Hello everyone,

I created a site that shows " Monster ratings“.

These ratings are counted as a sum of all points exceeding 1500 in all games (for a given player).

Current leaders are:

1. Ray Garrison (monster rating: 5869)

2. Tim Shih (monster rating: 5337)

3. Bernard Herwig (monster rating 5022)

All comments are welcome!

I'll try to improve the site if you suggest how :-)

Enjoy!

PS: Sorry for stealing the “Monster” word, feel free to sue me (or suggest a better name ;)

PPS: I saw a thread “formula for rate average” - and I think my site might be an answer. Kind of funny coincidence, as I've been thinking about it recently and created it just the other day…

I just wonder, how did you know that I'd ask for that ??

again can you read the other thread to consider the issues i raised there?

Well, basically I don't really fancy the idea of “average”. It tends to prevent people from playing games they are not good at so that they can get a higher average rating.

For example, if I only played go19, my average rating would be pretty good. What I really want to measure is how good people are in all the games counted together.

But I don't want to use average rating, as that would benefit newbies with rating 1500 over someone who happens to suck at some game and so has for example rating 1400. I see no good reason for penalising that…

In “Monster Ratings”, any activity from the starting point should help the player's Monster Rating, or at least do no harm.

(oh my, I really shouldn't write anything when drunk… I hope it is at least partially comprehensible…)

Ok, I'll try again:

While “Monster Rating” takes into account all the game types and aspires to measure how succesful each player is, it doesn't lower your rating for anything below 1500.

That is because I don't want to penalise players who are worse than the starting point, as that would promote inactivity. “Monster Rating”, instead, aims to promote activity (to be more concrete, it should promote my own activity, I want to force myself to start playing games that I completely ignored until now ;-)

That's a nice system tasuki, but it should take into account the latent hex19 rating that some of us have (hex13 rating when hex19 was introduced if we haven't played any hex19). I, for example, could boost my score by 305 points just by inviting myself at hex19 and resigning.

I wasn't even aware of that “latent hex19 rating”… is it possible to find it anywhere on the site?

Also, it seems like a bit too much of a hassle to implement a workaround for that… And as my goal is to persuade people to play more different games… :)

your site is great! thanks for it.

well done.

Thanks indeed, very nice!

You have reached your goal already, I will enter a gwg tournament for the first time. My personal target is now to reach position 250. That will be fairly hard as I'm currently overrated in Hex. Also if others start playing a couple more different games as well it might be hard just to keep ones position.

Cheers

richyfourtytwo (always motivated by stats and rating numbers, even though he knows they don't really mean that much)

One question: start rating for new players is 1500 / 20. kyu. You seem to have used something like 1500 = 17. kyu. Any specific reason for this?

I asked about how go ranks translate to numbers in another thread recently… but got no concrete answer.

You state 1500 = 20kyu as a fact. Where did you get it from? :)

I chose the 1300 = 20kyu completely arbitrarily: I didn't know what the “real” conversion should be, and I felt that go was overestimated here anyway, as there are three variants and top players get rather higher rating than in the other games…

But I'd be glad to change it to 1500 = 20kyu (actually it would be rather easy to convert it)

The starting rating is only 20 kyu for those who state that they don't know their rank when registering.

One source is here (http://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/faq.jsp#ratings), although it doesn't explicitly say 1500=20.

The other source is my memory, I started with 1500 everywhere except in go, where I started at 20 kyu. (And I didn't move very far away from these numbers ever, but that's another topic! ;-))

Ah, just read your message, Devil. So go is the only game where you can give an initial rating when signing up, right? That sort of makes the values incomparable.

Well, maybe calculating the average rating of all go players and rescaling that so it is 1500 per definition might be a way to define it semi-objectively. Sorry for multiple short posts, that happens when I think and type at the same time.

People also get different initial ratings at chess, despite the lack of any questions about chess skills when registering.

Re multiple short posts: Been there, done that! ;-)

no problem

about short

posts :P

Ok, I'm updating it to 1500 = 20kyu.

Actually I wanted to update it by adding +155 to go rating (except where zero) and managed to write the query wrong (who needs testing before doing something so trivial? ;-), so that it ended up deleting all the go ratings. ^^

The new update (from LG) should be done within an hour.

(I'd feel bad sending LG more than 4 requests a second…)

Hmmm, I couldn't invite myself at hex19; I'll need a volunteer :p

here i am :)

Thanks, but I already started a game with richyfourtytwo. In fact he invited me only minutes after my message.

nr 249… I only pay some games :p

but great initiative!

I love it, thanks! It made me sign up for games where I think I could do better than my rating indicates.

It sucks that my initial chess rating was 1000. :(

Will sign up for some rating tournaments right away. :)

I think you should use 1 Dan = 2000 for GO. Take a look a peoples ratings, and make a comparison with other games, and you might see why. This only matters because of the “cutoff value” of 1500. With no cutoff value, you could use 1 Dan = 10.000 and it wouldn't matter…

Apart from that, this is a fun way to compare “overall strength” - although competing in the Monstership is better, obviously! :-)

First of all - I'm happy I persuaded some people to try playing more games :)

Marius, I changed it recently to 20kyu = 1500. I think it actually makes sense and it's implied in the FAQ as well. As you already said, it only changes the “cutoff” calue, so it doesn't make much of a difference anyway.

And let me try to explain why high go ratings are higher than other high ratings.

Suppose the “rank” was defined as “can beat opponent of one rank about himself in 30% games”. Then go has about 30 such “ranks”. Second game is bridge, with something about 26-27 “ranks” and as far as I recall, chess has below 20.

This tells us that there are bigger skill differences betwen players in go than in other games, which in turn leads to more extreme high and low ranks.

(PS: I'm not sure whether I remember the numbers correctly - it's been several years since I read this somewhere and I have no idea where it was; if anyone has more info on this, please tell me)

I know that rating spreads more in some games than in others. However, not as much as is the case here. And you should look at the lower end as well. Where are the players with 1200 and 1300 GO ratings?

And I did NOT say that it doesn't matter. It affects the rating a lot. What I said, was that it wouldn't matter if there was no cut off value. Because of the cutoff, the difference between 1700 and 1400 is 200 points, but between 1500 and 1100 the difference is 0.

this is a great site but i have problems with the ranking in some of the games. i played a limited number of chess games when the opening ranking was 1200 i think and not 1500. therefore my ranking right now is way below 1500. same with some other games.

too bad that this chart does not calculate with the MOLG results

but otherwise, excellent job

also, go players are overrepresented at the top of your rankings. anyway, i also should play some ranked games in chess and hex to improve my tasuki ranking :-)

I didn't say you said it didn't matter ;-)

But seriously - I'd like to set it to what it is set “internally” on littlegolem.

And while I think it's likely to be 20kyu = 1500, I'm not sure. I'll use my connections in Slovakia to try to get in contact with Richard and ask him :)

The different starting rating for some chess players (or some hex19 players) is unfortunate, but I really can't do much about it. But if you play a lot of games, it will eventually even out :-)

As for go players being overrepresented at the top… just look at Ray Garrison. :)

And the go players below him all have several other games they are good at (sometimes even really good at).

Just compare the levels of the rating tournaments. In other games, level 7 = 1400-1599 rating points. In go, level 7 = 19.0-22.9 kyu. So 1500 rating points corresponds to 20.9 kyu or thereabout.

Actually there has been a single level 6 tournament in go on little golem, and all players started with 22.9 kyu. I don't if that means that my numbers were incorrect or if the ratings don't go any lower.

Hi, tasuki,

Thank you for creating your chart and the Monster ratings. Nice job!

I just gained 3,000 points by starting a Reversi10 game and an Einstein nicht! game after I saw this message. Creation of these ratings, indeed, will encourage LG players to become more active (or addictive) in playing games, and in playing more varieties of games. Wonderful.

excellent job, tasuki.

In th emOnster tournament, however, go games count 1/3, hex and reversi count 1/2, and all other games count normally.

Perhaps you can change your calculations to match up or better have a second table where goMean=average(go19,go13,go9), hexMean=average(hex13,hex19), etc. (if a rating is not available, e.g. if a player plays hex13 and not hex19, use 1500 instead).

Tim, if you have a rating R > 1500 in a game, the contribution to the Monster rating is R - 1500, not R.

Looking at the top 50 players, and inserting 1500 where the rating does not exist or is below 1500:

Average GO ratings: 2180

Average for all other games: 1597

I STILL believe 1 Dan = 2000 is a FAR better translation! This would still give a higher average GO rating than ratings for other games (1760), but that's natural, because as there are three GO games, good GO players will be overrepresented in the top 50.

Then it's about time to start learning Go, Marius… Give it a chance!:)

19th place it's fine, I learned 3 or 4 games only for the Monster Tournament :)

Tasmanian Devil, you are right. I just realized this fact after Klaashaas corrected me. :) And I agree with Klaashaas – Marius, give Go a chance.

Also, who coined the name, Monster? quite imaginative. :)

In my opinion the influence of go is much to strong. Look at the rating. You can be weak in any game you want and still have chances to reach top 10, but being weak in go is a killer.

Instead of computing the average for go, hex and reversi – as ypercube suggested – you could take also the maximum. So a good player who only playes one variant isn't penalized.

Right, kitaktus, nice thought.

And Tim, thnx. The title Monster of LittleGolem is an (yper)pun on the Master of Littlegolem title which was first used by klaashaas or Taral.

Thank you for all your interesting suggestions!

ypercube: Taking the average for go, hex and reversi seems like a very good idea. When I get the time, I will at least try adding it as another column and see where it leads.

Marius: I'd like to keep it synchronised with LittleGolem's internal ratings. I increased it to 20kyu=1500 based on richyfourtytwo's comment. Setting it to anything arbitrary will make people unhappy.

kitaktus: ibteresting idea as well, but I don't really want to only take into account the maximum, because that would be against the spirit of my ratings - it wouldn't encourage people to play more different games.

And to everyone saying how it is impossible to have good monster rating without being good at go…

Just look who is at the top! Roy doesn't have a very impressive go rating, yet he has clearly the most impressive Monster rating.

may suggest another way of calculating it? a compeltely different one :)

instead of a kind of average of the ratings, maybe it would be better to make an average of percentage respect the best rated player of each game.

If i have 1900 points in a game where the best player (Mr X) is rated 2000, i have a 95% in that game, whereas Mr.X would have a 100%. An average of these percentages would be sligthly more meaningful, i think :)

That's an excellent idea, Gregorio!

It's certainly the most objective one so far. But it would be kind of more difficult to implement and maintain the ratings… So… if I ever get the free time… :-)

well, having the rating of everyone, your skript just have to go to the list of players page and grab the topmost (mmmmm, a page that now throws an apache error, aaaargh).

Anyway, it's just one additional parsing for each game. But i'm not the one who must implementing, so let's hope you find some more spare time ;)

Even with Gregorios suggestion we need a sensible translation from GO ratings to ordinary ratings. Also, it will be greatly inflenced by single excellent players in certain games. I must say I prefer the original suggestion - but GO RATINGS MUST BE TRANSLATED DIFFERENTLY! I will explain why:

As stated earlier: For the top 50 players on the MONSTER list, the average GO ratings are 2180, whereas average ratings in other games are 1597. With 1 Dan = 2000, the average GO rating would still be high (1760). This should be more than enough proof that the current translation is wrong, and that 1D=2000 is a much better estimate.

Richyfourtytwo states that we start with 20k in GO and 1500 in other games. That is wrong. We start with a self-proclamed rating between 20k and 1k in GO, and 1500 in other games (in chess, we used to start with a self-proclaimed rating between 1000 and 2000). Thus, all we can say from this is that 1500 translates to something between 20k and 1k.

Also, GO players will (obviously) give themselves a higher rating than 20k - probably close to 1k. These are the players who play the most games (there are obviously exceptions, but still). Thus, most games are played between players with a much higher starting rating than 20k.

Look at chess: There, one could give oneself a rating between 1000 and 2000. If we were to translate this the same way you do for GO, we would say that a Chess rating of 1000 corresponds to a rating of 1500 in other games. But look at the chess ratings - they are very similarly distributed to that of other games as it is! Obviously, for the same reasons I have stated for GO.

Some may claim that good GO players should have a higher rating than a good player in other games. Possibly true to some extent, but definitley not for GO9! Hex19, for example, is far more complex than GO9, and should also distinguish more between good and bad players than GO9.

Why does this matter? Well, GO players get far more points than they should this way. Compared to what I believe is a sensible translation, good GO players get 1500 points more than they should have, compared to poor GO players. That is more points than many players have in all other games combined!

Why is 1D=2000 a good translation? Well, primarily because you get rating distributions similar to other games. The top players then get around 2300 rating, which seems natural. Also, this means putting 1500=10k, which is the median start rating (right in the middle of 20k and 1k), but this is to me less important.

One can also see that the current translation is bad when looking at the low end of the GO players - you'll hardly find a player with ratings below 1400!

Just because people who hardly play GO start with 20k, does not mean AT ALL that this corresponds to 1500 rating. Look at what people who DO play LOTS of GO games start with. They start with ratings from 10k to 1k.

I know that this rating is “just for fun”, but I really like the idea. However, it is only meaningful if one use a sensible translation between GO ratings and other ratings, so to me, now it makes no sense at all.

As for “Ray is still on top, so GO is not that important”: Please. Ray is ONE person - he's the MONSTER! This only means that DESPITE the heavy dependence on GO games, Ray is so great at most other games that he still manages to come out on top. That says a lot about Ray, but not much about the system.

Whether GO, Hex and Reversi should be weighted like they are in the 2nd Monstership, that's another issue. But if the rating is to have a “Monster” relation, that might be a good thing. This is not that important to me, although it might be if these ratings are to be used as seeding in a later Monstership.

So, I ask again: Please, change the translation between GO ratings and ordinary ratings, so this “Monster rating” actually does have a little meaning.

OK, just one more thing: Why do I even make these comments?

Well, it's because I think you had a great idea, and that you made a very nice site. It's initiative like this that makes this site my favourite web site, and I really appreciate it. So I'd like this initiative to become the great thing it should be, because, at least to me, this seemingly small detail makes a potentially great idea nearly worthless.

I think that it is obvious that Go is weighted very heavily in this formula. Just look at the top many several players and you will see that most of them are very good at Go. It will not matter too much if 19kyu is 1500 or 10 kyu is 1500, the good Go players will still be near the top, simply because the good Go players get three good ratings whereas the good Dvonn players (for example) get only one good rating figured into their overall rating. Well perhaps this is fitting, as this site was originally a “go” site, but I agree with ypercube that perhaps ratings should be calculated using weights. When I formulated the average ratings for the Monster2 tournament, I first calculated a players “go” rating, “hex” rating and “reversi” rating and then I averaged a players rating based on 16 game types (counting only one Go, one Hex, and one Reversi).

Oh, and just a word in my defence about my go “abilities” I admit that I am not a top dan player, not even near. But I started out at LG in Sept 2005 at 19kyu in all three Go variations and I have worked my way up to 12kyu since then, with a 59% winning percentage. So I am not a top dan player, but I am also no patzer!

(ah, good Dvonn players.. now I'm biting;) )

When you start playing Go, you get a kyu of 20.9. I think this should be set to 1500. (and the increasing steps also translated to 16 points for a win against an even matched opponent, to a max of 32; but maybe a counter argument could be that a go19 game is much bigger than other games, so it would be reasonable that it earns more points)

Although I'm not against three Go rating (they are more or less different disciplines), having an average or max is not a bad idea to capture the problem, that some players have high initial go ratings just because they have set them to that value. There are a lot of players who are playing mainly just one go type, but also have high ratings of the other two go types. Sometimes only with just a few games and nevertheless a translated rating of more than 2000 points.

When most of the played games on this site where go games, I think there was no problem, but there are e.g. also a same amount of connect6 games.

Quake: If it really was true that every player started with 20.9 kyu, it would definitely and undoubtably be a correct translation to set 20.9 kyu = 1500. However, as I pointed out in my far too long post above, this is not the case. People start with a self-defined rating between 20.9 and 1 kyu, which means that 1500 is somewhere in this interval. Those who start with 20.9, are mainly people who play no or very few GO games, which means that most GO games are played between players with a much higher start rating.

Ray: Yes, it's obvious that GO is weighted too heavily. And, as I pointed out in my above post, it DOES matter much if 20 kyu or 10 kyu is translated to 1500. Let's just compare four different systems, and look at players with 20k, 10k, and 1 dan ratings in all three GO games, and see how many points they get in total for their GO games in each system (the 20 kyu player gets 0 in each system, so let's just look at the other two):

A) Count all three GO games, 20kyu=1500

10kyu: 1500

1 dan: 3000

B) Count all three GO games, 10kyu=1500

10kyu: 0

1 dan: 1500

C) Average all games, 20kyu=1500

10kyu: 500

1 dan: 1000

D) Average all games, 10kyu=1500

10kyu: 0

1 dan: 500

I'd personally prefer system D, but can see why someone would like B as well. As you can see, when comparing systems B and C, 10kyu players gets more points in C than B, whereas the opposite is true for 1 dan players. Since there are more 10 kyu players than 1 dan players, I think one might assume that the translation is even more important than whether or not one counts all GO games, although, as I said, I would prefer system D.

Is it still the case for a new player to start with a self-defined rating or was it only something that was possible in the past? I can't remember that I could set my initial rating by myself. Maybe I've just forgotten that I had an opportunity then.

Why is it not possible to set 20.9 kyu to 1500? The possibility to self define your go rating on a higher rating (enhance experience from outside this site) can then be seen as for example starting with a dvonn rating of 1800.

Strange that it is only possible for go and chess. There are a lot of experienced new players of other games on this site who have to make their way to the top just by playing a lot of games.

Only Go and Chess have well-established ratings systems in general use.

The biggest problem is triple-counting Go. That makes what Marius is correctly pointing out triply bad, but there would be a problem even if Marius's objection is met. IMO, your Go rating should be the best of your three board-size Go ratings and your Hex rating should be the better of your two board-size Hex ratings.

People who know more than I should say whether Connect6 and LG's version of Go Moku as similar enough to be combined into one rating, or are more like Hex and TwixtPP, which are properly (IMO) counted separately.

Anyone with a poor go rating can stop playing with their current nick, register a new nick as 1 kyu and then embark on catching up with their old rating in the other games. This will make the comparison of go ratings meaningless and pollute the ratings in the other games. How to deal with this problem?

Setting a minimum number of played games, maybe?

Just relax, people… no need to fight against go so much :)

(after all, go is (obviously) the best of all the games)

So I changed it to 10kyu = 1500, but I think that's discriminating against go a bit.

The fact that my twixt rating is very close to my go19 rating and better than my go13 and go9 rating is just laughable. A long time ago, I invested substantial amount of time to studying go, while I never really studied twixt. I could talk about go strategy for dozens of hours while I could talk about twixt strategy for about 10 minutes. So I think my go rating should be much much higher than my twixt rating. Well, I consider this 10kyu = 1500 to be compensation for the fact that there are three different flavours of go on LG :)

As for cheating… there are easier and way more effective ways of cheating than “register a new nick as 1 kyu and then embark on catching up with their old rating in the other games” :]

I already explained why I'm not going to only take maximum go rating into account. And the more I think about it, the more I dislike averages as well.

PS: If go players feel they are discriminated against, please say so (I can always change it back if there are enough supporters :-)

wow, what difference! I'm up from place 249 to 68!

I feel discriminated :) I have also played a lot (lot, lot) of go (but here I only play 9x9) and 10k -> 1500 is laughable. I would put it around 15k, at least. Anyway, I am not a “monster” as I only play a few games heh.

In my opinion, a meaningful Monster Rating (MR) will be:

MR = (w1*g1 + w2*g2 + w3*g3 + … + wn*gn) / n,

where g(i) is our currently-calculated rating for a certain game type, and w(i) is a weighting factor.

Determination of w(i) should be related to the gaming time consumed by a typical game. For example, perhaps one month is consumed by a standard Hex19 game, whereas 3 days are consumed by a standard Four-In-A-Row game. If we use different weighting factors for both game types, MR will be, indeed, more meaningful, I think.

Ruben: I have never played GO outside of Little Golem, and consider myself a very, very poor GO player. My current rating in GO9 (which is the only one I play) is 13.8 kyu.

Tim: Why would a game that takes long time be more important than one that takes a short time? I might understand it if we were comparing the number of games played, as it is obviously easier to play many short games than many long games, but we are not. We are comparing ratings/skills in the different games. To me, all games should count the same. The only sensible weigths, as I see it, is to either count all games equally, or to weight GO, Hex and Reversi with 1/3, 1/2 and 1/2, as they have several board sizes, but otherwise the same rules (which is what we do in the 2nd Monster).

Why should Go or Hex be more important than Reversi or Gomoku? It just becomes a matter of taste. Why should someones favourite game be more important than another persons favourite game? It simply makes no sense to me. And TIME? what if we were to include tic-tac-toe, but did like in Einstein - used several games for a match? Let's say 100 games in a match? Then it would probably be the longest game of all. Should it have the highest weight? Or you could include Hex 200x200. Weighting by time, it would probably outweigh all other games combined. Why would we want to do that?

Tasuki: Thanks for the change! Now the rating makes some sense to me, and would have been a good basis for seeding in the 1st Monster. I would, just like Ray, have preferred weighting Go, Hex and Reversi too, but at least now it's much better than it was. Comparing ratings in different games like this makes really no sense (unless used as a seeding for a Monster tournament or similar), but it sure is FUN with a “total” rating. If it were an “official” rating, I'd definitely lobby more to get the weights for GO, Hex and Reversi, but since it's not, I should probably stop babbling soon…

OK, all human beings born on earth are equal. If we do abide by this ideal, then we must be also fair by evaluating their achievements starting from the very moment when the baby lands on the delivery table.

But we do not seem doing that now. Hmmm, John has too many cousins. He gets too much help from his cousins to gain his today's achievement. So, let us count John's achievement starting from his senior year in high school only. What about his rough time during his middle school days when he had to get up early in the morning to delivery newspapers? Nah, we do not count that. :)

Before we all debate further, we must first draft up a clear objective of the Monstership (if it was already drafted up, I apologize). Is it to promote/reward/encourage players' devotion to:

(1) strictly diversities of game types? (If so, then a grade A in a clay-pot

making short course should weigh the same as a grade A in a calculus

course)

(2) playing skill?

(3) LG gaming time?

(4) cultivating the logical thinking abilities in general, thus our life is

further enriched? (If so, weighing Hex19 and four-in-a-row the same would

be inappropriate)

(5) ??

Marius, I have been playing go for about 6 years. First KGS, real life and then here, as lack of time prevented me from the other two. I usually play very quickly, as I don't want to be more than 10 minutes or so playing. As I do with almost all other games here. In real life I was 14 kyu last time I entered a tournament, if I play again I'll do it as 11-12. Again, 1500 for 10k I think is underrated (at least).

According to the ratings, my go is worse than my amazons, dots and streetsoccer. So, I guess I'm hopeless and should stop investing time in go. In stead, I should consider making a career in Twixt, since I've never devoted any time to it, and I'm almost a better twixt player than go player.

(It's sooo obvious that 150010kyu is wrong. I used to be a reversi player. I know what it takes to reach 1900 points at reversi. If I compare my go skill with my reversi skill, there is no way that I'm 200pts weaker (24% winning perc.) )

To Klaashaas:

If you consider becoming a professional Twixt player, I will consider sponsoring you. :) How much, 150K Euros a year?

I do understand that some people may be red-eyed about the existence of 3 variants of Go. The following opinion is purely my own:

Go9x9 is basically the end game of Go19x19. So, if Richard takes Go9x9 off the site, I will not mind at all. On the other hand, some novice players may find it beneficial to learn games on larger boards later.

Go13x13 is quite different from Go19x19. I personally will NOT play Go13x13 games at all because playing them confuses my global strategies for Go19x19. For this reason, if Richard takes Go13x13 off the site, I do not mind at all.

Whenever a friend asks me for an advice as how to improve Go playing skill, I like to answer, “Do not play Go13x13.”

For learning diversities of games, Go9x9 and Go13x13 are valuable in their own right, however.

Tim, I want to become s professional Hex player… :D

Gregorio,

Your wish is granted, subject to the following condition:

Defeat all top LG Hex players with two handicap stones given to them by the end of 2008. :) I am sure you can achieve this goal if you are so determined.

Go on Gregorio, go on! You can start giving me two handicap stones :)

Tim, don't suggest Richard to take out Go9x9! I like to play it here, as a 19x19 game takes quite a long time and I am a very poor tactician. Sure a lot of people here play 9x9 also for fun (it's more quickly enjoyable than 19x19, although with less possibilities)

@tasuki

Could you add country statistics as well? Doesn't seem too difficult. If you feel like it and if you have the time to do it, that would be really cool!! :D

I take the challenge :)

Ruben, I did not suggest anything. :) LG can have 100 variants of Go, and I still will not complain.

Gregorio, you like to take the challenge? very well. Read the following story first. :)

Once upon a time, a Hex student went to visit a Hex saint.

“Sir, I want to become a Hex pro. Could you take me?” the pupil asked sincerely.

“OK, I'll take you provided that you can only utter two words during a period of 10 years. And do so near the end of the period. Are you able to do that?”

The pupil nodded his head firmly, and so the saint accepted him.

Time flies like an arrow. After 10 years, the teacher summoned the pupil over,

“You may speak up now.”

“Food cold.”

“Very well. You have improved Hex skill. Go back to study some more.”

Ten more years elapsed. The saint summoned the pupil over, again,

“You may speak up now.”

“Bed hard.”

“Very well. You have further improved. Now go back to study some more. Study those games played by Nie_wiesz and Bush, for example.”

Ten more years quickly elapsed. Seeing the pupil in front of him, the saint asked,

“So, what do you have to say this time?”

“I quit!”

:D

Tim, very discorageous… it will not mine my determination :P

and the pupil had 30 years!!

I think that Go has been oversimplified at 10kyu=1500. For example, I started at 19kyu and have won about 59% of my games since then, but that only brings me up to around 12kyu and a rating under 1400. I am clearly better than 1400 strength in Go!! I am currently ranked at #249 out of 685 Go players, easily in the top half, which also suggests I should be solidly over 1500. Also, look at #2, Tim Shih. At an outstanding 6.7dan he only equates to 2240??? He should be more like 2500! I might suggest something in between. This is the conversion table that I created and used when I seeded the players into the monster2 tournament (it may not be ideal either, but I think it is more accurate):

3 dan or stronger 2400

2 dan 2350

1 dan 2300

1 kyu 2250

2 kyu 2200

3 kyu 2150

4 kyu 2100

5 kyu 2050

6 kyu 2000

7 kyu 1950

8 kyu 1900

9 kyu 1850

10 kyu 1800

11 kyu 1750

12 kyu 1700

13 kyu 1650

14 kyu 1600

15 kyu 1550

16 kyu 1500

17 kyu or weaker, 1450

Ray, are you suggesting that this conversion table be adopted for all the three variants of Go? or just Go19? Thanks for your dedication of creating this table.

And it is, indeed, impressive that you advanced to 12 kyu in such a short period of time. If you show us a photo of yours, I expect to see two heads sitting on your shoulders. :)

two heads? only? He is the Monster!

Maybe he also has three arms?

Sure, it's obvious that the current go rating is oversimplifying go.

I thought it was just a compensation to the domination of go in the monster rating. Ok, the contribution of go should be substantial (maybe more than other games, but that is reached by having three go games), but I think is was too great in the initial monster table of tasuki. All we want is a nice representation of the total achievements reached at littlegolem over all games.

The problem is not having three go games. I think the case that many play mainly one go game, but have three high go ratings (two of them just set to the level achieved at the first) was overdominating go in the first table. Although the first go ratings were also too high in my opinion. Ratings going up to 2700. I think such a rating is nearly impossible to reach in other games. (for example chess or hex, also complex games)

… 2700. I think such a rating is nearly impossible to reach in other games. (for example chess or hex, also complex games)

This only means that those games are less complex than Go. Seems a plausible explanation for me.

I don't hear Einstein players complain that the top twixt ratings are too high, because they can't reach such ratings in their game…

I am not sure about the “complexity argument”. But i'm pretty sure there is a long tradition on teaching/learning go, and most of people who like go has taken lessons, made problems and/or read books. That makes that go ratings are far more expanded than those in hex, for example.

Furthermore, my experience says that Go is less prone to “surprises”, and that's why we don't use swiss system in go, but McMahon. Maybe that's another reason why go ratings expand with time.

Anyway, those paragraphs were not intended as an argument nor counter-argument in this discussion :)

yours,

Gregorio

OK, I believe most of us agree that comparing ratings in different games is really difficult, and in many ways makes no sense. However, since we decide to do this, I believe that most of us agree that since everyone starts with 1500 rating in each game (except GO), ratings should be compared directly (1700 ratings in Einstein compare to 1700 ratings in Hex).

But in GO we don't start with 1500 rating. If everyone had started with the same rating, say, 20 kyu, then I suppose we could have agreed to compare 20 kyu to 1500. However, since we DON'T all start with the same rating, that is not possible. An easy way to check out what the translation should be, is to look at the average ratings of all GO players, and compare them to the average ratings of the other games (which are close to 1500). The best way, however, would be to cronologically sort all GO games ever played here, and give all players a start rating of 1500, then go through all the games and find out what the current rating of each player should be. That's a bit of work, but since this discussion seems to attract a lot of interrest, I think I'll give it a try - after Easter. Just for fun, and to see what translation would have been “correct”. I have some predictions, however:

- Players who started with a 20 kyu rating will get a higher rating than they have now

- Players who started with a 1 kyu rating will get a lower rating than they have now

- Players who have played lots of games will have a smaller difference between their “old” and “new” rating than people who have played few games

- The 1500 rating will be somewhere between 15 kyu and 8 kyu

The three first might be possible to prove. The last one is just a guess.

And Klaashaas, if anyone ever gets an Einstein rating above 2500, I will definitely believe they are cheating. I think that even with perfect play in every game, one could not reach such a rating, due to the stochastic nature of the game and the small pool of players.

Tim Shih, such a long joke, and then you still miss the punch line. “I quit” by the pupil is followed by the master saying “I'm not surprised. You complained for the last 30 years!”

Ahhhhh, Abigail, I did miss the punchline!! Thanks. So, Marius The Expert, how do we translate one's rating in telling jokes when the joke teller has even missed the punch line herself/himself? 1300? :)

1000 ;)

Tweak - “… You did nothing but complain for the last 30 years” ?

It seems that the majority agrees that 10kyu = 1500 is not putting enough of value on go. So I decided to put it on 14kyu = 1500 (and it should stay this way at least a little git closer, I actually think we might be (slowly) approaching a consensus :). This is still intentionally a bit lower than what I think is appropriate for go, but that's to compensate for the fact that there are three flavours of go here.

Ray: I see you have a gap of 50 points between 1kyu and 1dan… as far as I can judge from some LG graphs, the difference is in fact 5 points (it goes like: 1.3k, 1.2k, 1.1k, 1.0k, 1.0d, 1.1d, …).

Robin: country statistics, mmm… do you mean like a flag next to a player's name or some kind of searching by country or something else?

I'd like to create customizable ratings - ie. you choose which games to include and what weights to put on them, but now I really have no time for that at all (I'm going skiing for a week, then I'll have catch up at work and then… who knows ;-)

I meant to write “a little bit closer”, of course…

(why do I never notice typos when rereading the post and then see them 2 seconds after submitting?)

THe compensation of having three flavors does me no good, as I'm a little below “1500” in all 3. Nonetheless, I think my 15k Go rating reflects more understanding and strength than my 1600-1700 Hex13 and Amazon ratings do, though not as much as my 1700s Chess rating does.

To clarify, the go conversion chart I gave above I had worked out last fall in order to seed the players into Monster2 (I am the tournament director). For Monster2, Go games are weighted and count only 1/3 and Hex and Reversi games count only 1/2. Therefore, I averaged players ratings beforing converting to a rating. I never got any feedback on my conversion table at the time, so I just went ahead and used that. However, for the Monster2 finals, I may tweak the chart a bit. As for the gap between 1kyu and 1dan, I was very unsure about how that gap actually worked. I thought it might aproach 0 from both ends, I never even considered that it jumped from 1kyu to 1dan (skipping .9kyu, .8kyu….0…., .8dan, .9dan), I will adjust my table accordingly for the next round of games (thanks tasuki!)

P.S., tasuki, I think 14kyu=1500 is a good value

Another approach to Go ratings on LG would be to simulate what would have happened had Go used the same start-at-1500 chess-style ratings as the other games. While the results of every game ever played on LG are apparently available online, to implement this suggestion, you'd also want to know the order in which the games ended, and AFAIK that can only be approximated from the online records.

In any event, if you had those simulated ratings, you could make a scatter plot of them vs. the existing Kyu/Dan ratings and see if there isn't a natural linear relationship.

Ray: thanks for sharing the opinion that 14kyu=1500 is good :)

MarleysGhos: That could be useful, but it would be hundred times more difficult to implement than the current (simple) system. (You know, sometimes I like to pretend I have a life too ;)

Here's another, slightly easier, approach: For each game, find the mean and standard deviation of the ratings of players meeting a criterion (all who have ever played, all who have played recently, all who have played more than N times, whatever). If there isn't too much scatter in those values among the different games, then it makes sense to assign rating points to the Kyu/Dan values such that the resulting mean and standard deviation are close to what they are for the other games. Unlike the time-history of all game outcomes, this could be easily automated. In fact, hasn't someone already fetched the ratings of all players in all games?

Of course, if the different games have wildly different means or deviations, selecting which games to match the Go ratings to would still be an open question.

Robin: country statistics, mmm… do you mean like a flag next to a player's name or some kind of searching by country or something else?

I meant something like this.

OK, for GO9, I have now gone through every game ever played, and gave all players a start rating of 1500. I have then calculated the current rating for all players. Looking at the top of the “monster rating” table, here are some examples (monster rating first, then my calculated rating). I start with players who started on LG with a high rating:

Bernhard Herwig: 2075 - 2035

Tasuki: 2210 - 2108

Xavier Gubas: 2260 - 2126

Bela Nagy: 2145 - 1968

Nosferatu: 1735 - 1646

Then players who started with a low rating:

Ray Garrison: 1575 - 1665

Klaashaas: 1880 - 1853

PAKO: 1290 - 1577

Marius Halsor: 1510 - 1659

As I predicted, players with a high start rating got a lower rating this way, and players with a low start rating got a higher rating this way (with an exception for Klaashaas - possibly because he has played very many games, or possibly because his games have mainly been against players who had a high start rating).

I do NOT suggest you use this method, as it is not intuitive for most players, and is also a bit time consuming. However, I think one can see from this experiment that the high ranked GO players still get too high score (while low ranked players get too low score). Some might argue that this means we now have the “right” translation, as the difference for high and low ranked players are approximately the same. However, as only ratings above 1500 are counted, it is the rating of high ranked players that is important. I therefore think that the translation still is a bit off (maybe 12kyu=1500 is better?).

Anyway, it's not off by more than a 100 points or so. The fact that there are three GO games (and two Reversi/Hex games) is much more important now, than what I see as an error in the rating translation.

Oh, and I would have done this for GO19, but was not sure how rating changes are calculated for MC (handicapped games). But the principle is just the same, and the rating changes will be similar.

80 lone 1890 2130 2130 2130

If you have a look at this player: some while ago he set hisself as 1.4kyu in all 3 go games. He only played friendly games and never 'proved' his rating. IS there no way to exclude such players as he never participated in any tournament ever (but is 80th in the Monster Rating…)

There was a slight error in the previous calculation (ongoing games got a weird value), but numbers are similar. I'll post them for completeness:

Bernhard Herwig: 2075 - 2148

Tasuki: 2210 - 2108

Xavier Gubas: 2260 - 2234

Bela Nagy: 2145 - 1968

Nosferatu: 1735 - 1645

---–

Ray Garrison: 1575 - 1725

Klaashaas: 1880 - 1915

PAKO: 1290 - 1579

Marius Halsor: 1510 - 1697

With this corrected, the fit with 14kyu=1500 is better than I thought before noticing this error. I have not looked at more players than these nine so far, but looking at this population, I think the current translation factor of 14kyu=1500 is OK.

i still do not quite understand why results and rankings the game of go are so much overrepresented. why not calculate with go9, go13 and go19 as one game with one average ranking for each player? why not use the same for hex13 and hex19 as well as for reversi8 and reversi10?

if someone is an excellent player in amazons, gomoku, connect6 or streetsoccer and above verge in all others then that person is lower ranked than some go players who have not even tested themselves in any other games.

why is this issue not discussed seriously?

otherwise congrats tasuki, excellent site

As has been said, go19, go13 and go9 are different games. So are hex13 and hex19 (and I have every reason to suppose that so is reversi10 and reversi-whatever).

You could also argue that draughts and mancala games are horribly underestimated in my ratings ;-)

As for people setting their go rating and not playing… well… that is a problem. It's a much bigger problem than the difference between ratings counted from scratch and ratings counted from some artificial starting value. It's also a problem that is not easy to solve. I believe that any “solution” of this problem will make many people angry. Taking into account the number of rated games might be a solution, but I'd have to set it to some kind of arbitrary value anyway.

And as for go players being overrepresented at the top - Nao is the best “go-only” player, currently ranked 36. I think that's rather reasonable.

And I promise that when I get the time, I'll implement customizable ratings - you set the cutoff value and the weight for each game, so everyone will create their own rating and will be satisfied. :-)

tasuki, you have every right to be biased, since you have created an excellent site that makes people want to try themselves out in games they otherwise would not play. but.

but to claim is that go, go13 and go19 (or the hexes and reversis) are completely different games is ridiculous.

just look at the monster rankings. in the top 20 there are only a handful of players who would not double or triple their points only because they are good at go (hex or reversi). such all-round players are rare: ray garrison, miuek, t-devil, for example.

but there any many more players who are mediocre besides their top-heavy go performance: xaver gubas and bela nagy are prime examples. beyond the top 20 DZ, gambatte, 12, sorin gherman have a high monster ranking also only due to their go performance. so it is not just nao

Bloke, you have played only a little go here (have played more anywhere?). But I think you have played enought, to at least agree with tasuki with 9 and 19go, aren't they completely different games? If you don't, play more games. About the hexes and reversis, I can't tell, I've only played 13x13 hex, and no reversi.

Ruben, what is “different games” is simply a question of definition. In this context, I prefer to consider games with identical rules, but with different board sizes, to be different games. However, I know very well that there are huge differences between playing Hex13 and Hex19. However, The difference between Hex13 and StreetSoccer is far, far bigger. Again, it's a matter of definition.

Correction: “…but with different board sizes, to NOT be different games.“. Sorry.

Heh Marius you fooled me with your first message. Sure, the difference between let's say, SS and Go9 are bigger than Go9 and Go19, but the skills you use when playing Go19 are not the same you use when you play Go9 (local tactics vs global strategy, things like that).

bloke: Xaver has over 1100 points (that's about a third of his total points) from those games he's “mediocre” at.

I wonder, why is no one complaining that street soccer is included too? It is a completely random game, so the ratings are obviously distorting the monster rating

And once again - as soon as I have the time, I'll make it possible for people to make their own custom monster ratings, based on the criteria they choose. :)

Looking forward to the custom site, tasuki. You're doing a great job! Anyway, I must protest that street soccer is “a completely random game”. Sure, chance plays a part - a significant part, even. But there is still skill involved. Stochastic games can be even more complex than other games, as you have to compute probability distributions rather than “just” a game tree. However, due to the random element, rating differences will likely be smaller in random games (SS and Einstein) than entirely deterministic games (at least as long as the deterministic games are sufficiently complex - in Tic Tac Toe, every game would end in a draw, of course).

Ruben: Sure, there are differences between Go9 and Go19 - noone disputes that. But like I said, what constitutes a “different game”, is simply a matter of definition. There are many reasons (good ones, in my opinion) why games with identical rules, but different board sizes, should NOT be considered different games, but opinions differ on this matter.

Oh, and sorry for that typo again…

I kind of overlooked the fact that littlegolem removed from my post… It should have been:

I wonder, why is no one complaining that street soccer is included too? It is a completely random game, so the ratings are obviously distorting the monster rating

I'm sorry for the inconvenience and I hope it's clearer now :)

It seems so obvious to me: Every strong Go player is strong at all the three sizes of Go, even if the games are quite different. Every Go novice is weak at all three. So of course in Tasukis rating Go has weight 3 and the honorable game of street soccer has weight 1.

tasuki: I bet that playing streetsoccer if difference between dices are plus minus 10, I'll defeat you 8 from 10 times. Playing with tigis you may win 1 of 10.

looser, tasuki was being ironic ;-) LG deleted is “troll” tags, but later he made them explicit :P

if in the real Monster Games go, go13 and go19 are considered versions of the same game, then why not here?

to remain on the ironic side: there is a definitely detectable “go-chauvinism” in tasuki's posts.

the result is that his monster rating calculation remains excessively biased towards go players and favors them – you cannot deny that.

In the first Monster, the 3 go games were considered different.

…and in the 2nd Monster, they are NOT considered different.

unfortunately :P

fortunately… :]

in the 2nd MOLG they are NOT considered different for a very obvious reason, i suppose. the reason why i have not signed up for each of the MOLG tournaments is my non-existent go game. but i like the new rules so i will sign up for MOLG3.

Aren't four in a row, gomoku and connect6 different versions of the same game also?

pop

pop

I have to thank tasuki for the excellent page: I started playing all sorts of new games, and I was very flattered to be on the 0st page (it is really the first but called zero). I was surprised how easy it has been to move up from position 45 to 28. I don't think I'll come much higher than 20 though being a bit over rated in Hex and because of the quality of the opponents up there.

i always thought it's 0th :)

So, I sacrificed yesterday's evening and added the possibility to ( insert fanfare) create your own variations!

I already added two variations (the default rating is a variation for technical reasons, and the new one is “weighted” with go counting only 1/3 and hex 1/2).

New variations, opinions and bugreports are welcome. :-)

Thanks a lot, tasuki! Great work! :-)

excellent. the weighted variation is already a great improvement. it should be the default.

a bug: i cannot create a new variation even with a very simple name. the message is that i have not read the rules… what did i do wrong?

yes, great work, and i like a lot the two new variations :)

bloke: No, it shouldn't be the default… the default is the one that makes most sense :)

BTW, I created the variations so that people would finally stop arguing which variation is the best ;)

And sorry for the bug - I added a regexp test for name and forgot to test it >.I've just corrected it.

Jesus fscking christ…

Whenever a new variation is created, a new indexed column is added to the player database. So I check for people trying to create a variation with a name of already existing column, and of course I forgot to check case-insentitively.

So it happened, that when someone tried creating a variation called “GWG” (there's a possibility to sort by game, btw, no need to create a new variation for that, you ******), it wrote the data over the existing gwg column. So I'm now updating the whole database. Now, when creating a new variation, it checks for every column, so in case some idiot decides to call his variation “last_updated”, it will not (hopefully) fuck up my database.

Geez, this made me so angry… (and yes, I know it's my mistake, but I really don't have the time and energy to deal with this so please just stop breaking my stuff, okay? :-)

When I inserted my variation it removed an apostrophe.

Robin, it was a bug that even allowed you to enter variation with an apostrophe and space in the name, I have manually corrected it :-)

Great work Tasuki! People should not believe in one correct order by strength of the players on Littlegolem. I like “weighted” most, but thats just my personal taste.

I really appreciate your effort, tasuki! This is becoming a great addition to Little Golem.

I have one very small suggestion for an improvement, if you should find the time: In the “weighted” variation, new ratings for the weighted games are calculated and displayed. To me, at least, it would be preferrable to show the actual ratings, but weigh them in the total score.

That is, I'd prefer to do Score=sum(weight(i)*game(i)) rather than Score=sum(wgame(i)), where wgame(i)=weight(i)*game(i).

I created a rating (1000) but there are no names displayed.

I just wonder… why did you call it “1000”? :)

It's working now - I renamed it to “thousand”.

I also added another requirement for a variation name - it has to start with [a-zA-Z] (and I hope this finally covers all that could go wrong with variation names).

Marius, I am not sure I understand what you are saying.

Here is the row (ok, I admit I removed all the undecipherable arrays and replaced them with human-readable variables) that calculates how to display rating for each game (the ratings are saved in the database as I got them, with go being converted the way explained in the about page):

$value = round(($original_value - $variation_cutoff) * ($variation_weight / 100) + 1500);

And I am aware that this might not be intuitive way to display the numbers, if you have any better suggestion, please do share.

Well, all I was trying to say, was that I prefer that you still DISPLAY original_value, and use the weight only in CALCULATING the total score.

Marius: This is funny, your suggestion is pretty obvious (the rating variations don't affect players' ratings in individual games, whatever way they are counted), yet it never occured to me. I did this to be able to verify that the rating calculations are correct (knowing that I wrote it myself, I was actually pretty surprised to find out they are correct ;-)

And I think I'd like the displayed values to somehow relate to the rating, although I'm not sure whether my way (translating the values so that the cutoff value is 1500 again) is good.

For now, if you want to see the “real” ratings, use the default variation :)

I created a games_with_dice_1000 rating, where only EinStein and StreetSoccer ratings count, with 1000 the cut limit.

The results are ok at the Ratings column but not at the streetsoccer and einstein columns. Ratings appear to be 500 higher, although the calcualtions are right.

ypercube: Actually, they are recalculated so that 1500 remains the cutoff value (I think it makes sense to display it this way, but I might have to rethink it, since Marius already had the same complaint as you (just three posts above :-))

I'm with Marius. It's just plain odd to see your familiar steady-state rating jumping all over the shop depending on what variant you're looking at. However, all in all, it's a great site - thanks!

It seems like the updating does not work. The rating for each game is updated, but the sum is not. I've only checked the weighted variant, though, so I don't know if the others are OK.

tasuki

when u are going to refresh this application?

It's sad that the excellent feature with variations no longer work properly. I completely understand that tasuki has other and probably more important things to do than fix this, but it's sad nevertheless.

The bug is rather strange, as the ratings for each individual game is updated, yet the total rating is not. And for the “original” variation, everything works just fine. I keep copying the ratings to Excel and calculate the total ratings there, but it's definitely not a desirable solution.

Thanks Marius, I never noticed I was going down in my weighted rating :( Seemingly you've lost even more than I.

First - I'm really sorry to have left you waiting for so long.

The bug was actually fairly trivial - I didn't check the length of the variation name, and in the table containing variations I only saved first 20 characters. Of course, in the player table, there was a column with the original full length name, hence the query failed completely.

It's all working again (I hope, at least), and I promise to be more responsive and responsible next time :)

Thanks a lot for fixing this, tasuki - it's great to see everything working again! :-)

It seems that “Monster ratings” works only for players 1..16999.

Since my Player_ID is 17284, I cannot see my “Monster rating”.

tasuki, could You please fix this problem ?

Hi, I thought 17000 would last longer :)

You can add a player by id like this:

http://golem.tasuki.org/?action=update&pid=17284

Anyway, it's not a hard set limit, it's just the number of rows I decided to initially put into the database (now extended to 20000).

On a completely unrelated note: I decided not to do regular updates of the ratings, as I figured it might be a heavy load on littlegolem. Now I see that googlebot and yahoo slurp have taken care of regular updating while distributing it over longer time periods :-)

tasuki, we need an update on your Monster rating site :)

Oooooook.

Side note: I knew I shouldn't have bothered with the variations - now I had to go through all of them and guess how the creator would have dealt with havannah…

Side note #2: I didn't update the ratings (just few ppl to see whether it works), I'll leave it up to users and googlebot.

Colourful update :)

While the previous version with yellow to red tones was definitely more aesthetically pleasing, I decided to give more colours a try. Yes, it looks awful and hover doesn't work the way it used to.

But it's very easy to just look and see - blue is a beginner, green is intermediate, yellow is advanced and red is an expert.

Please let me know what you think - if this causes several people to poke their eyes out I'll revert it to the previous state :P

Nice. It reminds me of playsite colours: blue, green, yellow, orange, red if I remember well.

You could add purple for rating less than a beginner and white for better than red (expert).

I like it the new way!

Thanks

Thanks for the positive feedback :)

I started with full spectrum - purple to red. But the purple was very very prominent and it was almost impossible not to look at it. And as far as the ratings are concerned I don't really care whether someone has 1500 or 1100 - so I don't want to visually discriminate against those who have low rating :P

Just bring it back to attention. I like it.

^_

Well tasuki, only if I could bribe you somehow for several places up…

Yippy! I finally managed to reach 4th place (in the weighted variant, obviously, as that's the only one I bother to look at). That's as high as I'll ever go, I suppose, as the distance between 3rd and 4th place is bigger than between 4th and 18th. I fear I'll go down a few places soon, too.

Congrats Marius ! I am also a fan of tasuki's weighted monster rating. I still can't believe sitting as 7th. Couldn't have made it without the introduction of havannah! I expect to fall soon to a more reasonable ranking soon.

tasuki, a recent change in the site's code has caused the EinStein ratings to start dissapearing from your site!

Thanks for letting me know - I corrected it. Too lazy correction though, so it will break next time the name gets changed ^^

Richard has now recalculated all ratings, with everyone starting at 15k in GO, so I think the Monster Rating should now use 15k=1500. Also, GO ratings are set to be one common rating, so there is no need to display all three ratings any more.

Oh, and the Einstein ratings are still broken, unfortunately.

Thanks for maintaining this list, Tasuki!

Hello good people!

I made some changes on LittleGolem Monster Ratings:

First, I deleted go13 and go9. ( I am strongly opposed to the same rating for go19, go13 and go9 - they are different games!… but what can I do?). I also set go ratings to be 15k = 1500 (before it was 14k, so almost no difference).

Second, I deleted most of the user created variations… I left the few I deemed useful.

Third, EinStein name keeps switching there and back… so my regexp was failing (yes, I'm too lazy to create a robust solution). Corrected again, currently updating all (over 20000) players, should be done in an hour or two.

PS: No wonder Marius wanted me to update the ratings - he's 6th now and I fell from 4th place to 12th. Why do you think I waited with the update for 3 months? My ego is thiiiiis big and I had to undergo an extensive therapy to be able to put up with such a failure.

Thanks a lot, Tasuki! I expect that soon there will be only one rating in Hex and Reversi as well, and then the default variant and the weighted variant (which is the only one I keep checking) will be identical. Since I only care about the weighted variant, this update didn't affect me that much, but I think getting Einstein back in might have pushed me up from 6th to 5th (or from 5th to 4th, seeing as the player who is currently 4th is a known cheater).

Perhaps it helps your ego a little knowing that you are making a great site, which I, for one, really appreciate! :-)

PS: At some point, I suppose WYPS should be included too, in some way.

To aviod any misunderstandings: I meant that the player currently rated 4th in the WEIGHTED Monster ratings, formerly known as “Jamaica” and “fairplay”, is a cheater. He/she now uses the name “No1_Othello_fourinarow_player”. This is fortunately the only exception among the top rated players - in my experience, all the other top Monster-rated players are great, fair, players.

I am bumping this

I want to get in the top 100 as I feel my skills in some games are raising it should work :-)

“No1_Othello_fourinarow_player”, a proven cheater, now is on top of the Monster Ratings, which is sad.

Good news, however, that I am above 2500 rating points and within the Top40, for the first time.

Go bloke! :-)

(@Hjallti: I refreshed your rankings and you jumped from No. 127 to 110. You will be within the Top100 before soon.)

I just saw I am on 112, and I am really getting forward in some games! Thanks and good luck with your rating bloke.

(probably I am already in the top100 of the non cheaters)

You may be right: No1_Othello_fourinarow_player, FaiRPlaY, chess_game, Po_W_eR, UsEr_DaTa, and a__________________rad are proven cheaters in the Top100, and there might be others, too.

Why would my ID not show up? Seems like a zillion people get listed, but when I search for my ID its not found (I tried 'Aganju', '21003', and all combinations of upper/lowercase, and even my old nick 'BillBigfoot')

Do you have to be playing for some time? Or what?

apparently: 395*50=19970 there are less than 20000 players listed and there are 20192 playing.

It seems the last player in its database is Paulz http://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/info/player.jsp?plid=20795…

Actually, the database doesn't update automatically (it would create unnecessary pressure on littlegolem). It updates when someone visits the update link (google helps with this :-)

And when you try to update someone who isn't in the database yet, it creates a new entry. I added Aganju by visiting the url: http://golem.tasuki.org/?action=update&pid=21003

Yes, I know, there could be explanation on the site and an easy, clickable way of doing this… but I thought no one would notice ;P

is there a reason why WYPS is not in there? It would boost my rating….

Yes, the reason is that I'm lazy and didn't notice (yesIknowthatsoundslikeaverysillyexcuse).

I'll try to add WYPS tomorrow, possibly the day after.

If I fail to do that, feel free to throw snowballs at me.

snowballs? what's that? It has 20°C outside (68 F) :-) [yes I love to rub in why I moved to Florida]

tasuki, I'm thankful you did anything at all! I often catch myself doing that, and many others too: it's so easy to complain about what could have been done, but we should always remember that something was done already, and it wasn't done by us.

20°C is nice (thanks for using Celsius first ^^), but as for me, I like snow every now and then :)

I added WYPS to the table - enjoy!

And I might have incidentally deleted a few well-known cheaters from the database ;)

Including WYPS is a welcome move. It catapulted me into the Top30. Thanks! :-)

Would you incidentally also take care of EcNaL and Po_W_eR who are also well-known members of the Jamaica Clan? :-)

Not just those two, I saw about half a dozen of them still on the page. RoRoRo thinks the Jamaica Posse contains the following:

JamaicaPosse members# 17304YeAr2010, No1_Othello_fourinarow_linesof# 17583FaiRPlaY, Jamaica, Never_ending, fAiRpLaY, vayamos# 17305a__________________rad# 17306Ye_L_o# 17396UsEr_DaTa# 19008EcNaL, chess_game# 17578v_a_y_a_m_o_s# 17582va_yam_os# 17592aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa# 19873mk5# 18194mrjekyllxxxdrhyde# 18239Po_W_eR# 17631spelme# 17632jimmmmy# 17633bigmac

Great job, Tasuki! Very nice that you keep the Monster Rating alive. I wonder if Richard soon will make just one rating for Hex and Reversi, like he did with GO - not that it matters much, I just use the “Weighted” variant anyway :-)

YeAr2010 got reincluded in the database, so I decided to implement a simple but effective banning system :)

So far, the winners are: 17304, 17305, 17306, 17396, 17583 and 19008. I'm not sure why FatPhil thinks the others on his list cheat as well, so I left them alone, for the time being.

Before I make comments I regret (bullcrap, I love flaming the heck out of people) regarding your awareness of the behaviour of the others, almost all of which have had their suspicious behaviour explicitly mentioned on the fora in the last year, quite how much research did you actually do into the games and results of the other players in order to feel confident that you could ignore the above claims?

If you give an answer that's too low, then you'll get flamed for not doing your research.

If you give an answer that's too high, then you'll get flamed for being utterly ineffectual at such research.

So chose your answer wisely. Good luck.

I didn't do much research, the only info I have is “RoRoRo thinks the Jamaica Posse contains the following” and a list of ids. I don't think RoRoRo really cares, but if it goes ahead and explains why it thinks so, I will be very grateful.

Accusing spelme – who has an amazing rating of 40 points – of cheating seems very bold. I prefer to err on the side of caution. I'd hate to drop any non-cheaters.

Please be advised that if you flame me, I will throw snowballs at you.

Accusing spelme of “cheating” is actually not that strange, tasuki - despite his low rating. The reason for this is that all the accounts stated above probably belongs to the same person (that's the accustaion, anyway). Some of these accounts are simply sacrificed and drained for rating points so that others can gain rating.

If you look at the games spelme has played, you'll notice a pattern. It's basically only against other nicks on this list. Fairplay is the account who gains the rating points, whereas spelme, jimmmmy and bigmac all lose to Fairplay, and alternate on losing and winning against each other.

Just to be on the safe side: I mean this only as information and an explaination as to why these accounts should be considered cheaters. I don't accuse you of doing a poor job at all. In fact, I'm surprised and very grateful that you take the trouble of removing cheaters at all! :-)

No flames or snowballs from me…

I got into the top 100 ! Great

I've been playing on Little Golem steadily for nearly seven years, and I am just now discovering the Monster Ratings. (I haven't checked the forums steadily, obviously. ;))

Well done, tasuki… bravo! this will have the intended effect of motivating me to play more games.

Bumping

it would be nice to see wyps ascending rating included

Agreed.

agreed :)

Do you mean that you would like to be able to sort any rating in an ascending way?

no, there is a game called “ascending wyps” and it has its own individual rating (that does not show up on a player's profile, but it does exist!) For example, click on my current wyps game (ascending wyps) and you will see my ascending rating of 1523 (instead of my normal wyps rating of 1656)

An easy way to see your own rating (probably 1500, if you never played) is to register in the waiting room for a game of ascending WYPS (and delete the entry afterwards - games do start only at midnight). It shows your current rating while you are in there.

You can do this for all other ratings you have, for example for WYPS in other languages, and many other variants of other games.

The problem is that a user (like tasuki) cannot gather the ratings of other players in WYPS ascending and other wyps variations, not easily anyway. These ratings are not shown in a list like the other ratings.

you got a point. :-(

the way is via the rating list.

Of course is not as easy as grabbing the data from the player info. But for tasuki maybe it would be profitable to change the whole grabbing system and use the rating lists. This way you get rid of some inactive users…

Oops, I hadn't seen these lists! Then it won't be a problem for tasuki.

They are relatively new (for the strange variations). I looked for them (just in case) when klaashaas advertised Ascending WYPS, and bingo! Not sure since when we have them available :-)

by the way, asc-wyps population multiplied by 3 thanks to klaashaas, hehe

Hmmm, if I were to add 'ascending wyps', I'd also have to add the other (not only wyps) obscure variations… which could make a bit of a mess.

Gregorio's idea to gather the ratings from the rating list is good - it would greatly reduce the resources needed for global update of everyone. But I don't do global updates more often than twice a year and I'd have to keep the current method anyway (to update individual users). And I guess I'm a bit lazy, so I'm going to postpone that :)

tasuki, I don't think so, I don't think any other obscure variation is rated separately. The removal of the doubles seemed to be going for the rule that you have 'each separately calculated rating' and Wyps ascending is the only one you don't have.

Well, then there's also “wyps french” and “wyps dutch”…

I'm rather unhappy about the recent rating developments on little golem - merging go ratings for different sizes seems to be a huge blunder (some people have even stopped playing here because of this), and putting “toroidal go” in the same box with other go variations is downright insane (I love toroidal go, but it shouldn't be merged!).

Regardless of how Richard changes the ratings, I will always have fun playing the games! I appreciate the website even with the unorthodox rating changes.

It is true there are numerous different Wyps ratings. However, Wyps ascending seems to be unique enough and it should probably have its own category (that is, should have its own forum, its own championship, etc). It is definitely not a “word game”.

I bump this one…

UsEr_DaTa and mrjekyllxxxdrhyde still need purging from the table, I see.

So does MaiN_LoGiN, who is obviously yet another member of the Jamaican Gang.

Ditto Ydq_222_kz

Re:

\\\____________________________________________________________________

2010-01-05

tasuki

YeAr2010 got reincluded in the database, so I decided to implement a simple but effective banning system :)

So far, the winners are: 17304, 17305, 17306, 17396, 17583 and 19008. I'm not sure why FatPhil thinks the others on his list cheat as well, so I left them alone, for the time being.

\\\____________________________________________________________________

Tasuki, would you please purge the following members of the Jamaican Gang from the LG Monster Ratings as well:

18194 = mrjekyllxxxdrhyde

18239 = MaiN_LoGiN (previously known as Po_W_eR)

19873 = wwwdotcom

19884 = Ydq_222_kz

Besides the prevailing consensus that they are the different nicks of the same ratings manipulating cheater, it is further proof that the pattern of their records are eerily similar.

bumping

bumping

why aren't I there?

You are there now.

If other new players see they are not there please do as follows:

click a date of a player that is there

in the url change the number of that player to your littlegolem number* and enter.

(*that number is in the url of your player status so a mouse-over of your name would be enough to know this number)

thanks ;)

back up from page three!

I added the 4 cheaters mentioned by bloke few months ago.

Also added OSKI and Shogi (database update is underway, should be done in couple hours).

Why is oski dutch not in the list? I am leading that rating list!!

just kidding, I know why, I am just bumping the thread

but they are used in the calculation, even though they don't show.

Are they?

I am leading OSKI French (I am also second last :-) ). But the variations in rating don't seem to affect my tasuki Monster rating.

well I doubt French (or any other language than english) is counted in.

I think english OSKI is counted in, as well as Shogi, because I saw the jump for my rating the moment he added it: I'm rather obsessive currently with the rating, and update mine after each ended game, so I see the difference added right away each time. At one moment, I had an additional jump in the score, which added up to my Shogi and OSKI scores. That's not proof, though. Just strong evidence.

Just wondering…

Why is there no dvonn and amazon score counted?

that's a very interesting point! It is counted for some people - position #73 is the first one that has one, but further on there are many.

I'm not sure if it is a display issue, or why they would not be there for the first 72 players - I definitely have a rating over 1500 for one, and it does not show.

Maybe there are some errors… and we all just believed it?

it must be a bug. It only shows a value for players that have not been updated since September. And if you update them, it goes away for them too (I did three).

I think with adding the two new games (OSKI & Shogi), an indexing error was introduced…

or - more probably - with the renaming of 'Dvonn' to 'DVONN', and 'Amazon' to 'Amazons', the code is not recognizing those two games anymore.

I have sent tasuki a message.

Aganju, stop posting in everyy threadd loll…did u even leave any thread untouched? ahaha :P

(i couldn't resist xD)

tasuki, can you add Slither to the list?

I note that there is a new #2 on the list, Jean Hebert, usurping Marius Halsor. If you google “Jean Hebert chess” you will get a wikipedia page on this Canadian chess master…

When i joined LG a few weeks, i saw the nick JeanHebert and immediately thought “Really? Is it the real guy, or just a fanboy?“. Jean won the Canadian Chess Championship back in ~1979. He was one of the youngest players to ever win the title, and 30 years later he was also one of the oldest!

[His LG chess rating is only 1732, but it is based on an 18-1 record… Kinda makes me wonder about the 1650 player who beat him…]

I am quite surprised somebody knows me. Yes, I am that Jean Hébert. I am pretty much retired from professional play now, so I have a lot of time for my passion of board games.

PS: That loss was due to an horrible blunder on my part. I moved a piece to the wrong square, losing my queen and the game. Oh well, that will learn me not to pay attention to what I do.

Did Einstein donate his brain for research? Or has his brain been preserved? Ray, are you going to donate your brain for research (not now)?

Tasuki, revise your rating formula such that two adjacent ratings cannot be differed by more than 1000 points. My goodness, Ray is ahead of the crowd by about 2400 points! How did he do that?

Jean, as a “senior” member at LG, welcome you aboard.

Note that Jean is a GM in correspondence chess.

Jean: Any serious chess player in Canada knows who you are. There just aren't that many IMs in Canada!

Back in the 1980s i was a player (rated 2065), a CFC governor, and an NTD (directed about 40 tournaments a year back then). Unfortunately, you weren't in any of the Canadian Championships i directed, so i never had the opportunity to meet you in person.

Glad to see that you haven't taken the incredibly narrow view of some chess players (e.g. Botvinik, Kasparov). There are many great games worthy of study, many of which make chess look… well, kind of weird. :-)

Wow, never thought I could meet a master here;)

BTW, I wanted to see where I am on the list but couldn't find that… does it require manual update?

Just read the post by tasuki on 2009-12-18 and knew how to update it:)

Need to add Slither :)

Is someone still managing this website ? (;

tasuki sometimes changes things, but as he stopped playing here I suppose he will not regularly check in.

Yes, it seems that this guy is not on littlegolem anymore.. :(

This guy is not on littlegolem anymore, but sometimes he checks out the TwixT championships, and even more rarely, reads his private messages and the forum.

I added Slither and updated the variants accordingly. It is always such a pain to add a new game, the database is designed in completely the wrong way. The fact that it's all my mistake only makes it worse.

Thank you for your patience and have fun! I might come back one day :)

Viva tasuki ^_

(-;

Nice to see this updated, but even better, nice to hear from tasuki! Thanks, tasuki! We miss you!!

I see Canadian Chess Master, Jean Hebert is solidly in second place. I am starting to think maybe I need to dust off my Go books!

It is hard to up in the ranking, and not really fast, but I have my time (:

If I suppose that Ray Garrison has a logarithmic progresssion and me a quadratic (exponential?) one, I will catch up him in 2015 (2013?) if my calculations are correct. Niark :)

bump

bump

Incoming (-;

Top 10 (-;

Is there a reason why my nickname does not appear on the ratings list?

That was odd, Johnny. I wonder why that is…

I seem to recall something about suspected cheaters being removed from the list some time ago, but I don't see why you should be in that category. Perhaps your ID-number is similar to one of the cheaters, and you were removed by a mistake? Just guessing, obviously…

or the quotes in the name cause something silly.

Maybe the name (obviously not my real one ;-)) is too long for the ratings list.
As tasuki seems not to be active on LG anymore (last connected last september) I doubt that we will find the answer …

the trick was to update any player and replace your playerid the url.
But tasuki just states 'sorry something failed' when I gave in the number 12278. Strange

There you go, sir.

Also, I'm surprised you're surprised, Hjallti, the site has been anything but well-written and stable :)

TOP 10:
1 Ray Garrison 8402
2 Marius Halsor 6044
3 ypercube 5813
4 JeanHebert 5442
5 Maciej Celuch 5270
6 bennok 5267
7 Bernhard Herwig 5198
8 Florian Jamain 5116
9 Diamante 4941
10 Mojmir Hanes 4727

I think this table is slightly wrong. Clearly, JeanHebert should hold the second place, as he would have had he not left the site and timed out on several games. Also, I find the “weighted” table to be more interresting, but the tables are quite similar, it seems.

The most striking about this table is in my opinion the vast distance from second to first place. “The Monster” is WAAAAY ahead. Also, I found JeanHeberts steep rise to second place interresting. We might think that we're good players here, but he clearly showed that an “outsider” could come and beat most of us fairly quickly.

WOOO, this is a really cool site, can you also give a National Flags line to the table? :D

LEESD, that seems like too much work, plus the table is getting out-of-hand big as it is…

Added Polyomino to the list of games. Merry Christmas!

bump

bump.

tasuki's stats seem to be broken! What was the other Monster Rating site ? Does anyone remember.

By the way it would be nice to have a forum search engine !

@bennok: http://www.golemrating.com/home/index/

and the link to the forum thread: Message for the owner

You can also find the link in my profile.

The website has been moved to

http://golemrating.drfriendless.com/

Thanks Maurizio, i loved it!

Great job MDL!

Maurizio, thank you for taking care of this. Instead of fixing https://golem.tasuki.org/ I've added a link to http://golemrating.drfriendless.com/ :)

I am relatively new to LG, as I've only been playing here for a couple of months. I couldn't find my name in the rankings, although I did see the names of several players who registered right around when I did. What should I do?

@Bart your name is on the lists of the games you have played.

E.g. for Conhex, it is in page 3: https://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/info/player_list.jsp?gtvar=conhex_CONHEX&filter=&countryid=&page=3

Ok, thanks

Well done Maurizio!

Two suggestions:

Add a numer/ranking column. Since I am not among the top players it takes some effort to count my monster placement. Would be good to see on what place I am, depending on the column I sort.

Again, since I am not among the top players, the headings are not visible once I have scrolled down to my name. Would be nice to “freeze” the headings and also the player names when scrolling down or right.

I agree with mungo, I think it would be nice to see a number/ranking column. Does this seem reasonable? If not, it's fine, it just seems like it would be useful.

This looks great, thanks Maurizio!

How is the final number calculated?

Ricardo, it is the sum of

max(0,elo-1500)

Across all games

Ok, thanks Maurizio… so only games with a rating above 1500 counts, is that because the initial rating is at 1500?  Maybe an alternative would be to count all ratings, even those that are below 1500, but not include ratings for games where no games have been played?

But, of course, It is already really nice how it is now! Was just thinking about an alternative… the coloring is also great! Another question, how often is it updated?

It seems it is not updated anymore?

@Felipe

are you speaking about http://golemrating.drfriendless.com/

This is cool! What do players need to do to appear on the list?

Interesting

Cannot find myself on the list either (http://golemrating.drfriendless.com/)

Would be great to have info about last update there (e.g footer - updated on…)

Agreed, would be usefule information to include “last updated on xx/xx/xx”
looks like @Maurizio De Leo is the creator of this website.
Strange that players like Wicked & Mojmir are not on the list. Mojmir should be one of the top players! I also note that the ratings are outdated. And don't forget, this website has gone through lots of rating “adjustments” in the past year, so games I haven't played in years have different ratings now, and they are not reflected on this website.

I think the website was broken by the (somewhat) recent change of the ratings on LG, which went from an ELO number to kyu and Dan for all the games.
I will try to see if I can get it repaired. The actual coding was done by DrFriendless.

Thank you, me and my brother used to follow monster ratings closely as at some point we both had decent ones