should handicap games count towards ELO ratings ?

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drdrd
Posts: 14
Joined: 27 March 2020, 15:22

should handicap games count towards ELO ratings ?

Post by drdrd »

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.)
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Grunman
Posts: 22
Joined: 03 July 2020, 16:17

Re: should handicap games count towards ELO ratings ?

Post by Grunman »

By my feelings, it is hard to estimate a player's strengh in Go here by local rating, because there are not so many players here in general. So one's rating is often about to be correct when it is over than 300 points. That's why there would be many games with improper handicap. And either decision would be only partly correct.
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Ningauble
Posts: 13
Joined: 25 August 2020, 23:29

Re: should handicap games count towards ELO ratings ?

Post by Ningauble »

Maybe not for the higher elo player, but, it might be the only way a weaker/learning player to get elo. As someone who played a few games the match ups here are kind of terrible. Although also I'm much weaker at async than I would have thought. I'm going to try and get in touch with my friend I used to play this with and see if he remembers what online platform we used to recover my (albeit pretty weak/low rank). We mostly played in person sometimes trying to go to cafes for lessons but we both played a bit online for awhile. But yeah it's nice that they have it as an option but I think there'd be better services to use if you want to play on a more regular basis.
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endoKarb
Posts: 2
Joined: 06 January 2016, 22:26

Re: should handicap games count towards ELO ratings ?

Post by endoKarb »

It's a bit odd that handicap games count for Elo, but it's not really a problem.
Since who gets to play black is decided at random, it basically just becomes an higher variance way of playing.
As a weak player, if you get black you might just beat a stronger player and score some Elo, if you get white you get crushed.

It helps people get to 100 Elo even if maybe they don't really deserve it... but that's about it. You can't really abuse it for anything serious.

Seems fine to me unless I'm missing something.
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King of Games
Posts: 8
Joined: 05 April 2020, 18:32

Re: should handicap games count towards ELO ratings ?

Post by King of Games »

everyone will get artificially raised up to 100 points. Which breaks things a bit.
Getting to 100 points is not broken, it's intentional. Every game on the site works the same way. You should think of 100 as 30 kyu: it's the bottom of the ranking. You can reach 100 by playing against other people who have never played the game before (rank 0). So if anything, rank 100 is the equivalent of "I know the rules", and doesn't signify anything more than that.

That said, what others suggested here isn't correct. The purpose of a handicap is to ensure that both players have an equal chance of winning. Let's say that the handicap was working perfectly, and the weaker player had exactly enough stones to make an even match. There would still be a problem. You see, an equal chance of winning means that your ELO would end up as the same number if you kept playing against that person enough times!

But obviously if one player is giving a handicap, then having the same rank would not make any logical sense.

For the weaker player, it's a minor issue. They may have an inflated ranking for a short bit, but if they play against others in even matches, it'll quickly drop down. Most people don't mind having a rank slightly higher than true ranking.

For the stronger player, they can keep an artificially low rank. But the strong player, like in the OP, may not want to lose their rank (which is hard to build up). Unfortunately this is a problem with ELO, not with Go handicap games.

Unfortunately, there is no solution to that problem within the ELO system that BGA uses. The assumption on all ranked games is that you have one rank for *all* variants. And in this case Handicap games are a "variant".

So yes, I think it's broken. Handicap games probably should not effect ELO. The solution would be to allow players to decide whether to play the game "unranked". That would have to be fixed as a site-wide feature for all games, and BGA probably wouldn't want to do that since one of the big features of the site is that it automatically ranks you.

In short: If you care about protecting your rank, go play the handicap game on a different site.
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Grunman
Posts: 22
Joined: 03 July 2020, 16:17

Re: should handicap games count towards ELO ratings ?

Post by Grunman »

It would be nice to have another different rating for handicap games, althoug it barely would ve added here.
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