But I have an opinion! 
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You have the right not to vote.
You pointed out rhetorical fallacies before, but what’s with this habit of yours of making only loaded questions? I really don’t understand it. Your first poll could not be answered truthfully, and nor can this one. I think this is not really helping your case.
If we forgo the (biased) assumptions of whether handicap is fair; whether chance, probability and randomness mean the same thing; or whether tournaments are supposed to tell you who’s the biggest fish in the pond (yes, I’m looking at you @S_Alexander, there’s always bigger fish), the question is actually pretty simple: Do we want handicap ASTs alongside the existing ones, or do we not?
I for one would be in favor of such tournaments existing, for whosoever wants to play in them. I dare not answer any of your polls, though.
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I don’t think these are too heavily loaded questions, but everyone is free to disagree.
If you don’t like the poll you are free to make an “unloaded” poll.
There is no obligation whatsoever to vote, but I am curious why you not dare answer.
And to all those people who voted that they don’t want a fair chance: you have the right to challenge (significantly) stronger players only. 
With any handicap Komi or stones you have to overplay by definition because you’re losing…
Presuming only beginners play handicap games? Have pros not played handicap games vs Katago and leela?
Just your perspective on what’s happening. I’d say if you weren’t playing better or more skilfully by some metric then you wouldn’t win even starting with an advantage.
You’re still talking as if ASTs are some revered prize, like and irl tournament with prize money. They really aren’t, you can win and play no more than a couple of moves in some of the live and blitz ones.
I really don’t understand this perspective. Let’s ignore the fact we’re talking about handicap games like they’re taboo. Playing an even go game isn’t like a coin flip. Maybe you can model the results of even games between equally rated opponents or properly handicapped games with opponents of different ranks as Bernoulli trials but that doesn’t mean that that result is somehow predetermined. You can’t just decide to play all your moves on the first line because somehow you’re due to win this game.
Except it isn’t unless you’re completely ignoring the fact they’re playing a game. It may appear random if both players are playing to the best of their ability, ie using their skill at the game. You can’t just pair equally ranked players and have one player play nonsense and still expect to win any fraction of the games.
I agree with this 
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I imagine there must be one at least one professional player that would feel a little disrespected if their achievement was compared to winning a series of coin tosses.
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No you can just play at your best, not trying specifically to induce wrong answers but keeping the way to ask some not obvious questions sometimes. Then you can win by the cumulating failures of your weaker opponent without having to search for trick moves. There are some exemple games pro vs pro with high handicap where black loses just because if he tries for a win with a wrong spirit (too defensive), not because white tricks him ( would be hard between 9p)
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I kind of know what you’re saying. You’re saying in theory you can win by only your opponent making mistakes and not by you playing any different than usual.
However presuming that your opponent won’t make enough mistakes to lose the game given the handicap, do you just accept defeat or do you ‘test’ them with a move that doesn’t work, like a trick move or an overplay?
There is a difference between asking a question and a trick play.
For example a boshi at 9 stones on the edge is normal play, legitimate. Black has wrong and right way to go away from it. A high boshi (2 spaces) is more a trick play because is less promising for white if black answer well (more cata in view for w)but the reading is more deep required. The nose under the techu is another trick move, if answered correctly will result in a white catastrophe.
The book I referred : “secret chronicle of handicap go”.
I had opportunity to play 5-6 stones handicap games with pros, I assure you they won without tricks (I won a very few). I try the same attitude with weaker players.
With my own students, I don’t use trick until they win. Then they win I play a last one before upgrading the handicap, in which I allow myself everything (well that’s not that terrific either, I don’t like risks that much). And when the win is assured, I try a win by the smallest margin (it makes your student feel better afterall and it’s entertaining for me).
Promising DDK don’t complain on handicap, it’s just a fun time where they grasp a better mastery of making your stones work together, connect (and keep disconnected w), sacrifice sometimes and wait to get points in a natural way. Same time learn to close boundaries, basic life and death… They learn to use as most as possible the essential mechanism: the capture or even better the threat to capture and avoid the complex things which is something you can export to even games later too. They enjoy to think the next game will be one stone less with not only approaching the strength more but with discovering new fields of investigation (like losing that center stone, or having white in a corner first at 3 stones)
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If you want honest opinions (and if you do not want to irk me 
) please try to refrain from insulting or shaming people who disagree with your opinion. Please provide arguments, not completely personal judgement.
As we still disagree on the distinction between equal and fair chance, I am afraid the poll really does not have much merit. Perhaps you might consider rewording it.
If you instist on your definition of fairness (though personally I don’t think it can be fully defined in such a simple way) I would like to offer my interpretation that by giving one player a handicap one is NOT treating the players eqaually - literally giving more stones to one of them and thus favouring one.
Hence both options seem to defy themselves in my opinion. You would not say: “that’s not fair, he only won because he played better moves.” Or would you? 
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I will not let this discussion escalate, therefor this will be my last post in this topic.
I do hope however that you and others will carry on discussing this matter and focus on how some AST’s could be transformed into more honest tournaments.
That’s all.
I have personally a bit split feelings about handicaps.
In theory, i prefer even games with players who are roughly close to my skill. I have the ranks and ratings hidden here, and i like playing without actually knowing which one of us is (or should be) the stronger player. Without knowing the ranks i feel like i can play better moves myself, but having handicaps will totally tell me which one of us is the stronger player and by how much.
On the other hand, i know that handicaps are serving two purposes. The purpose for black is that hc stones gives them decent change to win, but for white the purpose is to provide adequate challenge and keep the white player mentally engaged with the game.
I mean, sandbagging and easy wins are fun sometimes, but most of the times when im playing somebody way below my rank, it will turn into very lopsided game very quickly. If i can quickly get the lead, and if i can judge that my opponent is noticebly weaker player than i am, i know i can prolly win it without putting much mental effort into the game. And when i stop putting the mental effort into it, big part of fun-ness disappears instantly. So, i prefer handicaps when my opponent is a ddk xD
If i had to choose how pairings in AST works, i would vote for “non-handicap game with the person who’s closest to my skill level that i havent still played with that tournament”
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We should probably come back to this good point too. There are already OGS Title tournaments that use handicap and I believe you get trophies for winning them as you would for ASTs Mingren Handicap Title Tournament 2019 and Meijin Handicap Title Tournament 2020 for 2019 ones.
I think we also need to consider the discussion in the original context of the post.
It doesn’t really matter whether any one person prefers to play with or without handicap stones, whether it really constitutes a win or involves less skill or some other notions like that. Really we want to focus on whether ASTs with handicap should be considered.
It seems fair to say they shouldn’t all be replaced by tournaments with handicap by the default. It’s likely that if handicap is introduced it should be a separate set of ASTs which you obviously have the option to choose whether to play in or not.
Realistically you also need to consider the actual context of generic ASTs. I would wager most of the blitz/live ASTs have less than 10 players and more than likely have large rank disparities. I would say that it is likely to have a 25kyu, maybe an 18/19kyu some higher ddks like 11-13kyu, some sdks 3-7kyu and maybe a dan player ~1/2 dan.
In this case you’re really only looking at maybe at most one even (in the context of odds of winning) game with about 10 players in that tournament, in theory the rest of the games should be decided (upsets can happen of course, me (7kyu) vs atorrante (11kyu) at the time Tournament Game: Live 19x19 Swiss Tournament 2020-09-08 16:30 (65220) R:1 (shinuito vs Atorrante)).
I think if you want to encourage participation in these ASTs you have to give people a reason to play, I wouldn’t want an even game vs an SDK or low dan player as a 25kyu, so there’s no point really in joining a swiss or knockout tournament AST at the moment unless you see another player of your rank, but if everyone following that logic, no-one joins.
I think correspondence can possibly be dealt with separately since in theory you can have way more people sign up, because having to play 10 games is less daunting when its spread over a month or so, than if you have to sit through a 4-5 round swiss tournament with rounds starting immediately as soon as games in the last round end.
Again take it into context the real meaning of winning one of these too. It could be that you won a tournament with you as the highest rank, that you prevailed over players much higher rank than you and won, or that no games were actually played because people timed out or just resigned when they saw the rank disparity. The trophy has no predefined meaning, it’s not like winning an actual Go congress tournament or Go association tournament, or even like winning the OGS title tournaments which take years to finish.
This would mean you set up the game and assign colors at random. Handicap games aren’t discrimination free, they favour black. You are using a d predefined property (rank) for discrimination.
Discrimination is the act of making distinctions between human beings based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they are perceived to belong.
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On the topic of ASTs: I don’t know why we need them at all. It is easy to create your own tournament with the settings you want. You can even add a rank restriction, preventing unbalanced games at all.
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Because we want golden cups! (well bronze and silver sometimes too)
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I’m not personally interested in handicap games/tourneys, but I wouldn’t mind if some of the ASTs were handicap. I wouldn’t play in them, but I wouldn’t mind.
Don’t user created tournaments also give trophies though?
Seems to me like the real value in ASTs are the live and blitz tourneys. It’s more convenient for people to decide to join a live or blitz tournament that’s starting very soon opposed to one they have to plan in advance to make time for.
Correspondence though? There are plenty of those to go around. 
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Try to.
All I’m saying is that we have a component of luck in our games. The result is dependent on our and opponent’s skill and preparation plus some luck. By being better at the game, taking the game more seriously, having better internet we’re trying to increase our chances in the game, make our side of the coin heavier. But luck is luck. We all at some point won games against much stronger opponents because we got lucky. So the game is tossing a rigged coin. We can try to push our chances but there’s still randomness. Even if you’re 98% likely to win, you can lose because that specific time coin decided to landed wrong way for you.
Adding handicap in tournaments is trying to eliminate skill part of the coin toss and give more weight to random part of the toss.
If one player is playing deliberately worse then they aren’t of equal strength anymore, are they? The player who made the decision to play like that made their side of the coin lighter. And now they have worse chances in coin tossing game. How much worse depends on how much worse they decided to play, of course.
What part of coin flipping analogy made you think I’m talking about a predetermined result? Haha. Only if you mean predetermined by god.
Doesn’t make it less true.
Summary
Poor, poor pros
Why are we even arguing about whether handicap is good or bad?
Some players love it, some hate it, and some don’t care much, but it’s ultimately a subjective question that comes down to personal preference.
So, I think @Vsotvep already summed it up perfectly with:
Let’s have both and live in harmony with those that prefer the other
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I don’t believe that.
But yes sure, you can say there is some randomness in each game. People are different and have even different emotional responses to the game which can affect their decision making. However whittling every win or loss down to luck is a bit demeaning. If somebody fought a ko for forty moves to win a game by half a point and you tell them they got lucky, they might agree or they might think you’re being mean to them for no reason.
I think you should try to consider it from this perspective too.
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