EGF Official ratings system


Downloads General info System description Remarks How to submit results References


Downloads:

These plain text files are updated in real-time. You can download them for any purpose you need.
By the way, they are strictly compatible with those provided by old rating pages.


National rating ladders

(real time update)

  (tick here if you want to include the R_max column, which shows the highest rating achieved by the player over the last 12 months)
AD - AndorraAM - ArmeniaAT - AustriaAZ - AzerbaijanBA - Bosnia
BE - BelgiumBG - BulgariaBY - BelarusCH - SwitzerlandCY - Cyprus
CZ - CzechiaDE - GermanyDK - DenmarkEE - EstoniaES - Spain
EU - EuropeFI - FinlandFR - FranceGE - GeorgiaGF - French Guiana
GR - GreeceHR - CroatiaHU - HungaryIE - IrelandIL - Israel
IS - IcelandIT - ItalyKG - KyrgyzstanKZ - KazakhstanLT - Lithuania
LU - LuxembourgLV - LatviaMD - MoldovaMK - North MacedoniaMT - Malta
NL - NetherlandsNO - NorwayPL - PolandPT - PortugalRO - Romania
RS - Republic of SerbiaRU - RussiaSE - SwedenSI - SloveniaSK - Slovakia
SM - San MarinoTR - TurkeyUA - UkraineUK - United KingdomYU - Yugoslavia
All European players    


Other rating files download

(real time update)

File Description TXT / HTML ZIP
alleuro_lp List of all European players who ever participated in any included tournament 4.3 MB 1.2 MB
allworld_lp List of all World players who ever participated in any included tournament 4.6 MB 1.3 MB
all.hst Complete history of rating development of all players (one row for each tournament) 47.4 MB 7.1 MB
tlist List of all included tournaments ( 2011-02-16: the file format has slightly changed; now it reports also number of rounds and number of players for each tournament ) 1.1 MB 277 KB


General Information

The rating system was adopted by Czech Go Association at the beginning of 1998. Originally it was designed to serve only the needs of Czech go community. Later on we decided to enlarge the tournament database by including other European tournaments and made it comparable with the former EGF database. The system has been used for computing the official EGF ratings since November 1998. The included events should meet following conditions:
  • The event took place not earlier than January 1, 1996.
  • The tournament is recognized as EGF classified event.
  • Both handicap and even games are accepted.
Fast games (less than 30 minutes) are not counted because their results are less consistent. We allow for handicap games since their inclusion helps to keep the correspondence between ratings and grades. At the same time it also enables to follow the commonly accepted requirement on the number of handicap stones to be used in a game between opponents of different strength if both players should have the same chance of winning. We would be glad if you could send us any tournament table meeting the specified conditions and not included so far. If you do so, please, try to follow our instructions for sending the tournament results.

The rating list includes all "European" players who participated at tournaments that are in the database. An average 1 dan should have Go Rating about 2100 and the difference between grades is set to 100 (6 dan = 2600, 1 kyu = 2000, 20 kyu = 100 etc.). These values are also used to initialize the rating of a new player. The scale of professional grades is set provisionally to 1p = 7d = 2700, 2p = 2730, ... , 9p = 2940. If player's rating drops below -900, it is reset to GoR=-900 which is fixed as the bottom value.

Example 1: The ratings of top European amateur players Guo Juan and Lee Hyuk fall in the region of 3p-4p.

Example 2: The player with GoR = 2050 can be regarded as either a weak 1d or a strong 1k.

Depending on players' tournament results and on the various ranking systems used in different countries, the correspondence between grades and GoR may not work quite well especially for lower kyu grades. However, it gives a relatively good measure of player's strength provided that he/she has participated in at least 3-5 tournaments.

If a player has not participated at any considered tournament for some time (this period is set to 2 years for dan players, 12 months for 1-10 kyu, and 6 months for 11-20 kyu; the actual year/month is not counted), he/she drops out from the current rating list. However, the player's rating is kept in the database of players and it is used once he/she appears again at any tournament in the future.



System description

The rating algorithm was updated starting 2021. The whole database from back in 1996 was recalculated with this algorithm. You can find the old algorithm here.

Ratings are updated by: r' = r + con * (Sa - Se) + bonus
r is the old EGD rating (GoR) of the player
r' is the new EGD rating of the player
Sa is the actual game result (1.0 = win, 0.5 = jigo, 0.0 = loss)
Se is the expected game result as a winning probability (1.0 = 100%, 0.5 = 50%, 0.0 = 0%). See further below for its computation.
con is a factor that determines rating volatility (similar to K in regular Elo rating systems): con = ((3300 - r) / 200)^1.6
bonus (not found in regular Elo rating systems) is a term included to counter rating deflation: bonus = ln(1 + exp((2300 - rating) / 80)) / 5

Se is computed by the Bradley-Terry formula: Se = 1 / (1 + exp(β(r2) - β(r1)))
r1 is the EGD rating of the player
r2 is the EGD rating of the opponent
β is a mapping function for EGD ratings: β = -7 * ln(3300 - r)



Remarks

The post-tournament ratings are calculated assuming that every player enters the games with all opponents at the same initial (pre-tournament) rating. It means that the ratings are not reevaluated after each game (round) and the "new" ratings are computed from the "old" ones adding all contributions from the games the player completed at a given tournament. In other words, we assume that the ratings of players do not change in the process of one tournament.

If a rank professed by the player had improved significantly (at least by 2 grades for amateur players or by 1 professional grade) with respect to the highest previously professed rank, the rating of the player is reset. This measure helps to deal with fast improving players and with players who participate at included tournaments only occasionally.

The work on the program that calculates the ratings is still in process. In the future, the program should also be used for some statistical purposes and for the maintenance of the database of go players. We welcome any comments and suggestions.


Acknowledgement:

The rating system has been tested, with permission, on the database of professional games provided with the GoGoD Encyclopaedia CD produced by J. Fairbairn and T.M. Hall. We thank R. Kok and Ch. Gerlach for providing us with their databases of tournament results and A. Engels for maintaining a web page which helped us immensely to collect the tournament data. We would also like to thank J.-L.Gailly for advising us on the correct treatment of handicap games. Finally, we acknowledge a help of many people who have contributed with their comments and suggestions, and especially of those who have kept us informed by sending new tournament results.



Notes on submission of tournament results

The results must be submitted through the online parser which is present in the backend section of this website.
In order to be allowed to submit data, you will be requested to register a user account.
If you encounter any problems, report them to egd@europeangodatabase.eu

When the results are sent we need to know:

  • the name of the event
  • the place (city) where it was hold
  • the exact date of the event
  • tournament class (or the time limit including byoyomi)
  • handicap strategies (if any handicap games occured)


Tournament classes

  • class A:
    well organized tournament
    time limit requirements: adjusted time minimum 75 minutes, basic time minimum 60 minutes;
    Fischer time: basic time minimum 45 mins
    weight for inclusion to EGF ratings: 1.00
  • class B:
    well organized tournament
    time limit requirements: adjusted time minimum 50 minutes, basic time minimum 40 minutes;
    Fischer time: basic time minimum 30 mins
    weight for inclusion to EGF ratings: 0.75
  • class C:
    casual or club tournament
    time limit requirements: adjusted time minimum 30 minutes, basic time minimum 25 minutes;
    Fischer time: basic time minimum 20 mins
    weight for inclusion to EGF ratings: 0.50
  • class D:
    Tournaments played on Internet
    time limit requirements: adjusted time minimum 50 minutes, basic time minimum 40 minutes;
    Fischer time: basic time minimum 30 mins
    weight for inclusion to EGF ratings: 0.25

Adjusted time (TA) calculation:
  • Japanese Time Control (Byoyomi)
    TA = basic time + time equivalent to 45 moves
    e.g.: basic time: 60 minutes, byoyomi: 30 seconds per move:
    60 + ((45 * 30) / 60) = 82.5 minutes
  • Canadian Time Control
    TA = basic time + time equivalent to 60 moves
    e.g.: basic time: 60 minutes, byoyomi: 20 moves in 10 minutes:
    60 + ((10 / 20) x 60) = 90 minutes
  • Fischer Time
    TA = basic time + time equivalent to 120 moves
    e.g.: basic time: 45 minutes, increment per move: 15 seconds:
    45 + ((120 x 15) / 60) = 75 minutes
  • Absolute time (Sudden death)
    TA = basic time

The EGF Ratings Committee reserves the right to adjust the class of a tournament if considered necessary. The class of the event should be known before it is held. The organizer may demote the class in tournament announcement if the lower class suits better to his intentions (e.g. when new tournament system or rules are tested). The events that do not meet the specifications mentioned above are not recognized as classified EGF tournaments.


Tournament table format

The rating program processes the tournament tables written in the form of ASCII text files. The data record for each player is to be given in one line. Empty lines and everything following the semicolon sign are ignored. The results are presented in a string of entries separated by blanks. The number of rounds (included results) must be the same for each player and each result entry is given in the form:

        <opponent's place><symbol>[/<colour>[<h>]] 
where 
        <symbol> is + (a win), - (a loss) or = (jigo)
        <colour> means the colour of stones ('b/w' = black/white)
          <h>    specifies the number of given handicaps
   
Examples: 35=, 23+/w (equivalent to 23+/w0), 11-/b5 
The handicap specification can be omitted if the handicaps are computed from the difference of opponents' grades (minus a given reduction). If the player did not participate in a given round, the result is still to be specified in one of the following ways:
        0+  a free win
        0-  a free round
        0=  a free round (0.5 added to the score and MM)


Examples of some tournament tables:

t970920b.h2 - handicap games, handicap = difference of grades - 2 (defined by the file extension; h9 extension used for even games)
e961122.h9 - even games, example of a team tournament
t990220f.h9 - even and handicap games specified


In the
Admin backend you will find extensive documentation, with further specifications for formatting the results table.

References to other rating systems:

 
 
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   .: EGD v. 3.0 :.    Official tournament repository of EGF (European Go Federation).
For any question, issue or suggestion refer to egd@europeangodatabase.eu

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