Should Ing rules give a handicap bonus to white?

General Go Discussion
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According to https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~wjh/go/rules/KSS.html, Ing rules should give a handicap bonus to white, like Chinese rules (off-by-one of AGA rules). We don’t currently do that on OGS. Should we?

  • The Ing rules themselves are silent on the subject.
  • https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~wjh/go/rules/KSS.html asserts the bonus applies, and has this editorial comment: “Note that Black giving compensation in handicap games is not found in any official documentation of the Ing rules. AGA President Phil Straus has requested this convention so that territory and area counting can give the same result in handicap games.”
  • Ing Counting at Sensei's Library has this comment: “Ah, I found out the answer on the AGA’s website [that’s a broken link!], in an interpretation of the SST rules written by Janice Kim, Michael Simon and Phil Straus. In handicap games, White receives komi equivalent to the number of handicap stones placed, and wins ties.”

Here’s a link to a pull request to enable it. Should we land it?

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Using the WayBackMachine, it seems that the article at the broken link is the same as the commentary hosted on the CMU personal page that you linked first.

See: cached version from WayBackMachine

The silence of the Ing rules can be viewed as an ambiguity or ambivalence. Thus, only the AGA seems to take a positive position on the matter. So, I say yes, as it seems okay to just follow the conventions of the AGA. If there are any complaints about the change, we can further discuss and revisit it.

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