I was curious as to whether or not white gets komi in a handicap game -- or is that really up to the players? I played three games today with someone who's just learning, and when we scored, I didn't give myself any komi points at the end. Also, does it depend on the board size, or is it universal?

Well, it's always up to the players, but conventionally white doesn't get komi in a handicap game.

We also normally say that white wins jigo games, which is represented as giving white 0.5 komi in handicap games. This is what you'll usually see.

Komi for different board sizes is debatable. In my experience, the 'standard' 6.5 is normally used on all the common board sizes.

There are different combinations of stones, komi, and reverse komi that can be used in handicap games. I like to use the AGA Handicap chart from Sensei's library to set handicaps. There is also a discussion on Sensei's about handicaps for smaller boards.

I would like to add that setting normal integer komi of 6 resp. 0 is also quite usual. Jigo is not a bad thing.

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Just out of interest, in New Zealand rules handicap games have no komi and white simply passes the first n-1 moves, where n is the handicap, which can be very harsh if you don't have a prior agreement to take the "normal" points...

Also, I agree with Harleqin, if you don't *need* a winner (like in a tournament) why not allow ties? (I like komi=7 for this, though obviously =0 for handicap games)

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Honestly, I forget komi even exists half the time. When I do remember, I still find myself using the 5.5 points rather than the 6.5 or 7.5. Habit, I guess. But, anyway, I also don't see any problems with a tie in private games.

With chinese rules it's common with 1 komi per handicap stone but I guess that's to make half scoring work correctly.