Handicaps

[yebellz]

The rank displayed next to a player’s name might not exactly be the rank used to calculate handicap.

I went to find an older post where I explained this, but it turns out it was in a previous thread also started by @Interestinggame

Automatic handicaps

In your game, you actually got a handicap of “1 stone”, which just means that you get to play as black with komi reduced to 0.5 points. This is the standard handicap for 1 rank difference, while receiving two stones is appropriate for 2 ranks difference. Your opponent’s rank was displayed as 18k, however, their underlying rating number also has an associated uncertainty (“deviation”) that is particularly high, which indicates that their rank is not so reliable. Normally, one would expect to se…