Life In 19x19

Someone once mentioned something from a book about getting a dan to give you a 4 handicap as a way to get stronger.
Could the same thing be done with people of equal strength? ie. a 7k gives another 7k a 4 stone handicap.
Would this be profitable?

It would give you more practice at handicap games. I suppose that's a slightly different set of skills to regular games - white gets to practise things like light play and invasion, and black gets to practice things like attack, a little more than usually happens. Try it, and let us know!

Hazushi wrote:Someone once mentioned something from a book about getting a dan to give you a 4 handicap as a way to get stronger.
Could the same thing be done with people of equal strength? ie. a 7k gives another 7k a 4 stone handicap.
Would this be profitable?

Getting a dan to give a higher level dan a 4 handicap will not make the higher level dan stronger. lol

tchan001 wrote:Getting a dan to give a higher level dan a 4 handicap will not make the higher level dan stronger. lol

Think you misunderstood idk...
Breakthrough to shodan talks suggests a way to get stronger is to use a 4 stone handi against a dan presuming your lower than 3-4k.
Why would you want to give someone stronger a handi?

I figure that it forces white to think out of the box and in turn possibly making them stronger if not like Billy said it is practice or study with handicap games, attacking for black and invasion and light play for white.

And I dont know about doing this at higher rankings but this is a suggestion currently for like 5k and lower to see what happens.

I've done something similar, getting a stronger player to take a handicap from me. It was very interesting. I didn't do it often enough for it to make any difference strength wise though.

It will make you stronger if you review your game and why you or he lost. What went wrong, where should you have played? Is there a better solution to this problem? Were you too slow or too thin? Were you scared of him and gave way everywhere?

I can't say you will get stronger without doing the reviews. But if you do review the games then yeah, definitely.

Hazushi wrote:Someone once mentioned something from a book about getting a dan to give you a 4 handicap as a way to get stronger.

Yes, if Gu Li gives me many 4-handi games, it is a fantastic way for me to get stronger.