Rank - worldwide comparison

Table of approximate equivalences between ranking systems

Please help to improve this table by adding data to our /DataCollection and feel free to edit it if you have more accurate information than currently presented.

However, since universally valid ranks do not exist; this is and will always be a table of approximate rank equivalences.

The table starts with beginners and ends with amateur experts.

Problems with the table presented above

Be very aware that the information in this table is at best an approximation, and is not very reliable.

• People are living in different time zones - some play comfortable in the evening while their opponents play in the middle of the night.
• Older data points used to create the table have not been removed when the relevant ranking system changed.
• The AGA has no ranks at all, just numerical ratings. There is no official translation between numerical ratings and ranks, and there are no ranks above 7d.
• EGF ranks vary internally in Europe. A large range of methodologies exist to allocate ranks, ranging from Anarchy to Strict Implementation of the GoR formula. Selecting a country from this page at the EGD will display a graph comparing that country's ratings versus standard GoR.
• Likewise ranks are awarded differently in provinces in China, and it is undoubtably the case in Japan and Korea too.
• WBaduk ranks vary internally between the different servers.
• The whole list expresses strength differences only with integers, hence might be off by half a dan grade (China)
• Blitz internet ranks and ranks derived from slower time limits online are often markedly diverse.
• Turn based servers can suffer from novices improving far faster than the rating system can cope with. (This is also a problem in EGF territories which use a strict implementation of GoR with no rating resets.)
• The ranks below 20kyu do not exist in some countries in Europe.
• Some people will play whilst drinking online
• Some people will play online whilst distracted by children, siblings, or parents.
• Ranks from face-to-face games are based on comparatively small numbers of games (often played in tournaments) which are taken more seriously. Ranks from online servers include large numbers of games played more casually.
• The internet can also contain sandbaggers , players who are deliberately playing under their strength in order to beat up weaker players. The IGS rank of 30kyu used to be notorious for this.
• There is no data for South America or Australasia. ^{[ 2 ]}
• AGA ranks vary internally in the USA, one coast is said to be stronger than the other.
• Depending on where a player learned to play go and where he mainly plays, it is possible that he is significantly stronger or weaker on real gobans than on virtual ones. A difference of 5 stones and more are not unusual.

Rating methods

• AGA - ratings information at AGA rating information
• China - here is a link(chinese)
• Japan - here is some Tokyo ranking scheme
• Europe - grades vary by country, see http://gemma.ujf.cas.cz/~cieply/GO/rgdrep.html . for a comparison of ratings with GoR . Comparisons of GoR do not take into account isolated player populations.
• WBaduk - See World Rating System
• IGS - B C, beginners class, is used for players below 17k and guest logins. see the IGS-PandaNet rating system for more information
• DGS - Link to the Dragon rating system
• KGS - Here are the Details of the KGS Rank System .
• OGS - Online Go Server uses an Elo-type system: details

More ratings links

See also:

• Rank - first comments
• The discussion page
• RatingHistogramComparisons .
• For rank translations between AGA , China, Europe , Japan, Korea, IGS , DGS and IYT see function "convert_to_rating()" in DGS server source code . ErikO : The conversions in "convert_to_rating()" are in most cases taken directly from the rank translation table at NNGS (type help rank ).
• You may find a subjective estimation of your EGF rank after solving this test: http://play.baduk.org/ (test results are discussed in a special chapter at /discussion )
• Rank microcosm
• New rank comparison list (from 2010 data of various servers/lists)

Footnotes

[ 1 ] BC ( B eginners C lass) is a blanket initial rank at IGS. Unranked people & guests start as BC for their first 5 games at least. The first numbered IGS rank appears to be 17kyu currently. There are also some stronger players who choose to have a BC rank.
[ 2 ] xela : As I understand it, Australian ranks are set by consensus within each go club. There are not enough tournament games for accurate calculations in the style of American and European ranks. It's generally believed that Australian kyu ranks sit somewhere between the American and Japanese ranks. High dan ranks are possibly a bit stronger (Australian 7 dans seem to hold their own against other 7 dans at the WAGC ), and so it's likely that the spacing between dan ranks is greater than one handicap stone per rank. Possibly someone else will have more accurate data on this.
[ 3 ] A European 7D grade is claimed to be the approximate equivalent to a professional 1D grade by the EGF.
[ 4 ] This column represents the rankings as used by the Hankuk Kiwon , for information on the old gup ranks, see rank - gup (Korean) explained
[ 5 ] Ranks on Wbaduk (formerly Orobaduk, CyberOro ) depend on the server you play on: On the Japanese server the ranks tend to be better than on the Korean servers.
[ 6 ] Now that the Tygem English server is open, perhaps we can include Tygem ranks here when more data becomes available.