Life In 19x19

I was playing BasicBot 19x19 on KGS last night when I came across a wrinkle in the Chinese rules that I wasn't aware of, that is, white gets an extra point of Komi for each handicap stone black has at the beginning of the game. Somewhere in my simple noob mind this seems to totally offset the purpose of taking a handicap. In other words, why take a 5 stone handicap if I'm giving white 5 extra Komi points?

Thanks.


Edit - can't believe I misspelled handicap

I don't do that. In handicap games, I typically see 0.5 komi.

That said, one stone is worth more than one point, so it certainly should not offset the handicap-just mitigate it slightly.

I think that this may be a counting issue, not a handicap issue.

Because each of those stones count as a point for you. So, if white didn't get those extra komi points, he would be giving you extra points.

Each handicap stone is worth about 14-15 points by Chinese scoring. The komi make it worth about 13-14 points. I am sure that there are historical reasons for the offsetting komi, but I do not know what they are. Anyway, the offset is slight.

On KGS, there is a very good reason for the offset. Each stone on the board is worth a point by Chinese scoring, but not by Japanese scoring, which is more popular. The one point offset keeps the ratings consistent, regardless of which form of scoring you use.

psk31 wrote:I was playing BasicBot 19x19 on KGS last night when I came across a wrinkle in the Chinese rules that I wasn't aware of, that is, white gets an extra point of Komi for each handicapp stone black has at the beginning of the game. Somewhere in my simple noob mind this seems to totally offset the purpose of taking a handicapp. In other words, why take a 5 stone handicapp if I'm giving white 5 extra Komi points?

Thanks.

Because in chinese rules you get points for those stones, there is reverse komi if you do nothing. Those points for white do not give him komi, but just stop black getting extra reverse-komi over and above the handicap.

In my experience of numerous handicap games including reverse komi games, I believe that in practice 1 stone is worth about 15 points in blitz games, 10 points in average speed real time games (such as default KGS timings), and about 6 or 7 in turn based / correspondence games.

Thanks everyone. So much more to learn...

I was aware of some handicap games going with the .5 Komi and had even heard of the negative Komi in some instances and that made sense to me. It was a counting issue since I didn't notice it until KGS showed the scoring.

I'm also learning you have to be very quick at changing the settings for the bot games or someone else grabs the bot before you can. Next time I'll make sure to change the rules to Japanese to see how that works.

psk31 wrote:I'm also learning you have to be very quick at changing the settings for the bot games or someone else grabs the bot before you can. Next time I'll make sure to change the rules to Japanese to see how that works.

Note that changing the rules to Japanese won't really change anything in that regard. In a 5-stone game, White won't get his 5 extra komi, but Black won't get 5 extra points for his 5 extra stones, so it evens out.

psk31 wrote:I'm also learning you have to be very quick at changing the settings for the bot games or someone else grabs the bot before you can. Next time I'll make sure to change the rules to Japanese to see how that works.

Bots use Chinese rules, because when they're playing each other, they don't know how to mark dead stones, so they just keep playing until all the stones have been removed.

xed_over wrote:

psk31 wrote:I'm also learning you have to be very quick at changing the settings for the bot games or someone else grabs the bot before you can. Next time I'll make sure to change the rules to Japanese to see how that works.

Bots use Chinese rules, because when they're playing each other, they don't know how to mark dead stones, so they just keep playing until all the stones have been removed.

Actually, some (all the good ones, I think) bots do mark dead stones. However, if they disagree (this happens frequently), they need and use the "playing on" option.