Well no system is perfect, but I’ve heard people say that to be a good player you need to adapt to any situation - I think that was said on this thread, and if handicap stones change the nature of play then I’d say that comes under adapting to a different situation. As for style, a famous Jazz player once said “Style is limitation.” and I think that applies as much to Go as it does to anything else. I guess in the end people are going to go with what seems right, but I for one would rather give a weaker player the handicap and challenge myself to deal with it, than take an easy but boring win without. As you say If it’s not fun, why play?
Chinese rules allow free placement of handicap stones 
I think I’ll make the November handi games tourney use Chinese rules
Meanwhile, I have invited you to join the oct 2014 tourney.
interestingly I’ve just been creamed by a player who gave me eight stones, Strangely it was me doing almost all of the capturing but they flowed through my barricades like morning mist, then turned to iron. This is the game - https://online-go.com/game/1028331 - I haven’t had a good look yet, but I expect I can learn something from how I was eaten alive. I’m assuming from the name that I was playing a woman, and I wouldn’t say she played aggressively - She was just very agile.
I’d ask for a review in the Teaching —> Reviews section of the forum
I myself feel too weak to review, but just a few things that came to my mind when I quickly went through that game:
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You offered your opponent lots of cutting points.
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Letting your opponent drive your moves is bad. Sometimes it is better not to deny White some territory, but instead to use Sente elsewhere. On the top left side it seemed you were just following your opponent’s moves blindly while there were (IMHO) bigger moves for B to be made elsewhere, thus securing other territories for B.
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And yes, Sente … better to use it wisely than to close a one-or-less-point gap (F17).
All in all …not a too bad game for B I think.
Greetings, Tom
i can confirm that my rank has gone up after losing, twice that I can remember. The most recent one i lost by 2.5 points to someone 3 ranks above me, and my rank went up nearly half a kyu.
I would personally prefer handicap games with <6 handi stones. The reason for this is simple: if too many stones are given, the handicapped player can easily “hold the advantage” even if losing many points. Winning 6+ handi games could develop a overly conservative attitude of playing, which would do its harm in even games.
This is also acknowledged in real-life handicapped tournaments: the tournament director would rarely set up games with 5 or more handi stones.
@matburt @anoek It would be cool if we can add a max. handi ceiling… 
As of now we only have none handicap or auto.
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[quote=“xhu98, post:27, topic:2274, full:true”]
I would personally prefer handicap games with <6 handi stones. The reason for this is simple: if too many stones are given, the handicapped player can easily “hold the advantage” even if losing many points.[/quote]Mh… I have played against 21 and 23 stones (with beginners in Real Life who insisted < shrug >) … and won 
then finally they acknowledged that the 19x19 board might be a bit large at the moment. And the guy who currently play with me IRL every Friday needs 14 stones on 19x19. We still enjoy these games, though I always almost sh!t my pants when I’m confronted with that many B stones.
[quote]Winning 6+ handi games could develop a overly conservative attitude of playing, which would do its harm in even games.[/quote]Mh, in those games it apparently lead to a mistakenly too self-assured attitude.
[quote][…] It would be cool if we can add a max. handi ceiling…[/quote]I assume you mean as an option, right? I wouldn’t want that forced on me.
[quote]As of now we only have none handicap or auto.[/quote]Uhm …
Or am I misunderstanding you?
Cordially, Tom
I don’t think that’s the expected behavior for the ranking system. My understanding (perhaps I’m wrong) is that losing should never increase your rank and winning should never decrease it. I don’t believe the system takes into account margin of victory nor makes a distinctions between winning by resignation, timeout, or final score.
What you’ve described might be a bug. Perhaps, a developer such as @matburt could chime in?
Hi @Uranus we’ve seen this a few times now and we’re looking into it. What game(s) did this happen on? The one you mentioned where you lost by 2.5 was game 889307 it was an unranked game and didn’t affect your rating.
Well… you can’t play a rated game with someone more than 9 ranks higher than you… so there is that.
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@trohde @matburt I realized I didn’t make my suggestion quite clear… 
Apologies. I meant that in the tournament setups, there were only two options: either none handi, or auto based on the rank difference. And I realized that people preferred <=4 stones for all games (this happened when I was managing Quick & Review tournaments in GO Basics group.)
Yes, that will be optional, not imposed 
@matburt This handi-ceiling option would be cool if it’s in our next patch! 
It also happened to me. I won by few points against a lower rank player and it decreased my rank. I didn’t say anything cause it was fair, the game is old now, so I don’t think I can get the game link now, but I’ll look for it
nevermind, the other game in question was deceptively close to another one that made me go up, it actually made me go down 1 point.
I have a question about handicap games.
Do handicap stones affect your rank in the same way as a non handicap game?
for example. If I play someone who is two stones stronger without a handicap and beat them, will my rank go up the same or more than if i’d played them with a handicap?
I havent played many handicap games if you didn’t notice…
Handicap should adjust your theoretical rank and therefor change the amount of rating points awarded/lost in a game.
It’s basically this system.
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As @flowing said… if you are a 10k and you play an 8k with 2 stone handicap your rating will change as though you played an even game. If you beat them without taking a handicap then your rating will increase by a much larger number of points.
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I feel like the site would be more friendly to new players in general if the “auto handicap” option was checked by default. Most open challenges I see do not have them enabled, and I doubt it’s just that stronger players want to crush newbies. I think they just use the default options.
Just the two cents of a bad player.
edit: Oops, and a bad poster! Didn’t realize this thread was old, sorry!
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Definitely. In a sparsely populated server where the most convenient way to get a game is to accept an open challenge, it’s not that good that the norm is for ranked, no-handicap games. Sure, playing with people who are substantially more or less skilled is not a problem in itself, but for purposes of keeping the game interesting, don’t encourage people to maximize the probability of winning when either winning or losing is almost a foregone conclusion from the start. This makes the game boring, especially for the stronger player, and frustrates the desire for a rated game. People obviously play a lot of mindless go on this server, and so set up games fairly mindlessly. Sensible defaults are therefore important.
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I should really add my 2 cents here for the record, because I’m one of those people who post challenges with handicap turned off. There are 2 main reasons why I do this:
- Handicap games hurt my rank.
I used to leave handicap on in all my games (I think it used to be default, or maybe it still is). The noticeable impact was that I could never get my rank above 2k. Players like fish&chips 8k, who used to be very active, routinely crushed me with their handicap stones. That player was ranked 6k at the time.
At the same time, standard games against fellow 2k-4k players were relatively easy, and I could also beat some 1k with some determination. Then there was one 10k (KGS 3d) who I barely managed to beat with 8 handicap….
In the end I had the impression that handicap did not work as well to correct the ranking difference as it is sometimes held up to do. So I started to play without and quickly made my way to 1k (currently 2k, but I’m sure it’ll go back up soon 
)
As a method for raising the black players’ rank, handicap is a very coarse and crude instrument, compared to variable komi or time odds, which does not disturb key gameplay features (see point 2).
For those who say that I care too much about rank, that it is just a number, that I could get it set anywhere by a moderator and that I should just play for fun:
What can I say? Trying hard is fun, winning is fun, and I am a competitive person
- Handicap changes the game.
Somehow nobody agrees when I draw a comparison between handicap Go and piece odds in chess. The concept is very similar. The fact that white doesn’t have two corners fundamentally changes the strategy in the game. In my eyes, it breaks the beauty of Go, part of which is the idea that a player can only lose by making a mistake.
Also, handicap games are distinctly star-point flavoured. If you can’t get enough opponents of your own exact rank, you will soon have an overdose of 4-4 joseki. I like some diversity.
The thing about mistakes though, is that when there’s a skill discrepancy, almost any move can be a mistake, since the stronger player will have an answer to it. I have to say I’ve come to agree with those who say handicap stones change the game, but without them the stronger player is pretty much guaranteed a win, which I guess the weaker player can write off as a learning experience, but it’s demoralising to play a game that’s lost from about the fifth stone…