I didn’t notice that any other game has any handicap. I think there must be a bug.
I also think that McMahon is presumably not compatible with handicap - my understanding is that mcmahon reduces the number of rounds needed to find the strongest player by starting with a ranking of all the players. The bar should be set so that all (and only) those with a realistic chance of winning are above it and start on the same number of points. There can be no handicaps in games between this top group.
The other pairings are between people with a (negative) score linked to their playing strength - the pairings should be between people with similar strengths so again there shouldn’t really be handicaps in these games. However, my experience of IRL tourneys is that there are often not enough closely ranked players below the bar and so handicaps of strength diff minus 1 are used. this means that the stronger player still has a good chance of winning but the games are not completely predictable.
So, in short, I don’t think McMahon is really compatible with handicap - if you want all games to be handicap games.
So in this tourney, I think it’s right that the top group (10k+) is not playing handicap games. However, there are clearly issues, since there is a player in the top group who is 11k (10.2 but was has just won a few games so presumably was weaker before) and then there is only one (as far as I can tell) handicap game between the two weakest players. neither of these things seem right to me.
I do recall seeing something about McMahon tourneys being glitchy though. I wonder if it’s just a tourney format to avoid for now until it’s fixed…
[Although that might be complicated since I think that really you should only set the bars of a mcmahon tourney when the entrants are known but as I understand it they are set when the touney is set up at the moment - I’ve never hosted a tourney on OGS so I don’t know how it works but if the TD can change the bars just before starting the tourney that might work? also I don’t understand what the lower bar (20k in this case) does… I only know mcmahon tourneys to have one bar]
Initial Pairing Bug for McMahon Tournament? - Tournaments - Online Go Forum (online-go.com)
at least 2 bug report that don’t seem to be resolved - Anything on GitHub anyone?
edit 2 - this is an interesting thread - There is no handicap stones - Support - Online Go Forum (online-go.com)
It seems that a combination of pairings and handicap can make things go wrong - i.e if the weaker player gets white then there will not be a handicap for that game since only black can get handicaps so maybe the pairings are done first and then handicaps are applied whereas the desire for handicaps should determine the colour each players gets (i.e. weaker players should always be black)
I don’t know if this is a setting is setting up the tournament.
github issue - closed as resolved Handicap sometimes get set to None in Tournaments with Handicap Auto · Issue #676 · online-go/online-go.com · GitHub