American Go E-Journal » U.S./North America

With the hiatus in over-the board tournament play due to Covid-19, there has been a lot of interest in online tournaments. The online US Open at this year’s e-Go Congress was hugely successful with hundreds of players participating from around the world. 

At its upcoming Fall Tournament on November 14, the National Go Center will test a new project to rate online tournaments. “We wanted to do something to make online tournaments more attractive while also advancing the state of the art for ratings,” said project coordinator Josh Lee. The project uses the Glicko2 algorithm, which is used by the OGS go server, Chess.com and other sports.

Current AGA membership is required to play in the NGC tournament, and the online rating will be initialized from a player’s current AGA rating. Testing of the algorithm is being done with two earlier online tournaments from this year, with sample results posted here (Note that these are just a sample and the numbers are still changing as the calculations and parameters are being finalized).

“We had a very smooth and successful Stay Home Vermont Go Tournament this weekend,” reports Pete Schumer. “We began with a friendly Zoom get together Friday night, followed by Round 1 on KGS.  Then on Saturday, we played rounds 2, 3, 4 and then had a fun wrap-up gathering on Zoom as well.  There were 15 players mostly from Vermont, but also one from California, one from Japan, one from China, and one from Thailand.  Kudos to the players from East Asia who kept up their good spirits despite the sleep deprivation.” 

The tournament’s winner was Rich Chalmers (1D) who was the only player with a perfect 4-0 record. “In fact, this is a repeat performance for Rich who was already the current state champion,” says Schumer. Second place went to Jack Cary (3k) with a record of 3 -1. “Jack was also very busy helping to promote and set up the tournament and doing all the technical support throughout the weekend.  Very much appreciated!” Dan Deneen (2k) finished third on 3 -1, and fourth place went to Caleb Lesher (6k) who also had a 3 – 1 record. 

“We hope that more clubs will follow our lead, as well as that of the US Go Congress organizers, the Austin Go Club and a few others to continue to host additional tournaments on-line,” says Schumer. “It’s a great way to keep our wonderful community connected!”

As of September 23, the AGA has rated 12 tournaments that have been in the queue for some time. Our team is restarting operations and planning upgrades in the process. Check the AGAGD and see the list of recent tournaments added. We have contacted all of the TDs for any missing tournaments and hope to have those rated soon. We are adding new Ratings Operators soon and have scheduled training for them in the coming weeks. Our Dev Team will be looking at Ratings Operations to enhance your workflow in the future.