A player defeating a weaker player thinks he has achieved something. But it’s a delusion to think so.
A player who loses to a stronger player thinks he has not achieved anything. But it’s a delusion to think so.
In fact, players can learn their strength reliably only in an equal game. I invite you to find out your real strength. But do you have enough courage to do this?
Our tournaments are always held with automatic handicap. We hold round robin tournaments and small (from 8 to 16 people) competitions in the Swiss system.
Our tournaments always start only after filling all the available seats, so to start playing quickly, bring your friends with you. As soon as the tournament begins, the registration of participants in the next tournament of the same format begins also.
Without a doubt the person with the handicap stones has an advantage, depending on the rank difference. If you put a 13kyu versus a 15kyu, i’d expect the 15kyu to win every time with a two stone handi. Same thing with a 3kyu and 5kyu.
Actually this is not at all how handicaps and ranks are set up to work.
The definition of rank difference is in stones.
A 2k difference in rank is supposed to mean “these people are evenly matched when the less skilled has 2 stones”.
This would be achieved by having all ranked games played with handicap stones. As I understand it, that’s kind of what happens at IGS, for example: you can’t play automatch without handicap there (as far as I know).
The result of this is that if you are ranked 13k and can’t beat a 15k person witih 2 stones, then you lose, and your rank falls - you aren’t really 13k at all if you can’t beat a 15k person with 2 stones.
At OGS handicap is more the exception than the rule, so that “feels odd” to people who only play here, and our ranks likely diverge from sites where handicap is played more: we “think that” 2 stones is a challenge for 13k vs 15k, as opposed to knowing that it is even because all such games would be played that way.
I think that the meaning of “evenly matched” should be: “you can’t say who will win, both of them could win beacuse the handicap fills the gap between them”. Isn’t it?
So I expect that in handicap games each player should win 50% of the games.
That’s exactly the reason of my previous question about rating.
Expecially because I feel I’m overranked: I climbed up from 12k to 8k in a month (thanks to some game won by timeout too) and I expect to fall down as quickly. So I’m afraid I could loose all of my handicap games because of a wrong handicap.
Which would be a fast way to bring your rank to where it belongs. (If indeed you are overranked. I myself feel overranked too. If all of us feel overranked, maybe we are just ranked correctly??? Just a thought.)
Exactly. If you are overranked, you are likely to lose handicap games set up based on your rank, just like you are likely to lose non-handicap games against people the same rank as you.
This will cause your rank to fall until it doesn’t happen any more, then you will be correctly ranked.
It doesn’t seem like a problem: you will lose a few games till your rank corrects, but you will have the challenge of playing some people who are better than you and likely learn a lot in the process.
Thanks for the sharp reply – I was tempted to think that @Mogadeet was just making a harmless, semi-witty remark; but now I see that he was exposing his underlying stupidity for the world to see …
I’m sure glad that he made the remark before I did.
I’d suggest that folks please refrain from making ad hominem attacks, especially if it’s just about a harmless joke, even if not everybody thinks it’s funny.
