I'm sure that most people are enthralled by the GoR categories. A long time ago, a change was made to these, which went without any comment. I have always believed the change to be bizarre, and I would like to explain why.

Firstly, it used to be the case that games, in order to be Class A, had to be played within a tournament of at least 2 days duration. This was struck down at an AGM, and rightly so. Why would it matter if you have a mini 1 day event? If the thinking times are broadly the same, the quality of the games should be the same, and thus they should be weighted the same. It seems obvious logic.

class A:
well organized tournament, no handicaps in the top group, recognized by EGF member
time limit requirements: adjusted time minimum 75 minutes, basic time minimum 60 minutes; (Fischer time: basic time 45 mins, adj. time for 120 moves: 75 mins - see remarks)
weight for inclusion to EGF ratings: 1.00

Now, the part in red was added in over a year ago at least. Is it a logical modification? I struggle to see why, and I am not even sure what the point of it is. If handicaps are allowed in the system, then they should be treated equally across all thinking times, and across all ranks. If the rule is trying to say, dan players don't want handicap games, well, why should they be treated specially? Besides which, the set up is illogical.

Consider a 3 round event, with 1hr main time, and two periods of purchased (Ing) 20 minute overtime..... Players A to H are either 2d or 1d, the rest of the players, I to Z are much further down the table, being weak kyu players. The event is a McMahon, but with handicaps, set at Rank difference - 2. Everyone's games are class A. Now, run the same event, but kick out the dan players... oops, we arrive at a class B now. To me, that just doesn't make sense.

If somebody introduced the modifier weight = 1 - (H*0.05) [max H = 9], I would understand. This rule change, I have never understood.

_________________
North Lecale

I agree completely. The alternative option is simply to not have handicap games rated (as I understand it, the majority of the objection to handicap games is the principle of it, and that only even games should count). However, once you do that, you of course include no komi games, and therefore you'll impact quite a lot of the games in a typical McMahon tournament played by the bottom half of the attendees. I think it would be a real turnoff if only 2 or even 1 of their 3 games were going to count towards rating.

I personally don't see the problem with including handicap games, professionals were happy enough with seeing handicap stones as rank difference classifications for many hundreds of years, and the rules of thumb with winning percentages has been well enough documented that we should have a fair idea now of how to incorporated it "fairly" into a rating system.

I think however, that the reason for the red caveat was the compromise between not putting off the weaker players and ensuring that all the top players handicap grumpiness was handled.

Actually, I think that part was there since at least 2005. That year the first tournament I organized was class B because there were handicap games on the top bar.

Fede, I checked, it may have been there in secret, but officially...
http://web.archive.org/web/200601120938 ... O/gor.html

class A - well organized tournament, recognized by EGF member
time limit requirements: adjusted time minimum 75 minutes, basic time minimum 60 minutes
weight for inclusion to EGF ratings: 1.00

_________________
North Lecale

Best: no handicaps. Second best: compromise of no handicaps above some level. Worst: Handicaps allowed for all.

I have discussed many times elsewhere why rating handicap games is bad. No time to repeat that now.

Since the best option is not wanted yet, choosing the second best option is better than nothing.

You are probably right about it being a non-stated rule previously, but it seems that EGD has always included that phrase. http://web.archive.org/web/200904090214 ... system.php

class A - well organized tournament, no handicaps in the top group, recognized by EGF member
time limit requirements: adjusted time minimum 75 minutes, basic time minimum 60 minutes
weight for inclusion to EGF ratings: 1.00


Anyway, sorry for going a bit off-topic.

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but what does "top group" mean? Would it affect tournaments attended only by kyu players?

I think Robert is correct that ranking handicap games decreases rating accuracy. But there are other considerations aside from scientific accuracy--like participation for example. On the one hand, if a rating system is too inaccurate it is worse than useless. On the other hand, a system--particularly one for amateurs--with too many onerous requirements is also worse than useless.

Not an easy call, IMO. But I think the compromise of removing handicaps at some strength level is reasonable. Ideally, tournaments would have enough participants at all levels so handicaps are not needed.

Thin tournament fields do not imply a requirement for handicaps: it is possible (IMO, desirable) to play even games.

It completely eludes me how a correlation of ranks and rating (about 100 rating points are supposed to represent 1 handicap stone) can be maintained if handicap games are edited out of the system.

Sure. Besides I see no good relation between ranks and ratings at all, at least not for each individual player.

But there's one thing both have in common: there is no good relation between both of them and your real playing strength either.

It could be that high handicaps can skew things quite badly?

I'm not sure whether you disagree with the statement or are just making a different point.

Concerning "Ideally, tournaments would have enough participants at all levels so handicaps are not needed.", I agree that having enough participants is good if the tournament system is suitable, e.g., if it is McMahon. I disagree with the, IIUYC, implication that handicap games in (ordinary) tournaments would be good (or good for a case of a too thin field).

Ah, ok-thanks. I didn't intend to imply the latter.

I don't think that the analysis done so far, published on the site by the way, has shown any problems with the inclusion of handicap games. If it was a problem, I would have expected somebody to have taken Handi out by now.

Anyway, I disagree with 1 rule for dan, another rule for kyu.

_________________
North Lecale

Not that I agree with all the implications, but I can understand why such a modification would be implemented - if the ultimate goal of a class A tournament is to see who is the strongest player on the day of the event, it would seem that playing the top group's games as even is a necessity. If you have these games handicapped it means it's a forgone conclusion who is the strongest and you might as well have declared him or her the winner beforehand.

Now, I don't understand all the nuances of how a class B tournament is different than class A, but what I gather from reading this thread, a class B is not weighted as heavily in rating calculations? I'll admit that seems a bit odd to me, and I agree that it's odd that the lack of sufficient top level players affects how rated games of players not in that top group are weighted...

That was an idea that I hadn't considered. I cannot really believe that it was what the EGF were aiming at though. It is not always the case that the top group games have to be even to find the winner. For example, in a tournament held in Ireland, there was a 7d. Now his nearest opponent was about 3d. So to make things interesting, they decided to add in a little (i.e. reduced) handicap. It seemed to go fine. My own opinion is that 4 stones is generally the largest acceptable width of a McMahon bar in the first place - so it's not really a crazy idea, what they did in this tournament.

The only difference between Class A and Class B is the weighting of the rating change. Say I win 100 rating points in my games, if the tournament is a Class A, I get those 100 points. If it's Class B, I only get 75, (Class C is 50).

_________________
North Lecale