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Auction Komi
  Difficulty: Advanced   Keywords: Rules, Tournament

Instead of prescribing a fixed komi, a tournament may instead use a system of bidding to determine the komi for each game. There are a number of ways in which this can be done. In all cases, bids are restricted to whole or semi-integral numbers, although whole numbers may be forbidden if jigos would be a problem.

In one system (used in the Japan Strongest Amateur tournament), one player is given the right to choose the komi, and the other then chooses whether to play Black or White. This is an example of You Cut I Choose.

In another system (used in the annual Furze Platt tournament in England), the players bid against each other in a standard auction, the player who bids the most points taking Black and giving that number of komi.

Auction komi systems have been criticised on the grounds that if they became widespread some players would end up playing Black almost all the time, while others would be White in nearly every game. At present, however, auction komi systems just provide a little extra variety and there seems little danger of them becoming widespread.


Charles For example we know that Rui Naiwei would willingly pay eight komi for Black. She is a scary lady on the Go board.

Jasonred Is her win percentage playing Black with normal komi much higher than normal, reflecting the extra points? Actually, how come 8 komi, shouldn't there also be a half point to avoid draws?

DougRidgway The usual criticism is that komi bidding introduces a new phase of the game (the auction) and requires a new skill (bidding) which is unrelated to standard go skills. Optimal play during the auction depends sensitively on the opponent and the rules of the auction.



This is a copy of the living page "Auction Komi" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.