Life In 19x19

Gadzooks! Nobody has mentioned the ASR! ('cept topazg who sadly doesn't have time for it). The ASR is a league that runs both on KGS and kaya. Although it doesn't perfectly or exactly implement the OP's excellent idea, the way it works is that you play unranked games against anyone in your class, and every game brings you points (more if you win). At the end of the month, those with enough points move up to the next higher class.
So while this isn't what the OP was looking for, it offers him the chance to play unranked games (and there's always a benefit from playing stronger players) to get points for playing, and the chance to move up in the league. As a side benefit, many games end with a review, which provides you with one of the best tools for improving. And...it's absolutely free!
In any case, the ranking system is a beast with which you will invariably have to grapple as a go player. While the OP's idea would offer a softer entry curve, the tried and true model is based on the concept "no pain, no gain" and it's not going away any time soon.

Well, a real beginner learns and improves even when she loses. How to incorporate that into a rating system? Maybe by counting losses as partial wins, depending on the number of games played.

Even beginners start at different levels. Assume that the rating system finds an approximate kyu rank, R, after, say, 10 games, between 30 kyu and 10 kyu. Let G = 10*(R - 10), rounded to the nearest integer. (If R < 10, don't bother.)

Now if the player wins a game, it counts as a full win, +1; if he loses a game, it counts as G/100 - 1, only being a full loss, -1, if G = 0. So if R = 30, G = 200, and a loss counts as +1, a full win. If R = 20, G = 100, and a loss counts as 0, a tie.

After each game, decrement G, until G = 0, or the rating reaches SDK.

When G > 100, which could be the first 100 games, a player is rewarded for playing, win or lose. When G > 0, the cost of a loss is diminished.

Such a system reduces rating volatility for DDKs, and gives their ratings a positive bias, which is desirable, IMO.

Lyzl wrote:There is something about the hollow "hi, gg" signed at the beginning of each game and final, crushing "thanks" that just makes the whole experience a bit of a shell of real life Go to me.

You are not alone there. Some players are just more talkative than others - daal and topazg mentioned the ASR (= Advanced Study Room, but don't let the name put you off...) which I typically find to be a little more friendly than standard rooms on KGS. KGS also has the "KGS Teaching Ladder" room, which has fallen into disuse a little, but I still find it generally very friendly.

and don't forget, that this forum has its own room on KGS: Lifein19x19.com (Room List -> Clubs)

Lyzl wrote:On Go servers, I'm always nervous a loss will lower my ranking.

You may like OGS, which is a turn-based server. The ranks are neither important nor accurate over there. However, rankings are not important to finding games at all. In my opinion, the following are among the killer features of OGS.

• Many huge "title" tournaments that anyone can join, where you are guaranteed to get around 6-7 games at minimum (more if you keep winning). They have prizes even for people who don't win the title. They even have 9x9 tournaments.
• Ladder competitions: You can challenge anyone with a higher "ladder position" than you do and they have to accept if they want to keep their ladder position.

You can even set up a tournament just for your friends. If you feel nervous about games, another option is to keep solving tsumego. Your only opponent is yourself in that case.

That said, I think that there is an unhealthy culture of worshiping strength in communities that play games that are perceived to be intellectual exercises. Not everyone is affected by it, but I think that beginners feel it, even if they don't see it manifested explicitly. You can avoid feeling bad by practicing some mind control and finding a group of people who make good go buddies.

Bill Spight wrote:Well, a real beginner learns and improves even when she loses.

I think this is only really true if a beginner understands why they lost. Otherwise they just repeat the same mistakes, develop bad habits, and arrive at all manner of wrong conclusions about how to play the game properly. I would venture to say that most of the time, beginners quit the game all together long before they've racked up their first 50 "instructive" losses.

zslane wrote:

Bill Spight wrote:Well, a real beginner learns and improves even when she loses.

I think this is only really true if a beginner understands why they lost.
Otherwise they just repeat the same mistakes...

The two things are not mutually exclusive.
A baby learns to walk; she falls many times. Even though she falls, she is still improving.
She doesn't know why she is falling, but she is still improving.
She is improving from her experience. She can develop bad walking habits, but she is still improving.

A real beginner learns and improves from his experience. Yes, some (or maybe even most of us) will repeat the same mistakes,
develop bad habits, etc. (unless a good teacher points them out),
but a real beginner is still improving and learning, at the same time.

zslane wrote:

Bill Spight wrote:Well, a real beginner learns and improves even when she loses.

I think this is only really true if a beginner understands why they lost. Otherwise they just repeat the same mistakes, develop bad habits, and arrive at all manner of wrong conclusions about how to play the game properly. I would venture to say that most of the time, beginners quit the game all together long before they've racked up their first 50 "instructive" losses.

Aside from what Ed said, go is a long game. Besides winning, the players have subgoals. There are many opportunities for learning, and a player can lose the game yet succeed at a number of goals. True, success is generally better for learning than failure, but go offers many successes.

I agree that beginners should try not to form bad habits, and recommend that they play much stronger players. I lost almost every game I played until becoming an SDK.

EdLee wrote:A baby learns to walk; she falls many times. Even though she falls, she is still improving.

Physical skills, and those involving a lot of eye-hand coordination, benefit from repeated drills with minimal coaching or expert intervention. And there isn't usually a whole lot of theory to embed in the learner either. Perhaps a better analogy is needed here?

I just think there is way too much faith around here in the process of learning by osmosis in something as strategically complex and tactically subtle as go. About the only thing a beginner is likely to learn just from losing a lot is how to avoid losing stones in atari needlessly. But I'm not convinced that beginners would even pick up in the importance of establishing two eyes without being told about it explicitly. There are many fundamentals that don't reveal themselves merely through the process of playing.

This boils down to whether go should be handled as a game or a sport. In the original poster's comment, it was described as a sport: pure competition with only perfunctory communication. I definitely think that game-ish aspects can make go more fun without diminishing any of the 'hardcore' player's ability to study, dig, and compete. For example, options that have been discussed on the forum before:

1) Achievements, brought up by Araban originally
2) Separate ratings to measure different things. For example, the level system described here would be another viewable rating, and you would be able to choose which you could see.
3) Unlockables such as custom boards/stones.
4) Guilds/etc.

As far as some of the reservations people have, this stuff would all be optional and none of it would give a player a better chance of winning, so a player who was not interested could ignore all of it. As far as having multiple accounts, there could always be an option to link accounts so that the actual ELO/serious rating was separate but nothing else was. That way your automatching would not be affected but you would still have access to unlockables and such.

The downside to all of this is that it would be work on behalf of go server makers. In the meantime however, it is fun to talk about stuff like cool achievements. All of these sorts of things are kind of like getting to choose your username: some people really don't care if they have the options and it doesn't make you better at go, but it could make the game experience more fun for a decent number of people.

Not sure why, but if Go ratings were more like this rather than this I'd find it cooler.

Chew Terr wrote:4) Guilds/etc.

This one, at least, has been implemented.

http://senseis.xmp.net/?KGSClans

I'm not sure if they're still doing it. Haven't heard anything about it in ages, though, so I'd assume it's died out...

I'm actually just graduating from my bachelor's in Cognitive Science this year, and as to the matter of how learning works, here's some insight I remember, but am too lazy to link the references to, so you probably shouldn't take it at face value,

Basically, some things, such as breathing, walking, and yes, even language, are known to be innate. Our brains are equip with innate mechanisms to learn and do these things spontaneously at certain ages (called "critical periods"). Other things, such as learning to ride a bike, are not meant to be learned intuitively from birth, however, simple trial and error is sufficient to accomplish basic cycling skills with little to no special training. Other tasks, such as learning to perform surgery... probably needs some teaching to learn, and there is little or no intuitive counterpart our brains are equip to learn from. Feedback is key in trial and error - you have to know when you are failing. On a bike, this is easy, you fall off, you fail. Surgery does have feedback, but obviously going straight to trial and error on patients isn't optimal, so much textbook learning is desired.

The contentious part in learning Go is... how is your feedback? Do you know if a stone laid was good or not? in the case of losing an atari'ed group, probably, but for more advanced moves, maybe not. This is probably why teachers are so highly valued! They can give proper feedback on your play, as do tsumego.