From: "Ignacio Fco. Suárez Boville" <ignacio <at> informaticosmix <dot> com>
Date: 14 mar 2001
Subject: handicap in the ladder

  The forced mates for 5p / 6p handicap just
makes it all worse. This ladder is an Internet
ladder and most, if not all the members will
be subscribed to this list and know the mso.
article about handicap playing.

  I'm just not interested about handicap
playing right now. I know this is much more
equal than that of western chess but I just
don't want to study it when I still have a long
road ahead in standard shogi. If we're
playing a real ladder people from the lower
ranks won't play against the top ones
directly.

  Say a player doesn't accept handicaps for
lower raked opponents but he does with
higher ranked ones. Doesn't that need
further regulation?. Moreover, to have in the
same list people playing with or w.o.
handicaps would spoil the balance of the
ladder.

  People not accepting handicaps will play
under inferior circunstances compared to
those playing handicap. I think one of the
motivations of the new ladder was creating a
new one which showed, aproximately at
least, the level of the players.

  If we're playing handicap, everybody should
be playing handicap. Mr Werner said that in
the US federation handicap games are being
rated. I guess handicap should be
compulsory then.

  I do think that it was a good idea to restart
the ladder to correct some errors from the
previous one, but, if this becomes a failure,
are we going to start a new one again?. I
think we better get a ladder working and
then apply improvements on it.

  Linares is just 70 Km away from my house. I
think next year I'm going to challenge
Kasparov if he is kind enough to give a
queen handicap :)


=============================================
Ignacio F. Suárez Beauville


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