Cons:
- Handicap games are a great feature of Go to enable two players of widely different rank to enjoy a game that is a challenge for both
- It sets an expectation for beginners who learn the culture of Go on OGS that handicap games are abnormal, and that widely different rank players normally play even games. This is not true in the wider world. I think it’s bad to have trained a decade of Western beginners to not like handicap games. If a 20k from OGS turns up at a real-life go club and tells the 5k they want to play even then the 5k may think the 20k is being an arrogant fool and the game would be boring. This is also why I don’t like analysis on in live game by default, it’s setting a bad expectation and culture.
- Even by default means there are fewer handicap games played. Handicap games are very useful for internal calibration/consistency of a ranking system. The definition of a 5k vs a 10k is there is that when they play a 5 stone game they should each win about half (actually white has half stone advantage, rating system can take this into account, KGS does). If instead they play even games and you expect the 5k to win 93% or whatever you get much lower quality data. I suspect this even by default rule contributes to the problems in OGS ratings.
- Even by default means that you have a lot of games with expected win % far from 50%. This means that non-skill based game results like error submitting move bug or timeouts from lag will distort the rating system. So if I as a dan player play a 10k even I’m expected to win practically 100%, but if I have a shitty connection and lag out in 20% of games then that 10k gets a massive rating boost and me a massive rating drop. Leading to lower quality ratings.
Pros: