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"The game flows in a natural and familiar manner, keeping the game fun even with a high handicap. (In a game like chess, by contrast, the handicap is a missing piece, and this changes the character of the game."
Wrong. A piece or pawn is NEVER removed for a handicap. For one reason, removal of a piece or pawn gives the advantage of a tempo or an open file, so it would be almost as much as an an advantage as a handicap.
Handicaps in chess are given on the clock (for example, 5 minutes vs. 10 or 15 minutes). A clock is a much needed item in GO. Let's make a deal, I won't write about GO, of which I know nothing, and you don't write about chess.
By the way, the play is simple in GO, but the rule variations, scoring variations, and exceptions to the exceptions are a nightmare. Plus, the beginner has to learn several dozen Japanese words (that that big a deal). Taken all together, it is no surprise GO has never really become popular in the USA and probably never will.
The major difference between GO and CHESS is, chess is better : ^ )
Try reading a book of Paul Morphy's games and you will clearly see that stake games, played at odds, for this is what they called handicap back then, where involving the removal of a piece, or pieces.
That said, I don't know why Chess is mentioned in this page, and the claim feels like spurious nonsense to me. I suppose that locally an Evans Gambit can look much the same at knight odds. As the reader here found, it reads as patronising hogwash rather than truth.
The original post hardly merits answer. That material odds were / are never given in chess is simply wrong. It doesn't even matter for the point the paragraph makes, whether material odds are common in chess. As a beginner in Chess you lose, as a beginner in Go you take appropriate handicap. And of course, the world is larger than the USA. If he/she doesn't want to write about Go, there is no need to troll an international Go wiki.
For everyone else: This is a wiki. You can edit pages, instead of commenting comments in the forum.