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, itās a thereifixedit solution but other than that, the answer in the short run is āNoā. If it was scheduled as an even game your rating will adjust accordingly, as well, though I suppose youāre 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 thereās a bug, thereās nothing you could do except for restarting the tournament (in the former case) orā¦ waiting for a backend fix (which also wouldnāt 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 āit is a handicap game and he did not get his stonesā.
The problem is āit was supposed to be a handicap game, but it isnātā
So it looks like a bug in the tournament game setting up mechanism (or something we donāt know about āhandicap 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 itās 11 stones fewer compared to 10. 
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 blackās territory. That way it would pretty accurately reflect 9 stones for the weaker and 0.5 komi for the stronger player.
I see youāve chosen to play without handicap though. 
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It seems that itās 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 thatās exactly what is happening. I think itās been like this for a very long time, although I donāt think right now I like this behavior, seems like if itās 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.
Iām not sure what determines who gets black or white - clearly it it somewhat random. If itās fully random then youād 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 canāt 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, Iām 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? Iām 8 and heās 14, and heās given six stones handicap. I am looking at the board and literally stoned. Black everywhere. Iām 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 youāre not practicing handicap play, of course you wonāt know where to begin. Itās 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! Thatās been fixed and deployed, so the next round should look better.
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