Life In 19x19

I don't really think about rank too much - I just enjoy playing tough players and see how they move around the board. I've been playing my 3rd Dan every week live and with three stones I can occasionally make him think for more than a few seconds before he responds and I know he lets me win occasionally. He does have a tendency to create semi-blind dragons... he almost sweated out his lunch last week in front of two other Chinese guys who were watching, urging me to win and laughing as we played..

I'm revisiting Tygem at the moment and noticed odd stuff. I'm in at about 16 k after 15 or so games. I'm seeing two things

1] very weak players who I guess are "real" 16 kyu.
2] Devastating players

Now the thing with the latter is they are clearly really good.. not just a bit bit good.. They are all over me BUT.. here's the thing; they get me well and truly goosed... at the point of killing a group then they move out to somewhere else - giving me the vital point. To cap it all I offer a count toward the end (usually because I know I'm 50 or so behind) -- they refuse and then resign!

This has happened five/six times with different players.

Possibly some kind of rank fixing?.. it is unnerving..

Here's the last game this happened..

Top left and bottom right looked dead.. but allowed to live..

From your descriptions, it sounds like a case of the sandbaggers. Just try to look at those games as a learning experience, if you plan on keep playing on the asian servers, they're full of them.

Now the thing with the latter is they are clearly really good.. not just a bit bit good.. They are all over me BUT.. here's the thing; they get me well and truly goosed... at the point of killing a group then they move out to somewhere else - giving me the vital point. To cap it all I offer a count toward the end (usually because I know I'm 50 or so behind) -- they refuse and then resign!

First of all, if you request counting when the game is not finished and they accept it they will lose in most cases, maybe even in all cases!

There are many players that are clearly losing a game and then start to request counting on every single move - many times and also wait until the last second to play an atari, until you finally accept and lose. Therefore your opponent doesn't want to waste time and just resigns, because he knows that he has won.
That is something that you will see unil about 12k. A stupid strategy like requesting Draw after you lost a big Dragon.

As for the stronger players: Yes there seems to be a lot of sandbaggers, but I don't really know if they are, the lowest rank that I had on Tygem was 16k and I fought my way up to 10k in the past month. And I had the feeling at around 13k the players start to get weaker (or I'm just getting stronger - I don't know). That could mean that the sandbaggers are 17k-13k, but it could also be a coincidence.

Alot of tygem dan players have ddk accounts to either sandbag and troll or to fish for students. But most likely they just like destroying their opponents. It's like recreation if they are on a losing streak. The people I play on tygem 2d seem to mostly be the correct rank, and I feel that a good deal of them are weaker than some of the 18k players. Tygem is great in the dan ranks, but you cannot avoid sandbagging in the kyus, especially ddk

It is a great way to get better, though..Just make sure to review the sandbagger games