no (on 19x19)[/quote]
If black does not get more handicap stones, then is there a negative komi set automatically to account for the further difference in strength?
Still waiting for an answer to this part.
[quote=“stone.defender, post:59, topic:50489”]
no
https://forums.online-go.com/t/9-ranks-restriction-in-ranked-was-removed/50454/9?u=stone.defender
For now, the maximum “handicap rank difference” awarded on 19x19 is 9 stones. But you’re allowed to play against an opponent of any rank.
is that the number in the top left of the 4x4 table on one’s page
Correct.
is it the number next to one’s name on one’s home page?
Also correct. These should be the same number.
FYI, this is now fixed and deployed to production. It was a visual bug affecting both preferred settings and challenges.
Another visual bug was fixed in the same “preferred settings”/“challenge” panels. The “you play as [colour]” text now shows the challenger the colour they’ll play.
Also, we made a simplification for komi in small boards for manual handicap stones of 1+:
In certain displays (such as list of group members), there’s just a single integer ranking. I guess this isn’t actually used but just gives a general idea of strength?
Good! 7.5 Fair komi by Chinese rules on any board size…It should have changed before.
Do you mean for a rengo game? (If, not, can you clarify the context?)
Assuming yes, then for all games (including rengo games), the “Game Information” panel’s “Handicap” entry should show the effective/computed handicap rank difference when it’s (a) understood (never true for non-standard board sizes) and (b) different from the number of handicap stones.
A few examples, all NZ rules with integer komi:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t an even komi (such as 0, rather than +1 or -1) preclude the possibility of draws, since instead a close game will result in a score of B+1 or W+1 (seki notwithstanding)?
Seki with eyes
EDIT: nevermind, I missed the parenthetical
To be clear, I was just using New Zealand rules as an example. But:
As you say, draws with 0 komi are rather unlikely in area rulesets, since you’d either need a seki or for players to pass with an odd number of dame open.
I don’t think the primary goal of New Zealand rules is to encourage draws, though, but, IIUC, to be simple and clutter-free. 7 is the specified komi in even games, presumably because that makes the game fair for equal-strength players. There is no komi for handicap games, presumably because if it’s not an even game then it’s simplest to have no komi at all.
(As a note of interest, according to Bill Taylor, the Tromp-Taylor rules (“the logical rules” of Go) are based on the New Zealand rules, reworded to avoid recursive definitions.)
Eg bottom of page here:
dexonsmith: I think that this site is great, and I appreciate all the work you do here. I used to play 9x9 on Yahoo Games in 2002, and this interface is much better in innumerable ways.
With that said, as you suggest, there still may be room for improvements in the course of time. Eventually, if computers increasingly pave out theoretical wins from move 1 with 6.5 komi for white, and with 5.5 komi for black, I hope that you will consider adding a new ruleset along the lines of the one used by the katago opening book that hexahedron mentioned: “Using Japanese-like rules, komi 6.”
Perhaps this isn’t a mode that you’ll add today or tomorrow, but I hope that you will get to it sooner or later, if that’s where the data keep pointing. In general, I think it’s more fun to have a game that doesn’t lead to a theoretical win either for white or for black given perfect play: That is, I think that if you play perfectly, you should at least be able to earn a draw.
I’m not quite sure how close we are to perfect play now (and I probably wouldn’t be the right person to ask about that anyway), but I suspect we are closer for 9x9 than we are for 19x19, and that we’ve gotten a lot closer over the past few years with the advent of AlphaGo, AlphaZero, and comparable computer-go programs. Don’t you think? And even when we are imperfect humans playing against other imperfect human, there is something comforting about knowing that the game isn’t inherently tilted against us, regardless of our starting color. I might be unnecessarily ignorant about the other rulesets available (like New Zealand, or Tromp-Taylor), so maybe I should look into that…
And last, to clarify why I care in the first place, I just want to say that I think 9x9 go is a great game in itself: better for those among us with not-so-long attention spans, and deserving of whatever high-grade analytical attention it can get.
Maybe if we get full reverse komi support, so the rating system understands and compensates for komi other than the default, we could have rated games with Japanese 6.0 komi just by setting that as custom komi?
That said, I highly recommend Tromp-Taylor/New Zealand rules, especially now that we have draws as intended.
I too like to be playing a theoretically fair game, even if I’ll never be good enough for it to matter, objectively.
With a custom game set to auto-handicap 9x9 NZ rules, I got an even game against a much lower ranked provisional player:
What should we expect? Provisional ranks are used for matchmaking but not handicap?
handicap vs someone with completely unknown rank makes no sense
Yes, this is expected, and has not changed recently.
>160, auto handicap gives even games (regardless of rank difference).>140, auto handicap divides rank difference by 2x.Right, the reasoning is that provisional players haven’t played enough games to determine their strength.
The details might be worth reconsidering once we have streams for starting ranks.
Okay, I updated the wiki as follows, feel free to correct:
It doesn’t make much sense to me to default to an even game, so I do hope we can change it along with assigning starting ranks!
I think I feel almost the opposite 
Even at an IRL tournament someone declared a certain rank and so was supposed to give me handicap stones but I won reasonably comfortably but of course I couldn’t tell much about their rank from it.
We then played an even game and I could make a reasonably accurate guess at their rank from it and it was much lower.
Then the rank could be adjusted and set for the tournament properly.
Welp guess im forgoing 9x9 on this site then. I consider myself a fairly decent 9x9 player and even I struggle on 5.5 komi as black. Leela (in my local computer and settings) always favours white right from the get go and now there’s an extra point to deal with. The most optimal moves favour white and with perfect play, white maintains that lead even in 5.5 and no mistakes were played in the lines I saw recommended by black to be losing.