Are you joking?! The links refers to the German Championship Preliminaries 2012. German Championships do not use handicap. The number of participants was 11. So 187. or 168. cannot make sense.



This is an example of "handicap only at the bottom of a tournament's players field".

This is an interesting way of looking at it.
This is an odd statement for me. Singling out the best player is always the main goal in a tournament where I'm from. Now that's not always possible due to a number of factors but the goal is to get as close as possible to an authentic top 8.

Love of the game and part of the journey to become stronger.

Interesting posts btw. Thanks.

Thanks for the clarification.



Sorry. I posted the wrong link, the links should be corrected now (the erronous link was supposed to be to the XXXII. Berliner Kranich, consistent with handicaps being only for the 15-20 kyu bracket, in any case).




All of my examples are. You did say "without handicap for all ranks", and the original poster is an absolute beginner.

It's one important goal of a tournament.



But this is the most important, for the majority of the players.

Well, It seems that I'm pretty much alone with my opinion, but let's say one of your friends plays a game you never heard of / you don't know the rules of or whatever. One day, he tells you that he won a big tournament in that game. You would normally assume that he was the best player, right? But then he tells you, he only won because of a handicap system and he isn't even very good at this game. In fact, he is just an average player, but because of a rank system that may not always be accurate and because of said handicap system, he won. That doesn't sound fair, does it? What's the point in becoming good, when you don't get a natural advantage out of it? In fact, you actually do get an advantage, but it is taken from you to make more interesting games.

(Edit: I misunterstood the McMahon-system, the next paragraph is irrelevant)
Another example, which is of course exaggerated and will probably never happen like that, but let's just think about it:
There is a tournament where all the top players are about equal strength, they are - let's say - 2d. All games between them are very close and often end with only a few points difference. This is a tournament with the MacMahon system, full handicap and 7 rounds. Every top player expects to win 3-4 games, because they are all (almost) equally strong.
One of them is a smart kid and registers as a 1kyu. That way he gets -2 points (because of the MacMahon system), however he gets 2 stones handicap against all the other top players. Because of this, he can easily win all his 7 games (remember, even games were very close, with 2 stones handicap, he can thus expect to win all games).
So in the end this player will get 5 points (7 games won, -2 for being 1kyu), while all the other 2d players can only expect to get 3-4 points. The one with 5 points will probably not win the tournament, because there will surely be players who won 5 or 6 of their games, but he is better than the average 2d player, only because he took advantage of the handicap system.

I'm not trying to say the handicap system is bad or you should play different systems in tournaments, plus my example will of course never happen like that, but I want to point out that there are clearly flaws in using a handicap system in tournaments.
When you only attend tournaments to have fun, you would probably not care about all of this, but I for myself think (and have been "taught") that tournaments and competition has the purpose of finding the best player. Otherwise you shouldn't give out prizes and such.

And, of course, many tournament do not use handicap for higher ranked players and only for weaker ones (which does make sense to me), but, like I said, I generally don't like the idea of handicap in competitive play.

NinG, MacMahon tournaments regard a win as an increase in rank, so a 1k who has won a game become a notional 1d for the purposes of the next round, and if he wins again, he becomes a notional 2d, etc. So while under-ranking yourself is one way to game the system, it only really works for short (e.g. three round) tournaments.

A tournament to determine the best player in the region (town/state/country) would be without handicaps, but clearly its only of interest to the top few players. The vast majority of players can't win it, but would still like opportunities to push themselves to their limits.

Simple analogies are to graded karate tournaments (where you compete within your belt colour) or age-based sport events where you compete within your age range.

No disrespect intended, but this is a sign of a lack of understanding of the McMahon system

After each game the handicap is recalculated, and in my experience most UK tournaments are at handicap -1. So, in this case, you'll have 7 people on 1 point and the trickster on -1. By normal tournament rules he should receive a no komi game, but lets assume it's at full handicap and he's at 2 stones, and wins. So, for round two, you'll have 4 people on 2 points, 3 on 1 point, and him on 0 points. He'll now be drawn against a 2d with no komi which is a much harder proposition. Let's say he wins anyway, and the 3rd round has 2 people on 3 points, 3 people on 2 points, and 3 people on 1 point. He's still 2 points behind the top end of the field, but from round 3 onwards he's going to be playing even games. Even with full handicaps, entering as two stones weaker is an unsurmountable obstacle for him to overcome unless he's strong enough to beat all 7 comfortably in even games.

Alright, see, that's why I shouldn't write so much when I've actually never played in a tournament
Thanks for clearing that up, I did misunterstand the system.
However, my point that the best player should win a tournament, not the player who played best for his rank still stands (there could still be other prizes, e.g. for the best kyu player or players who win all of their games and so on).

Edit:


Funny enough, I did karate as well, when I was younger, but that's a bit different, because "translated" to go that would mean only playing within your rank. Playing against stronger / weaker opponents, but giving / receiving handicap is still a different thing.

Actually I get the impression most people in the thread are either negative or neutral towards handicap tournaments.



Most tournaments aren't full-handicap. An important tournament, almost by definition, doesn't use handicaps among the people eligible for winning the tournament!

If I say "I won 5 out of 6 matches at a recent tournament", without explaining the MacMahon pairing system, I am being just as dishonest as if I brag about winning a tournament without mentioning it was a handicap tournament. In both cases it may be justified good result, but it doesn't mean you are stronger than everyone else at the tournament.



The only full-handicap tournament I can think of off the top of my head uses swiss pairing, so the "1 kyu" would win. The MacMahon tournaments I have played in that used handicap often used reduced handicap relative to current MacMahon score difference, which means the "1 kyu" would recieve less handicap as he kept winning, and would in the end have less chance than the others (though disrupting the tournament of those who got drawn against him in the early rounds).



Many tournaments give out a small prize to weaker players who do comparatively well for their rank (4 out of 5 wins for example). Prizes in handicap tournaments are given in the same spirit. And not every tournament requires prizes.



How do you feel about, for example, the handicap games in the http://senseis.xmp.net/?ProAmHoninboMatch ?

When I was living in New Mexico we held four tournaments a year. The usual turnout was around 18 players, ranging from mid-dan to double digit kyu. All of the games were handicapped.

For a while we affiliated with the AGA, which at that time required us to hold one non-handicap tournament a year. We had three dan players and neither of the two lower-ranked dans wanted to play without handicap, as they were two stones weaker than the top player.

We did not hold tournaments to search for the strongest player, we held tournaments to have fun.

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Another element (which both jts & shapenaji touched upon) is for teaching purposes (this is quite interesting ).

Something that Fulan might not realise if he is new to Go is just quite how huge the range of skill is. From 30k to 9d is about 40 stones handicap (though you don't usually play with more than 9). If a 30k played a 20k even 100 times the 20k would win 100 times. If a 20k played a 10k even 100 times the 10k would win 100 times. If a 1d played a 10k even 100 times the 1d would win 100 times. If a 9d played a 1d even 100 times the 9d would win 100 times. If a 9d played a 30k 1000000 times I would bet my life on the 9d winning 1000000 times (assuming he doesn't die of boredom). Such a wide range of skill, and the sharpness of winning probabilities (EGF Winning Statistics) between just a few ranks difference is stronger in Go than most other disciplines. For example in Chess it is not uncommon for a quite a bit weaker player to get a draw (or even a win) against a much stronger player: a ~2200 Elo friend of mine recently drew against Veselin Topalov (2750 Elo, former world #1). In Go this is like me, a 3d amateur, drawing against Kong Jie 9 dan pro, which is so ridiculously unlikely it's practically impossible (even with integer komi ). So handicaps allow players of different strengths to have close, and therefore more interesting, games.

As for tournaments, most aren't handicap because now the games are competitive and we want the stronger player to win. I agree winning handicap tournaments is rather vacuous as they are basically sandbagging contests. McMahon really is a wonderful system and is what practically every tournament in the UK (and Europe too I believe) uses. I think in America rank bands are more popular.

You cannot win a McMahon tournament by sandbagging or playing handicap games. Above the bar all games are even (see http://senseis.xmp.net/?McMahon for details). In fact entering with too low a rank can actually stop you winning if you enter below the bar. As an almost example take the recent British Open (http://www.britgo.org/results/2012/british). Malcolm Pang was new to tournaments and entered at 1d. He won all his games except his final one against Andrew Kay. Even if he won that game (and I (Andrew Simons) lost my final one) and hence he would be on 6/6 and the sole highest McMahon score he would not win the tournament as he was below the bar.

@edlee For teaching purposes and to explore the game I fully understand handicaps. I would do the same when playing lesser players in casuals. I'm mainly known for the old Street Fighter II series on arcade and I would either pick characters I'm not as familiar with or intentionally play in patterns so my opponent can learn what is punishable. It's not really the same as handicaps but I'm not playing at my optimal level.

So just to clarify I'm not against handicaps in Go. I couldn't possibly have formed an oppinion yet.

@uberdude About the last example. By below the bar you mean he played with a handicap?

No, the meaning is related to the McMahon pairing system, and is in principle unrelated to handicap. In Go tournaments players are pre-seeded into different classes based on their ranks. This is done because Go games take much time so often there would not be time for a knockout match between all participating players (and because such a knockout match would start with several rather boring games before moving on to the "serious" rounds)

Essentially a 5 kyu starts with 3 more "virtual wins" than an 8 kyu. This is meant to ensure that players mostly get to play challenging even games (by being paired against other players with close to the same score), but it also means that an 8 kyu is unlikely to end up ahead of a 5 kyu in the final results, even if he wins more games.

This is not so bad for the lower-rated players, because they wouldn't really have a chance of winning the tournament anyway, but if the top players in a tournament are (for example) a 4 dan and a 3 dan then the 4 dan shouldn't start at an advantage. So for every tournament you select a "top group", consisting of the top several ranks, and these all start with the same score. Players below this bar start with fewer points, so it's harder or even impossible for them to win the tournament.

EDIT: also, as an anecdote about the prevalence of handicap games in tournaments: I play mostly in reduced-handicap tournaments (use handicap if the score difference is greater than 2), and in 130 tournament games I have played handicap games twice.

The other thing to keep in mind is that for most kyu and lower dan players, they don't really have a chance against the top field of a tournament, but you still want them to come and play.

So usually the way it works is that you have brackets.

Handicap allows the brackets to overlap, so that you don't run out of even ranked opponents. With 40 ranks available, if you have 60 people in a tournament, it will be common for people to have to play people at at least a 2 rank distance. Without handicap, nobody's rating would change. The stronger players are so favored to win that the test doesn't give you any useful information. Hence, at the end of the tournament, most ranks wouldn't move at all.

So if you want to have accurate ratings on players, you HAVE to use handicap sometimes.

At the top of the tournament, there is usually an open section. (everyone equal to or above 6 dan, or sometimes above 5 dan, and all even games). So the tournament winner doesn't get helped by handicap.

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Explain, what is this? :(

I think he means relatively speaking

A game is a test of the ratings of 2 people.

If the game is a forgone conclusion, when the favored player wins, It is very difficult for me to reject the statistical hypothesis that the current ranks are accurate. As a result, I am not in a position to update the ratings confidently.

When I add handicap, and shift the winning probabilities to around 50-50, the test has a good deal more statistical weight.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

No, check that sensei's link to understand what the bar is. But essentially the bar in that tournament was 2d which means everyone 2 dan and above started on the same McMahon score of 1. A 1d starts at 0. A 1k starts at -1. A 2k starts at -2 etc. You can see that a few games were handicap (due to inability to pair people on the same McMahon score) in that results page I linked because they are red.

I just think it is kind of a personal thing if you like the system or not. Saying "you have to make handicap games, otherwise no one is having fun" doesn't convince me at all.

For example, when I played chess tournaments, I always looked forward to the games against stronger players, sometimes way stronger players. Those were the games I prepared hours if not days for, and those were the games I got the biggest motivation from. And because of the preparation and the huge motivation, I somehow played way better than normally. I always had at least a chance.

But it would kinda ruin it for me, if I received handicap. Because then I wouldn't try as hard as I normally would. I would go into the game saying "Oh well, it's 50-50 anyway" instead of "Alright, he is stronger than me, but I can do it, if I try my best! I have a chance!" And after the game, I would be a lot more motivated to become better and maintain that kind of skill level I showed against the strong opponent.

I'm trying to say, for me, it would probably get less competitive and less motivational to play a handicap game than to play a normal game, where chances are high that I lose. And that's exactly the opposite of what it's supposed to do.

But as I said, I think that's a personal thing. I've played a number of competitive games and sports so for me the idea of giving handicap to a weaker player just doesn't sound right.

However, it's not that I totally hate the handicap system. It does make sense somehow, at least for the weaker players in a tournament-field. It's just different from what I'm used to.