Proper Handicap

   

PriorBlackPlays = Stones Black may play before White moves.

For ease of comprehension we will assume a Komi without tiebreaker.

Traditional Handicap:

 Rankdifference | PriorBlackPlays  | Komi | Effective Handicap
       0        |        1         |   6  |  0.0
       1        |        1         |   0  |  0.5
       2        |        2         |   0  |  1.5
       3        |        3         |   0  |  2.5

The discrepancy between Rankdifference and effective Handicap stems from the the irregularity in above table where the rankdifference switches from 0 to 1. To compensate for 1 stone of rankdifference Komi is dropped and nothing else. Yet Komi is tailored to be worth exactly half-a-stone. Thus instead of dropping Komi it would be appropriate to allow Black to place one stone more on the board than with rankdifference zero.

From playing with traditional Handicap two issues may arise:

  • Games played with traditional Handicap are biased towards White.
  • Rating systems ignorant of this irregularity will have inconsistent rankspacing. (luckily all Go-ratingsystems I know compensate for this)

Proper Handicap:

 Rankdifference | PriorBlackPlays  | Komi | Effective Handicap
       0        |        1         |   6  |  0.0
       1        |        2         |   6  |  1.0
       2        |        3         |   6  |  2.0
       3        |        4         |   6  |  3.0

Proper Handicap is nothing more than a try to fix Handicap by implementing above idea of giving Black one prior play more per stone of rankdifference.

Furthermore it is possible to reutilize the idea of 'dropping komi' to create proper handicap for fractional rankdifferences:

Proper Handicap with included half-Rank handicaps:

 Rankdifference | PriorBlackPlays  | Komi | Effective Handicap
       0.0      |        1         |   6  |  0.0
       0.5      |        1         |   0  |  0.5
       1.0      |        2         |   6  |  1.0
       1.5      |        2         |   0  |  1.5
       2.0      |        3         |   6  |  2.0
       2.5      |        3         |   0  |  2.5
       3.0      |        4         |   6  |  3.0

See also:


This is a copy of the living page "Proper Handicap" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2009 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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