If the population of players is large enough, it’s usually not so hard to find players around your level, especially when your level is quite common in that population.
So if your level is roughly OGS 6k, you’ll find plenty of suitable opponents (say between 2k and 10k) on OGS and handicap won’t be really necessary in most of your games.
But in an environment like a small local go community playing over-the-board, the situation is different. If your local community consists of only a small number of players of widely varying level, even games won’t be much fun. Handicap will expand the pool of opponents with whom you can play a game that is challenging and interesting for both.
I can understand that many people say that handicap fixes a problem that doesn’t exist on OGS. But if your level is far away from OGS 6k, you may find yourself in a situation similar to the small go community I described above. I have seen regular complaints about novices having difficulty finding suitable opponents on OGS. I think that a higher acceptance of handicap games on OGS could mitigate such issues.
I think many users on OGS do not want to play handicap games.
When I create a custom game without disabling handicap, more often than not someone accepts the game, then immediately cancels the game without playing any move.
This appears to be specific to OGS. I hadn’t encountered this before.
I had always heard of sandbagging as “something exceptions that an extremely small minority of users do”. Only here on the OGS forums have I heard that sandbagging is very common on OGS. This strikes me as very unusual and very perplexing. People who care about their rank tend to want to increase their own rank, not decrease it.
From what I understand, some players would intentionally lower their rank, probably by resigning rated games against bots or some other method. Then they would play against unsuspecting human opponents, and experience the pleasure of trouncing them.
That also has been discussed before. Ranked games against bots also have a potential benefit for novices. When novices have difficulty finding a human opponent, they can always find a weaker bot to play against to get a rank. Once you have a rank, it will become easier to find human opponents.
Sandbagging is not limited to OGS or online go in general. I think it’s a common thing in online gaming in general, but there it may be called “smurphing”.
The form of sandbagging to which you refer is known as “rank manipulation,” and it is a trivial form compared to alt sandbagging. In alt sandbagging, someone creates a new account in order to appear weak. When they rank up, usually after six or eight games, they create another new account, and so on. It is overwhelmingly the most common form of sandbagging. Most people are unaware of it—here and on other servers—because it is not provable with certainty except by a moderator, and, in the era of VPNs, not even by mods in many cases. It is very common for alt sandbaggers to have hundreds of accounts.
Since I was called, I would say that what you are describing is the crux of the matter and the question is:
“Why does skill differenence not being accurately reflected on the players’ rankings affects a handicap game, more than an even game”.
As far as I am concerned the answer is this:
If you land in an even game against a stronger opponent, the difference, as far as the game is concerned, lies only in the skill of the two players.
For example:
Let’s say that we play a game between us. We are of the same rank and skill, but somehow, you were recently playing mostly on another server or went to a teacher and now you are really 2 dan and the system obviously hasn’t accounted for that yet, right?
What will happen?
We will have a game, you will be playing better, we will probably both have fun and I will most likely lose the game. Seems normal to me.
Let’s say the same scenario happens with someone that is 10k and the system now rewards them with 6 handicap stones, but they had been on a different server/teacher and are now on par with 4k. Now not only you have to face an opponent whose rank does not match their strength (which is one thing), but you have the extra problem of having to face them on a board with handicap stones (which is another thing).
So, rank not being reflected properly creates ONE problem with even games and TWO problems with handicap games.
Precicely. But on an even board, even against a dan player, you might have a fun game with many moves, without they stack of handicap games placing an extra burden and making short work of the game and restraining the strategies you can use. (when playing handicap games, you have to go for maximum efficiency and ultra-thin/fast shapes early game)
If true (and though I suspected some instances of it, I never thought it was as pervasive as @Conrad_Melville writes) , this seems to be a good argument to have an optional filter for who can accept open games we offer, based on the number of games they completed (and maybe even require some number of moves in each game for it to count toward the requirement). I know for sure at least Dragon GS offers this.
I’m always excited to see [?] because it might be someone’s first time playing Go. I always ask “How long have you been playing?” or “How did you find out about Go?” or something like that.
I play a lot of games with handicap=automatic. Despite the facts and sometimes prejudices there are against handicap go, I prefer to lose to a 14 kyu who gets a two stones head start on a 9x9 instead of a no handicap game which is not really challenging.
So if @flat_chocolate_mount wants to play a (teaching) game with handicap, I am ready.
