There is no handicap stones

In this game of handicap tournament player with a lower kyu (flovo) did not get his handicap stones, and he playing white. Can this be fixed?

Thank you in advance for your help.

Pass.

Yes, itā€™s a thereifixedit solution but other than that, the answer in the short run is ā€œNoā€. If it was scheduled as an even game your rating will adjust accordingly, as well, though I suppose youā€™re not playing someone 10 stones weaker in a tournament setting for the rating gainz.

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@smurph Thank you for your answer, but, unfortunately, I still do not understand how to solve this problem.

Here we have bigger level difference, but handicap set correctly:

Well, regardless of whether the tournament wasnā€™ set up correctly or whether thereā€™s a bug, thereā€™s nothing you could do except for restarting the tournament (in the former case) orā€¦ waiting for a backend fix (which also wouldnā€™t solve the issue right now).

So all you can do is to pass 9-10 times and imagine w was b.

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FWIW, you probably know already, but the problem is not ā€œit is a handicap game and he did not get his stonesā€.

The problem is ā€œit was supposed to be a handicap game, but it isnā€™tā€

So it looks like a bug in the tournament game setting up mechanism (or something we donā€™t know about ā€œhandicap autoā€).

GaJ

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My understanding is that PlayerColour:Random executes before Handicap:Auto and thus if the weaker player randomly gets white, then no stones is the most accurate. I believe a player will also not get any handicap stones if the rank difference is greater than 9.

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For reference: I created an issue on github
https://github.com/online-go/online-go.com/issues/676

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The game you linked also only features a 9 stone handicap for a 20 stone difference in rank. I guess reverse komi is a matter of taste, but 45% of the nominally required handicap is about as bad as 0% if itā€™s 11 stones fewer compared to 10. :slight_smile:

By the way, to make my temp solution a little more accurate, you can play out the passing variant (b passes until w has 9 stones on the board) and if endgame finishes, w places 7 stones in blackā€™s territory. That way it would pretty accurately reflect 9 stones for the weaker and 0.5 komi for the stronger player.

I see youā€™ve chosen to play without handicap though. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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It seems that itā€™s time to call @anoek here.

I think BHyden nailed the problem: the tourney setup magic has given white to the lower ranking player, which means no handicap can be applied.

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Yep I think thatā€™s exactly what is happening. I think itā€™s been like this for a very long time, although I donā€™t think right now I like this behavior, seems like if itā€™s a handicap tournament, white should always be the stronger player.

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@anoek This is how it should be, regardless of the system of the tournament (Olympic, McMahon, etc.) But what happened to the game? Was it a bug? If so, will it be corrected and when will it happen?

Existing games cannot be edited, bug or no.

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I understand it. I asked about the future. Situations where the weakest player is playing white in a game with a handicap will be repeated?

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We can predict that this situation will repeat until the bug is fixed.

Iā€™m not sure what determines who gets black or white - clearly it it somewhat random. If itā€™s fully random then youā€™d expect about half the games not to have a handicap until the bug is fixed.

I had a look at the current round of your tourney, and it seems that the pair you reported is the only one where the stronger player got black, out of 5 pairs. I canā€™t see any reason why that pair was special.

GaJ

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Well the bug was in how the game was created (stronger player getting black), but after that everything was created as expectedā€¦ since white was weaker, 0 handicap was awarded.

As for future games created, Iā€™m going to look at the pairing code today and see if i can get to the bottom of it, so future games should be created more appropriately.

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@anoek It would be great! Thank you very much!

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Well since we are on the topic, I want to post the question: do you think one stone handicap for each kyu is appropriate? Iā€™m 8 and heā€™s 14, and heā€™s given six stones handicap. I am looking at the board and literally stoned. Black everywhere. Iā€™m really not prepared to handle this. In my opinion 3 or 4 stones is fair game.

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You should be expected to win 50% of all games. If youā€™re not practicing handicap play, of course you wonā€™t know where to begin. Itā€™s a different kind of game.

However, assuming a 250 move game (global average) and an initial advantage of about 60-72 points, you only need to gain about 1-2 points per move (more than your opponent).

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Alrighty I found the root of the issue, when we switch to the new glicko rating system we missed a spot in the tournament match code where we were still using the old rating system columns (which are no longer updated), whoops! Thatā€™s been fixed and deployed, so the next round should look better.

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