I am a member of AYD, the American Yunguseng Dojang. The lowest league in AYD currently is D3. All tables have been cropped to remove the real names of the participants. The names you see above are KGS user names. Mine is buzzsaw.
My initial placement in the final cycle of the season is third place because two members were demoted from D2. As a result they are placed above me. One’s placement in the 2nd and 3rd cycle of a season is based on wins and losses rather than on one’s rating. Even though I am the highest rated player in the league I am in third place on the table. This is fair to the players coming down from D2. Initial placement carries with it a tie breaking advantage, or disadvantage, which does not apply to the third cycle because no one moves up or down after the third cycle.
Each AYD season is composed of three cycles (months). At the start of the current season I was in D2 based on my rating. At the beginning of each new season one’s placement is determined by rank alone, not by how well one has performed in the previous cycle. Usually some new players join AYD at the beginning of a new season. They will be interspersed into the leagues based on their reported starting ranks.
Wins and losses in a third cycle will not effect initial placement in the first cycle of a new season except insofar as the wins and losses result in ratings adjustments. Ratings will be used to determine placement in the new season. Sometimes In-seong will give a ratings adjustment based on fast improvement, so that sometimes effects placement at the beginning of a season.
The table above represents my placement at the end of the first cycle of the current season. My rating alone had managed to land me in the D2 group. My performance had me slated to drop to the top position in D3 for the 2nd cycle.
The table above represents my placement at the end of the second cycle of the season. I had high hopes of being promoted along with Drewch for the 3rd cycle. I was initially placed at the top location on the chart which means that I would have won any tie break. I started the cycle with three wins against the bottom three players in the league. I had two more games to play, but I really only needed one more win to go up. Even if another player had five wins I would still go up with four in second place. If there were three players will four wins I would have won both tie breaks, and the player with the lowest initial placement would have been left behind.
I knew that the system was set up for the player with the highest initial placement to face her toughest competition in reverse order. My first games would be the easiest. The last two games would be the toughest. Having gone 3-0 in the first three games was no guarantee of promotion at the end of the cycle. I needed that fourth win, or I needed a three way tie.
Though I had beaten Drewch twice before, I regarded him as my stiffest competition. Based on observing the games of Meithras, I did not discount him as an opponent either. His KGS rating is 11k, but I think it was 15k a month previous. I, therefore, put no stock in his KGS rating.
It turns out that I lost my game with Meithras by 3.5.
Losing to Meithras put me in a position where it would have been necessary to beat Drewch in order to advance, and he would have gone up with me. It would have been a tall order to beat Drewch, but I was ready to try.
I tried really hard in my game with Drewch, but victory was not to be mine. I lost that game by resignation. Yes. I can read four moves ahead. I resigned.
Drewch was really nice and spent a good deal of time reviewing the game with me after it was over. He is a good go friend. It is a shame we could not have traveled back up together to D2 for the final cycle of this season.
I was feeling pretty depressed about my failure to promote. I realize that my disappointment is quite selfish given the fact that I have promoted a few times, whereas some of my fellow YD players, and friends, have not had that experience yet. I am sorry to be thinking of myself, and I do appreciate their disappointment too.
By the way, the way that the ratings points are adjusted can really work against the more highly rated player in a league, especially when there is a large difference in the ratings of the players. My wins in the past month did very little to move my rating up, but my losses were devastating. You can see that in the table below. Three wins netted me 18 positive points, whereas two losses netted me 20 negative points.
We actually need more players in the AYD leagues between 700 and 500 to solve this problem. There is more than 300 points separating the weakest and strongest D3 players in the upcoming cycle. There should be no more than a 100 point spread in a league. Maybe 150 in the bottom league out of necessity, but 300 is too much. Refer to the first table in the post for reference.
I’m starting to feel self conscious about my 6k rating on KGS. If I am playing true to rank, I should be a formidable opponent, yet I lose League games to 8k players, and even to 11k players. What is up with that? I was thinking that maybe I should go NR with buzzsaw to lessen my embarrassment. Then the solution came to me. Take buzzsaw down.
I decided Saturday morning to play a rated auto match game on KGS and perhaps put buzzsaw in her place on the way down to 7k, and then perhaps even to 8k where she may actually belong. It was not to be. I won a match with a 6k by 0.5 points. Funny. I actually laughed about it.
That same Saturday evening, two days after our fateful League Game, Drewch and I played a Free League Game with very different results. It was going to be a small win for me in the neighborhood of 7.5 points, which would have been nice enough. However, this time I was the one rewarded with a resignation. I read a cut.
I managed to find a Trouble Master problem in the upper left. I thought that it was going to be seen by white because I had to fill two dame at d18 and d17 in order to pull it off. Why would I fill dame in a Japanese game unless I was trying something? (This, by the way, is why I prefer AGA rules.) By the time I had cut at c13 white needed to atari at d13 to prevent a HUGE loss, and accept a smaller one. The three stones along the edge would have been lost. There were actually two other opportunities that I missed in this game in the lower right quadrant. I won’t go into detail. I actually should have lost this game, and would have, if white had completed his attack on my s7 stones successfully. All can be seen in the sgf file if anyone is interested.
So why do I need a go psychologist? It comes down to tournament anxiety. I know that League Games are not tournament games, but they carry with them all of the same pressure. More Free League Games with YD Opponents might help me to overcome this.
I really enjoyed taking my time with this free league game. An hour and a half was spent on the game. My opponent was in byo yomi for quite a while, and I was getting close. I think I had a little over three minutes left on my clock at the end of the game. I was glad to have enough time to find and execute the Trouble Master Problem. Perhaps my opponent did not have enough time to adequately evaluate it in byo yomi.
Speaking of the Free League, I am in 2nd place. Those losses really add up :-).
I still have fighting spirit.
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