We don’t have much of a handicap-culture here at OGS. A few people, myself included, think that’s worth changing. An entirey unrelated topic recently discussed was that arena tournaments (you can play as many games as you have time for) would be nice.
I thought I’d combine those two ideas. Well, tbh I think the arena thing was discussed for live play mostly, I’m sort of transferring that into correspondence. The idea is there will be a series of correspondence handicap round robin tournaments. You can participate in as many or as few as you want, all games played within the year 2024 count. More details are on the group page: https://online-go.com/group/13655
Alas, I’m used to the fact that handicap games are more educational games than competitive ones. But I sincerely wish you good luck with your endeavor, especially when I think about how difficult it will be to keep track of all the points for each participant.
The tournament currently open is 10 player one (with 3 spots still open), so 9 games for everyone. I will also offer smaller ones in the future (4 or 5 players), so people who don’t want to commit to 9 games at once can also participate,
@emaolivia71 I am not sure if you are a spammer or if your computer is infected by malware and included that link without you knowing. In the latter case you’d better do something against it.
10 days until we start. So far 22 players have signed up for at least one of the 3 tournaments. There are still 2 spots open in this one: Handicap Arena 2024 - 003 Once those are taken I’ll create the next one with 5 players.
The year has started (Happy New Year everyone), so has the tournament series. So far 27 players have signed up, the first 4 tournaments are running and a fifth (Handicap Arena 2024 - 005) is open and will start as soon as all 10 spots are taken (6 open atm).
Meanwhile tournament #6 is running. Also the standings table Handicap Arena looks slightly more interesting now, albeit for a boring reason: seemingly a player was surprised that games in a tournament with handicap auto setting, with ‘handicap’ in the title organised in a group with ‘handicap’ in the name was played with handicap, so they resigned immediately.