We are excited to share with you that we have supported handicapped tournaments on PlayStrategy. These provide an environment to play games against stronger or weaker opponents on a level footing. To do this the initial starting fen is changed to reflect the strength difference between the two players. This setting is only compatible with Go games and the tournaments can’t be a medley or rated. For more information see our handicap explanation page (playstrategy.org/page/handicaps).

Initially this option is only available for Go Swiss and Arena tournaments, but we hope to extend to other games in the future. Our next change in this space will be to support an input of player ratings for the given tournament so that the handicaps are as fair as they can be, especially for players that may not have yet played on PlayStrategy and have a stable rating.

Please join our Handicapped Go9x9 90min Arena on Sunday 28th at 16:00 UTC (playstrategy.org/tournament/5A9cs6bJ) to try it out!

Enjoy

312

As promised, we have added additional support to handicapped tournaments. A tournament organiser or admin has the option to input a rating for specific users. This will help ensure that the handicaps are as fair as they can be, especially for players that may not have yet played on PlayStrategy and have a stable rating. The display of the input rating will be followed by an asterisk (*) to indicate that it has been modified.

An input of either a PlayStrategy rating or an actual Go rating (e.g. 1700, 15k, 2d) is supported. For more information, please see playstrategy.org/page/handicaps.

112