument.

[mw42]

... This seems to me to not be a problem, for basically the reasons I said above:
- The population of people able to do this reliably seems very small...

Concerning the poll: I find it interesting that of the eleven people who voted that blitz games should be rated, eight think "SD inflation" does not have to be dealt with. Of course, this may just mean that they think it is not a problem not that they use SD inflation. I wish I added more voting options.

[emeraldemon]

I don't understand how this "rank inflation" could be a problem. If you want to play slow games, play slow games. If someone gets a high rank playing fast (or even SD), it seems like one of these things will happen:

1) They only play fast, so you will never play them. What's the problem?
2) They switch to slow, but b/c of the inflated rank, they lose most of their games. What's the problem?

[mw42]

Emeralddemon, concerning (2):

I think your assumption that users with inflated ranks who play mixed games (standard and blitz) will soon drop down to a normal rank is wrong. A user can play in the way described to attain an inflated rank then play a couple slow games and (probably) lose then go back to the SD to balance those losses. He may not advance any more ranks, but he is certainly capable of maintaining an inflated rank relatively easily.

Do you disagree with this?

[Li Kao]

My impression is that some of you are taking rank way too serious. I use it for 1) finding opponents of my strength and 2) tracking my progress. And that works even if a few idiots abuse. And in my experience the reverse abuse(aka Sandbagging) is more common, but still not a big problem.

[mw42]

That may be how you feel about rank, but, most notably, KGS TOS disagree with you

There are certain behaviors that are absolutely not tolerated at KGS... Dishonest play during rated games. Rated games are meant to be serious games where player's strengths are tracked.

If a user is found to be sandbagging, they are deranked so as to not pollute the rating system. I don't care about how high my rank is, but I like to know that whatever my rank it actually means something. I feel that KGS does this very well.

[snorri]

Emeralddemon, concerning (2):

I think your assumption that users with inflated ranks who play mixed games (standard and blitz) will soon drop down to a normal rank is wrong. A user can play in the way described to attain an inflated rank then play a couple slow games and (probably) lose then go back to the SD to balance those losses. He may not advance any more ranks, but he is certainly capable of maintaining an inflated rank relatively easily.

Do you disagree with this?

There is at least 1 player on L19 who knows how to make this work, and I'll leave it to him to speak up if he is so inclined. You could ask him at what time limit this would not be possible. But I think there is more than just the time limit involved, though. My understanding is that the strategy also includes giving handicaps near the maximum rated allowance, which is near 5-6 stones (I forget which.)

So the more recent postings seem to suggest that real concern is about a pathologically inflated rating, not the normal blitz / slow skew. First of all, it has to be said that the victims are accepting these games, so they are contributing to the phenomenon. KGS is into stigmatizing players with the ?, ~ and all that. Maybe another character could be added for players with a large ratio of time wins. Would that help or hurt?

[mw42]

OT: I've recently played at 6 stones rated, so I know that is allowed.

The "?" designates uncertainty in rank, and "~" designates a certain type of player. Neither of these statuses impact the rating system. Also, time wins aren't an issue. You could legitimately lose on time (I have lost by time in 25m games with 30s byo-yomi). Regardless, an "SD blitzer" mark will only stigmatize a user, not prevent them from impacting the integrity of your KGS rank. So, I don't think this is a valid solution (opinion, of course).

[jts]

The original claim, as I understood it, was that in sudden death games (i.e., games with one or no byo-yomi period) an extremely high percentage of matches end in +T, and that (unlike games, even blitz games, with many byo-yomi periods) there was no strong connection between who is winning these SD games and who loses on time.

I think this argument is broadly correct, and that it entails that you could make a small improvement to the ranking system by requiring 5 byo-yomi periods for a ranked game.

This would slightly inconvenience people who like to play SD, but no more than we already inconvenience people who like to play 9x9.

Everything about blitz is a bit of a distraction. The same problem could come up in 1:00 + 0:30x1.

[emeraldemon]

Emeraldemon, concerning (2):

I think your assumption that users with inflated ranks who play mixed games (standard and blitz) will soon drop down to a normal rank is wrong. A user can play in the way described to attain an inflated rank then play a couple slow games and (probably) lose then go back to the SD to balance those losses. He may not advance any more ranks, but he is certainly capable of maintaining an inflated rank relatively easily.

Do you disagree with this?

Let's say Alice starts a new account and plays some sudden death games misrepresenting her rank, maybe creates a few accounts before she gets lucky, coming away with a 5d account when she is really only 1d (is a 4 rank jump realistic?)

Now she switches and plays some slow games with the 5d account, losing most of them. Her rank starts dropping, maybe hitting 4d . The SD "trick" only works if you can get people to play you at the wrong handicap. I think this is a bit easier if you're a new [?] account claiming to be a particular rank, but if you're an established rank, are many people going to play you at the wrong handicap? She has to find more 1d and 2d players who are willing to play her at 5-6 stones. And even then, if SD is a coinflip it's only a 50/50 chance the rank will go up. Eventually you'll get a few blitz losses in addition to your slow losses, and the rank will slip further down. It seems to me that at best you can prolong the decline, if you have a continual stream of players willing to play you at the wrong rank.

Of course Alice could always throw away the account and start over again [a bit like start scumming in nethack]. But I'm not convinced you could maintain an account this way. If someone has an example it'd be easy enough to confirm through the archives.

[mw42]

Well, once you achieve an elevated rank the "higher" handicap becomes the appropriate handicap. ^^ Also, I don't think it's quite 50/50 if you are using a certain strategy, e.g. start a complicated fight. If your objective is just to not lose on time, but your opponent is playing to win it is likely he will have a harder time with the severe time restriction than you.

I've never done this, so it would be nice to have a testimonial from someone who has. They could answer these questions easier than I could (and possibly shut me up!).

[xed_over]

I haven't been fully following this thread because there are a few things I don't understand...

what difference does it make if your win/loss is on time or not -- isn't a loss still just a loss?

and for rating or not rating blitz games separately from non-blitz games, I haven't yet seen a consensus for the definition of blitz vs non-blitz