There have been concerns raised recently about just how hard it can be to get a game, and we would like to assess the viability of a small class size increase. The downside is that the max possible games in theory will raise from 39.

Proposal A as follows:

Increase Alpha, Beta, and Gamma from 14 to 16.
Increase Delta from 16 to 18 with dan seedings (16 people are seeded by default, and the first {no of classes * 2} new dan players on the waiting list get seeded into Delta
Keep Epsilon at a max of 20 players.

EDIT: Proposal B is as follows:

Increase Alpha, Beta, and Gamma from 14 to 18
Increase Delta from 16 to 20 with dan seedings
Increase Epsilon from 20 to 24
Reduce the number of games allowed per player from 3 down to 2

Pros

A - More availability. If we assume 4-6 players are simply not going to play much in a typical class, there's quite a large proportional increase in availability throughout the month.
B - Even more availability.
B - Lower max available games.

Cons

A - More max games allowed, from 39 to 45.
B - Some people comment that it is preferable to be able to have an odd number of versus games, as that way the head to head matchup has a winner.
B - If there are a number of inactive players, having 2 games per person restricts the ability to get more games in.

Additional considerations

Even though 45 games a month sounds a lot, in reality, very few of the players are currently playing over 30. Stats for Dec are as follows:

Less than 15 = 0(alpha) 18(beta) 42(gamma) 81(delta) 124(epsilon)
15+ = 3 4 8 3 13
20+ = 5 5 3 0 15
25+ = 2 1 3 0 6
30+ = 3 0 0 0 2
35+ = 1 0 0 0 0

Outside of Alpha, percentage of players to reach No. of games:

15 = 19%
20 = 11%
25 = 4%
30 = 0.6%

So, outside of Alpha, only 2 players managed 30 games, and 265 players (81%) managed less than 15. Even though high activity that other people can't match is a theoretical problem, it doesn't seem to be borne out in the data currently. This of course includes the fact that of the 63 players that played 15 or more games outside of Alpha, 36 of them were in the 20 players per class Epsilon Classes. With those excluded (so as to only look at 14 players per class), the stats for % of players falls even further:

15 = 16%
20 = 7%
25 = 2%
30 = 0%

Of course, bigger class sizes will enable people to get their activity up, but the question that poll is designed to answer is "Is getting games a bigger problem then enabling players to be too active, and how should we address this?"

I hate how you say:



The max amount of games that can be played should in my opinion be something that is possible to achieve. I've never liked the current system much for the amount of games that can be played. I'd rather go back to the day where we had just 1 game per match-up. I have never seen the point in playing the same opponent twice a month just so you can play more league games. The league games should be of high caliber and by letting people choose to play so many games it sometimes becomes more about the amount of time you spend on playing league games than about the quality of the games that are played.

I would vote for 16 players a class if the games are reduced back to one game a month or maybe two if it is really needed (would take out the problem of the weird pointsystem too), but otherwise I'd like it to stay this way. People being able to play more games is just a very big downside imo.

Would you be in favour of a 3rd option - increasing class sizes to, say, 18 players, and reducing the games per opponent to 2?

Would other people be for or against this third option?

I would always choose for the option that has the least amount of total games per person per month.

So 18 persons in a class with 2 games a month per match up makes 17 x 2 games = 34
3 x 13 = 39 games, so that's barely an improvement, but yes, I'd support that change.

I don't see why you want people to be able to play so many games though. I feel the quality of the games has gone down already. I know from myself I sometimes feel the need to just play a game even if I'm not in the best of moods, because I just don't have enough time to play enough games otherwise. This means less focus = less chance of winning for me = worse quality of the game. I'm pretty sure a lot of people will agree with me.

If I remember correctly, the origional reason for giving people 3 games per match up, was because of the availibility issue you are now again mentioning. This means the origional solution to solving this problem hasn't work (which is pretty obvious that it wouldn't), so now it should be changed back imo.

Having 16 players a class that can play 1 game per match-up means 15 games a month. That means everyone has to play a game every two days. If they don't, that's not the fault of the league, that's the fault of the players. A problem like that should be resolved by what is now happening anyway; The more active players will get into the higher classes and than it will be okay again. Letting more people in classes and letting them play more games won't solve anything in the end. It all depends on the activity of the players anyway.

In the poll, I will vote yes, but for somewhat selfish reasons. I hope to be promoted to Delta next month, and the sole reason I am in this league is to play more games against dan level opponents.

However, increasing the maximum number of potential games is awful for me. I'll never get 30, let alone 39 or 45. I've played virtually all of my go this whole month in the ASR league, and I'm at 13 games so far. Each game takes on average over 2 hours, considering the reviews I give to weaker opponents. Living in Asia, there is more than half of my group who I have never even seen online, let alone those that I may have seen but still have not played with. 9/13 games that I have played have been teaching games with people 4 stones or more weaker than me. Despite that, I still might not get promoted, as there is someone ahead of me with a 6/26 record, and someone virtually tied with me at 7/18. Both of those records are sure to increase.

I would prefer that the number of players be increased, and the number of games be decreased, to two or even one. If two games is the max, even points to both players should be given for a 1-1 split, but points for a second win should be halved.

Edit: I like MrZNF's point above.

@cdyBeijing: If there's enough people voting for option B, continuing in that direction would make sense as a following poll in a month or two I think - does that sound reasonable?

I guess the change will have to come slowly, so to not upset everyone, but maybe if now option two is going to be applied and people like the fact that there is a smaller max games the month after we could drop it a notch again.
I will just vote for whatever option has the lowest amount of maxgames, with the pure belief that if people have to play less games and, the quality of the games will improve.

It sounds reasonable. I probably still need to accept that if the league aims to reward activity strongly, I will always be at a disadvantage.

i like the proposal of mrznf, going back when people only played one match per season, this shurely will increase the quality, and now that league is full of active people, is likely that everybody will play their match. Since the league doesnt have schedules , is obvious that adding more people to each group will solve this. But yes this will increase the amount of matches, wich is good for lower layers like epsilon delta and gamma, this works as a proof of willingness to play in the league, but for alpha and beta, more precisely alpha, they wont like it, so maybe just in alpha, you should try as an experiment, implement the one match per person system, to see how it works, and we will see. =)

How about another option: Decrease the number of games you can play against the same opponent to 2, but drastically increase the amount of players per class-- say, to 30? That should help get around the availability issue.

prop A looks better.

Also another tweak that may help is to have higher class groups seeded by activity.

eg; high win ratio guys get seeded in gamma I & II
High activity guys get gamma III & IV

goodday.

I really don't think that people hitting their max games is a realistic problem.

But people overwhelming others by approaching their max games is certainly a problem.

My previous experience with online league style play has been the Canadian Go Association (CGA) online league on KGS. We have much smaller groups, usually 5-7, and play one game per six week round with each person in the group. All games are CGA rated, so they tend to be serious games, we usually schedule games in advance, and participants are strongly encouraged to get all their games in for a particular round. Workable for the CGA, but probably not for ASR, of course.

As a result of that experience, I don't usually tend to seek out more than one game per person--though I won't refuse extra games--unless I need to get a game in at the last minute to make up my four games and stay in. I tend to think in terms of "getting in my league game (singular)" with any given person.

Therefore I like the idea of reducing the number of games to 2, and perhaps eventually to one, and increasing the size of at least the Gamma and below classes. I voted for B because of the reduction in number of games, but I actually like the class sizes in A. There is a "sweet spot" for class size, but that size is hard to predict, because it varies depending on how active the members of each group are. While Alpha and Beta seem to be a bit more likely to make an effort to at least get their four games in, even in those groups there are always a couple of people who for various reasons don't manage to play much in a given month. Sometimes that sweet spot can be the existing 14, but in my (subjective) experience, it is has more often been in the 16 to 20 range, at least for the way I tend to play league games.

Does the AGA have anything similar to this?

Not that I know of. I am also an AGA member, mostly for things like the Journal and Yearbook, but haven't heard of anything. The CGA web site has a page about the league at http://www.go-canada.org/league/. They have been doing it for a bit over a year; games are normally played in the Canadian Room, under National.

The AGA may do the odd event or tournament online - there is an AGA tournament room on KGS.

I would love the BGA to adopt this. Truly truly love it.

Yeah, it's simple and brilliant. I haven't joined the AGA, because they effectively do not exist in Minnesota. An online AGA league would give me a reason to join.

I like proposal B personally. More possibilities of more games with different perspectives equals more chances to learn.

Also giving it a little thought, how about offer the ability to play a third game only if both players tied their previous game. You could award points so that the winner doesn't get more points than they would winning both games, but still gets a something, and the loser also gets some incentive to play the third round.

Or you could make it so the loser loses half a point which is given to the winner

Example of the first.

Wins followed by losses after the /

1/0= 2pts
0/1= 1pts
0/2= 2pts
2/0= 4pts
1/1= 3pts
2/1= 3.5pts
1/2= 2.5pts

Example of the second

1/0= 2pts
0/1= 1pts
0/2= 2pts
2/0= 4pts
1/1= 3pts
2/1= 2.5pts
1/2= 1.5pts

These are my suggestions for fixing the 'determining game' loss in option B, but I favor option B

I like the idea Farital. At the moment, coding this into the system is going to be very difficult, but the idea of the third game being a gamble (you may lose half a point or win half a point) makes it an interesting way of doing it without just injecting more points into the class.

Do other people have feelings on this one ?