I think handicap can be a good stimulus, at least IRL.
When I had played for some 6 months, I found a mentor who was about 1k. I would go to his house at least once a week to play. It started with me getting ~9 stones handicap and over the next ~6 months I slowly progressed to about even against him. Every time the handicap was reduced by one stone was very satisfying and a stimulus to keep going.
The analogy is not so well chosen, as practicing to make your stones together seems much more fundamental and relevant to play a game as peddling on a bike with little wheels.
Your comment is misdirected. I did not make the analogy, espojaram did. Indeed, my comment was, strictly speaking, off-topic, because it had nothing to do with go. I spoke specifically, and strictly, about the inadvisability of using training wheels, except in a very few cases. If you have something to say on that topic, I will consider it, although it would also be off-topic.
This thread has become rather humorous, because it is no longer attending strictly to the topic. There are several categories of possible answers to the topic question. The reason may be technical, it may be demographic, or it may be because a lot of people on OGS don’t like handicap games. A sub-category of the last is why people dislike handicap games, and this has brought responses about the value of handicap games and why people should like them. That wasn’t the topic question. And it is rather similar to arguing that someone should like…[fill in your favorite hated food]. This digression in the thread brings us no closer to answering the topic question.
Probably I’ll get crucified for this, but calling it out anyway: this thread is a shining example of a certain spirit I’ve picked up here. Beginner asks an honest question, 64 messages later people are still bickering. To add to that, I’ve felt that most of the responses to my question were rather snide and unhelpful from the start. Maybe good practice to respond appropriately to OP and then have meta conversations in a separate thread?
We don’t really have an answer to your question. The automatch does create handicap games
However most players on OGS prefer to create custom games without handicap. Probably there is no good reason, it’s just a habit.
Honestly, it’s probably just because no handicap is the default setting when you create a challenge and most people didn’t care to change it.
That said, feel free to request handicaps if you prefer to have them. I think handicaps are valuable tools to balance the game, specifically on sites like OGS where there are fewer players in the same rank.
To be fair, there isn’t really much agreement in the Go community, at least the Western Go community, about a “right” way to teach beginners… and many other things, really.
I agree with you that sometimes a beginner asks a question and the responses feel more like they’re saying “Um, that’s the wrong question, dummy”, rather than trying to help. I’m genuinely not sure if it’s because there’s a problem in this community or if it’s just a combination of the beginners being confused to start with and the following factors:
By nature, Go is a game that relies a lot on intuition and mutual trust. I believe because of this, at least in part, there’s a plethora of differing opinions about all sorts of things in the community, and when one member of the community tries to give their take to answer a question, there will usually be somebody else strongly disagreeing with it.
Another reason is that, in the West, Go is an activity chosen by people with an intellectual tendency, statistically, so many of us tend to have an inquisitive/philosophical/scientific approach to things. In practice, this means welcoming disagreements as long as they’re civil (uh, usually), welcoming a discussion of the nuances of a complex subject, and so on.
There’s no strong agreement on the principles themselves, and there’s especially no agreement on which principles should be taught first. Subjectively, I’d even say there’s a huge blind spot when it comes to which principles are likely to confuse a beginner even more.
To go back to the question you asked, case in point, I’d like to point out that the theories offered by the two replies immediately before mine are pretty much the opposite at the core. One says “automatches have handicap enabled by default but most people actively disable it”, the other says “custom challenges have handicap disabled and most people don’t care to change it”.
So do people not care or do people actively dislike the handicap? It’s clear that we don’t have a unanimous agreement on this, and any individual’s answer is just a complete guess.My take is that I believe most matches in the site are automatches (based on the ease of use, on how the GUI design leads people to them, and how they’re actively promoted in the FAQ wiki), so if anything I think the first theory is more likely to be right.
To go back to the question you asked, and what the previous replies said: my take is that I believe most matches in the site are automatches (based on the ease of use, on how the GUI design leads people to them, and how they’re actively promoted in the FAQ wiki), so if anything I think it’s more likely that people actively disable it in the settings (assuming it’s even true that OGS players avoid handicap games).
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This also aligns with my personal, anectodal, experience as a beginner: as soon as I ended up in a handicap game by automatch, I thought there was no way the handicap system was fair among low-level players (I have many times been matched with players who have an established lower rank than me and seem to play better or viceversa), so I disabled it in the automatch settings, and then I kinda forgot about it.
So if it didn’t happen that I recently came to the conclusion that handicap matches are actually instructive and fun, I might have never played a handicap match again.
Is this the same experience most DDKs have? Many DDKs? Just a few? Just me? Who knows.
(By the way, yes, I chose the cycling analogy poorly, but hopefully it conveyed the point I was trying to make, sweet lord 
)
My experience is that when creating challenges with handicap on OGS, two out of three people who accept the challenge will cancel it after the first move. This doesn’t happen when creating challenges without handicap. So there appears to be a clear tendency of players to dislike handicaps on OGS.
This wasn’t the case on other servers. I used to play on KGS and over there most games were played with handicaps. I think on KGS, players were afraid to play without handicap, because in terms of ranks, losing against a player with a lower rank without handicap costs a lot, and winning against a player with a lower rank without handicap brings no reward. Whereas playing with handicap brings the same risk and reward as playing against someone of equal rank, since the handicap compensates perfectly for the rank difference.
So this distaste for handicaps is definitely an OGS phenomenon.
I play almost always with handicap=auto.
Maybe a few percent resigns after one move.
How about we do a handicap bonanza. People who rarely play handicap play a series of handicap games and complain about the experience?
because i a not having the cation to read all the discusion
Did somebody mention that some players recieving the handycape stones playe weaker than if they normally play. At least for me thats normal
And also their a people who are getting stronger when they give handyape stones because they tend to be more focused now
Also wantet to add that i prefer the 1ß points per rank system for each difenrence in rank minus 1
Thtat means eg 10k agaisnt 7k the 10k player gets black and has +20 komi or 20.5 if you want to avoid draw. And if 10k v 9k then the weaker player gets black and 0 or 0.5 komi
That’s interesting observation.
In my opinion, the weak get weaker because he didn’t learn how to use these stones. Like using them to cash points and being far too passive.
The stronger may be more focused too, as the game will be less easy to win.
