Life In 19x19

All a ranking system can hope to do is to be internally consistent, and ideally provide a reference point for handicapping. As many others have mentioned you can pick whatever rank you have that you feel reasonably represents your strength (and if you are really worried about it you can add the necessary label, saying 1d KGS/IGS/AGA/EGF/wherever you got it). The systems should hopefully have reasonable correlation between them, but that's not to say there won't be people who have discrepancies even if they are functioning perfectly.

Just some examples - A player might have an AGA rank that is 3 stones stronger than their KGS rank...but it might be that they play blitz games on KGS after coming home from a stressful day at work, and they only play AGA tournaments on long weekends when they are well rested -- it might just be that they are several stones stronger when playing at AGA events relative to the average KGS game. You could also have the opposite, perhaps you have plenty of time to play relaxed games online at home, but when you make the trek to get to a real-life tournament it means you drove all night the night before, got a poor night's rest at a cheap motel you were splitting with 3 friends you carpooled with, and are strung out on coffee the day of the tournament.

Moral of the story is don't worry too much about rank, how you describe it and how you announce it, so long as you're honest....instead just focus on the playing you will be backing it up with (=

Pippen wrote:Hm...I don't know but would u feel saying if asked "I'm a danplayer" if you are 1d on KGS? I know it's not easy, but in the end I could invent a rank system that starts with 5d, but if somebody asked me what my rank is I would feel I cheat if I say: 5d. Does my point come across ?

I'll call myself dan player after I reach it in EGF rating (it takes cca 3d KGS in our conditions). Right now, I call myself 13-kyu even when I have a 5-kyu @KGS.

But everyone's perception is different. Mine is caused by going to the tournaments and knowing a lot of 'real' people in our go community. If one plays most of his serious games on KGS, it's only fair he calls himself 1-dan if he reaches it there. You can't blame him and force him to use ranking system you use/like the most

There is definitely a rank shift for some of us.

I've been too busy with other stuff to play serious games on KGS for about four months. Back then, I was 1K. That probably was accurate, for in December I played in a face to face AGA tournament, beating two 1Ds, losing to a 2D and a 2K. That's approximately 1D AGA performance, which is about 1K KGS.

On KGS, I am now 4 dan.

I gained 4 ranks in about 4 months without playing any rated games.

karaklis wrote:

SoDesuNe wrote:Besides, in Europe almost every Go-player has a KGS account so they can relate ^^

Not sure about that. According to my experience only about two of three of my tournament opponents has an account on KGS, and half of them very rarely play on KGS (i.e. they play more tournament games than games on KGS, just like me).

If it's a five-round-tournament and three of your opponents have a KGS account, I count that as "almost every Go-player" ; )

Joaz Banbeck wrote:There is definitely a rank shift for some of us.

I've been too busy with other stuff to play serious games on KGS for about four months. Back then, I was 1K. That probably was accurate, for in December I played in a face to face AGA tournament, beating two 1Ds, losing to a 2D and a 2K. That's approximately 1D AGA performance, which is about 1K KGS.

On KGS, I am now 4 dan.

I gained 4 ranks in about 4 months without playing any rated games.

This is probably mostly rank drift, not shift, and if you give the system a bit more data to work with, it will give you a reasonable rank again fairly quickly - but if you want to call yourself a kgs 4d, nobody's stopping you

My rank didn't go up.

Fedya wrote:My rank didn't go up.

Did you check the graph? I'm still 3k, but I nonetheless shot up 1/3 of a stone, just like everyone else.

Maybe I just didn't lose anything for my last loss.

Sur wrote:I'll call myself dan player after I reach it in EGF rating (it takes cca 3d KGS in our conditions). Right now, I call myself 13-kyu even when I have a 5-kyu @KGS.

But everyone's perception is different. Mine is caused by going to the tournaments and knowing a lot of 'real' people in our go community. If one plays most of his serious games on KGS, it's only fair he calls himself 1-dan if he reaches it there. You can't blame him and force him to use ranking system you use/like the most

3d KGS is 1d Czech? that seems off to me, I've played against the czech team...

shapenaji wrote:

Sur wrote:I'll call myself dan player after I reach it in EGF rating (it takes cca 3d KGS in our conditions). Right now, I call myself 13-kyu even when I have a 5-kyu @KGS.

But everyone's perception is different. Mine is caused by going to the tournaments and knowing a lot of 'real' people in our go community. If one plays most of his serious games on KGS, it's only fair he calls himself 1-dan if he reaches it there. You can't blame him and force him to use ranking system you use/like the most

3d KGS is 1d Czech? that seems off to me, I've played against the czech team...

Maybe a strong 2-dan? This is our most recent dan player: http://www.gokgs.com/graphPage.jsp?user=mamutik

Also Laman here, 1-dan KGS, is only 3-kyu EGF.

Joaz Banbeck wrote:On KGS, I am now 4 dan.

I gained 4 ranks in about 4 months without playing any rated games.

But the important thing is, are you "4d" or "4d?". They are totally different ranks on KGS. I suspect that you are the latter, which means you are not a KGS 4 dan.

Sur wrote:
Maybe a strong 2-dan? This is our most recent dan player: http://www.gokgs.com/graphPage.jsp?user=mamutik

Also Laman here, 1-dan KGS, is only 3-kyu EGF.

The thing is, it gets somewhat nonlinear in the dan ranks (AGA 6d can be KGS 4,5, or 6d)

And AGA 6d is generally considered to be European/Chinese 4d
(Technically I'm 2580 in EGF, but that's just because for some reason the tournament used my AGA rating as my starting EGF rating, and then I didn't lose to any European players...)

But I'm not sure, really tough to say what the right conversion is sometimes...

Funny thing is I found at least one guy that is 1d in EGF and KGS .

wms wrote:

Joaz Banbeck wrote:On KGS, I am now 4 dan.

I gained 4 ranks in about 4 months without playing any rated games.

But the important thing is, are you "4d" or "4d?"...

There is a question mark after it, which in my opinion, is appropriate.

Pippen wrote:Funny thing is I found at least one guy that is 1d in EGF and KGS .

This is not funny, but it is normal that in such wide ranges there are some cases where a EGF-1d has a rank of 1d at KGS.