Life In 19x19

I don't see why it is a problem that a 20k won the 1994 EGC 13x13 tournament?

If the handicaps are truly equalizing, then we would expect a 20k to have as much chance of winning it as a 7d, and we would see a 20k win the event roughly once every 30 years or so.

We would also see a representative sample of the playing population reach later rounds.

So, for example, if we look who qualified for the 2010 final 16 KO (http://www.egc2010.fi/results/13x13-finals.pdf), we can see that the handicap system was apparently very much to the advantage of the stronger players. Only one kyu player reached the last 16, and only one player weaker than 5 dan reached the last 8.

On the other hand, if we look at the 2014 results (http://www.egc2014.com/rezultate/1313.htm) we see that 6 kyu players, ranging from 2 kyu to 12 kyu, reached the last 16. So did 10 dan players, ranging from 2 dan to 6 dan. Since 3 qualified dan players failed to show up, sadly, only 7 dan players actually participated, which gave one of the kyu players two byes in a row, after which he won the tournament. In the last 8 it was 4 kyu players vs 3 dan players, in the last 4 it was 3 kyu and 1 dan player, and the final was 2 kyu players against each other.

I don't know what handicap system 2014 used, but the result was much closer to equalizing all players than 2010.

Now of course one can argue about whether one finds it desirable to truly equalize all the players or not, but if that is your set goal, then in 2010 the system clearly failed, and in 2014 the system got quite a reasonable result.

The problem is not that a 20k won the tournament but that the handicap was so favourable for 20k players that no-thinking strategies and tactics sufficed to win the tournament. Even a 20k should be able to consider more than one next move, but, in the type of sequence shown, she did not.

For EGCs with a handicap system 1 stone per 4 or 5 ranks, ca. 2 points komi decrement per rank, there have been years in which mostly dans made it to the KOs and other years in which a good mix of dans and kyus qualified including cases in which also kyus proceeded to the later rounds. With 2010, you just happen to mention a year in which the dans were particularly successful.

ATM, I do not recall the exact handicap system of 2014. IIRC, it was a tough one for the strong dans, for whom it was a lottery whether they were in groups with kyus mostly of type (a) or (b). I saw very different play quality by (a) versus (b) players, and accidentally the groups were very differently mixed - some being (a)-heavy, others being (b)-heavy. The KO table shows the result of that group distribution.

7D in such tournaments tend to be opponent-killers regardless of the handicap system; I think that no system can reflect well the possible range of playing strengths summerised under the "7d" tag. We saw this in 2010; and Silt 6d (the only non-7d in the semi-finals) is one of the stronger 6d players. In 2010, I lost to Ilya Shikshin in the quarter finals because he played much better in that games; in the 2009 final game I lost against him with 4 points because I made one significant endgame mistake, which I should have avoided, so, again, I think that the mentioned handicap system was fair. It is just that the weaker player needs to be even more careful than usual to avoid (also smaller) blunders: in 2005, Cho Seok-bin 7d threw me out when I overlooked a non-standard large scale killing move which I should have been able to discover and predict. In the 2012 final game against a 7d, I did not blunder but played suboptimal endgame during the opening moves. I do not want a greater handicap for me - I want myself to play better in order to deserve beating the 7d. The mentioned handicap system is good enough for that.

With reasonable handicaps, there is an occasional 10 to 13k in the finals but 14 - 30k are under-represented. IMO, this is so not because the handicaps would be unfair but because there are too many (b) players among the weaker DDK players.

My aim would be to give type (a) players reasonably equal chances. One sees that almost all strong dans are type (a) players while, say, only rougly 50% of the SDK players are. Therefore, with a type (a) handicap, there can be more dans than kyus in the finals if the preliminaries had equally many dans and kyus. This varies from year to year. The congress mean is, I think around 1k. In 13x13 (or other side) tournaments, it can happen that already the preliminaries have more dan than kyu participants. Besides, it is more likely that qualified kyus fail to participate in the KO and and lose their first KO game.