If I play a handicap game against a weaker player, it is entirely possible that I will lose - the point of the handicap system is to make it a "fair" game, and given that it can be hard to guess the correct handicap, losing against a lower-ranked player is likely.
I don't care terribly much about losing my rating points, but if a novice is elevated above the 100 point threshold, and it latches, and when they then lose to other beginners, everyone will get artificially raised up to 100 points. Which breaks things a bit.
Could do it as a training game, but then it is without time limits, which isn't really what I want either.
So perhaps it is simplest if handicap games don't count towards ELO calculations ? (Or maybe take the handicap stones into account when calculating the probability of win/loss for a game ? But that sounds really hard ! Not sure if there is a known mapping between ELO here and standard go grades.)
I don't care terribly much about losing my rating points, but if a novice is elevated above the 100 point threshold, and it latches, and when they then lose to other beginners, everyone will get artificially raised up to 100 points. Which breaks things a bit.
Could do it as a training game, but then it is without time limits, which isn't really what I want either.
So perhaps it is simplest if handicap games don't count towards ELO calculations ? (Or maybe take the handicap stones into account when calculating the probability of win/loss for a game ? But that sounds really hard ! Not sure if there is a known mapping between ELO here and standard go grades.)