According to senseis " The senior (stronger or older) player is normally the one who performs the nigiri (takes the handful of stones)", however that’s not helpful because both categories are in different dimensions (in a game with a stronger child vs. a weaker older man, who takes the white stones?). It’s just a curiosity, I don’t even know how frequently this method of initiating the game is actually used, but it looks very elegant 
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It’s quite common in face to face. Unless there is an handicap, which happens when players have determined their difference of strength before and agree to play with.
The age or strength rule does not really matter btw, there is no advantage to be the one who guess the parity or the one who grasp the stones.
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Probably most natural would be to go with whatever weighting of seniority and strength seems appropriate for the culture of the players or venue? If you’re asking how the Japanese would traditionally weigh that, I’m not remotely familiar enough with the culture to answer that
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It’s used very often, and in general, it is ranked first, and then if both have the same rank, based on seniority. So in your example, it would be the stronger kid, and then if they are the same rank, it would be the older man.
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In the USA, my observation has been that it’s generally the person who’s been with the club the longest, or the person who brought the goban, or the person who is already sitting down, or sitting closer to the stones if you’ve already sat down.
Maybe this isn’t a helpful comparison but… a lot of online game lobbies have one player designated the “host” who can usually invite other players and start the game. Being “host” doesn’t really mean much, but it usually defaults to
- whoever invited others to play
- whoever’s more experienced at navigating the game’s UI
Obviously there’s no actual “host” designation in an OTB game of go, but. I think nigiri is usually that kind of “temporary” seniority, which is often pretty obvious from context. The person who says “hey, wanna play? I’ve got a spare board over here” will usually be the one to grab stones.
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It could also be the person that has the white stones.
If you sit down at a random go board, or an assigned go board, chances are the white stones are closer to one player, and you can grab a handful.
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Here we are usually more pragmatic; when players sit on both sides of the board and pick up the bowl nearest to them, we just go with it and do the nigiri like that. Altought its quite common for stroger player to simply ask if the other one wants handi before starting, but thats only when players are already aware of their strenght difference ^^
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Anyway my go road being quite long now, I can’t remember one time I got in a conflict about nigiri. And that’s without caring on much about who should pick the stones.
Ok, so it seems that each place has its own habits There’s neither a strict universal rule nor total randomness, but indeed some kind of “power” associated with the grabber of white stones does seem to be a constant.
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