Material Handicap Tournament

This will be run similar to Trev's tourney, only the handicap will be in material instead of a move limit. Non subs can enter as long as they have a spots available to take on the games. All games will be unrated and should be set for a 3/7 time limit, and will have to be created using the “Set up your own board” link. The rating used to set up handicaps will be the tournament entry rating at the time I make the pairings.

I think just having one game per match up would be better, both to make it easier for non-subs to be in the tournament and to prevent numerous split match ups. The higher rated player would be white and have a handicap, and the lower rated player would be black and get draw odds in addition to white's handicap.

Proposed handicaps:

The consensus of theoretical opinion seems to be that a pawn is worth 200 rating points. Calculating from the site's 1400+ database, draw odds playing black is about a 30 point edge. So for so many points, the white player must play without...

230 – the c pawn

430 – the c and f pawns

630 – the b knight

1030 – the a rook (this matchup probably won't happen)

Note that it won't be possible to get this rating differences exactly (although coming close to it will be the goal of the pairings). Someone with a 550 higher rating may get stuck having to play down a knight and some with a 510 higher rating may get the relatively easier 2 pawn handicap.

Please say below if you want to be in the tournament and feel free to comment on anything.

Hi I think this is a great idea for a tournament and would love to participate if it goes ahead.

I like the idea and I'll participate, but just a couple points to mention. As trev's tournament was weighted in favor of the David, I think your formula for handicap is weighted heavily in favor of the Goliath.

I can't imagine a single pawn down being much of an impediment to a player 230 points higher than me, nor two pawns down to somebody 430 points higher.

As subjective evidence to that statement, I've been playing unrated games with a player on RHP roughly 500 points lower than me. I've played successfully without a queen, and without one rook, knight, and bishop. When we played a game where I gave up a queen and a knight, the lower rated player won. So I'm predicting that given your suggested handicaps, the Goliath will win every game. (Feel free to disagree with any of this.)

To suggest an alternative structure, what do you (and anybody else) think of the following: recruit 32 players and split them into two groups based on rating. Top 16 are the Goliath group; bottom 16 are the Davids. Top Goliath plays top David; 2nd plays 2nd and so on. All Goliaths play white and give up the queen regardless of rating difference.

At the end of round 1, you have 16 winners who are split into Davids and Goliaths and do the same pattern for round 2. Continue until only 2 are left at final, so you don't end up with the odd number we did in trev's tournie. If you end up in the later rounds with matches of the same rating, they play a straight-up game, no handicap. If somebody drops out, you recruit a replacement of the same rating as the person who dropped.

I'll play in the tournament no matter what format you use, but I'm thinking that giving up a pawn or two isn't particularly exciting. But giving up a queen...now that should make for some excitement!

My two cents,
Steve

I bet goliath would be lucky to win on game out of 32 if he was down a queen.

Originally posted by clandarkfire
I bet goliath would be lucky to win on game out of 32 if he was down a queen.

Depends. If Goliath's only down two pawns with a ratings difference of 430, I'm just as certain Goliath's guaranteed a win. And really where's the fun in that?

If you enter a queens odds tournament as Goliath and win how glorious is that?

I was just telling somebody the other day that my favorite games are those where I come so close to losing you can smell the hair on my king's chin burning and still pull out a win.

They won't be rated anyway, so you put no points at risk. If you lose, you say, Morphy himself couldn't have won that one anyway! But if you win...you have bragging rights forever.

I'm the other (David) half of sbacat's test games, and I'd support everything he says. I wouldn't even consider entering with the pawn levels of handicap, based on our experience.

Originally posted by Kewpie
I'm the other (David) half of sbacat's test games, and I'd support everything he says. I wouldn't even consider entering with the pawn levels of handicap, based on our experience.

Thanks for confirming that, Kewpie. I've very much enjoyed those queens odds games and I honestly think that having to construct a battleplan without the queen has helped my positional skills.

I don't want to hijack Jasen777's very good idea of a piece-based handicap game, so if there is separate interest in a queens odds tournament, I'd be willing to start a separate thread for that to solicit interested parties in exploring that route (assuming Jasen777's moving forward with the pawn odds idea).

My thought is to solicit 16 Goliaths of a certain minimum rating and 16 Davids of a certain maximum rating (let's say Goliaths minimum 1700 and Davids maximum 1300) and have a little fun with it.

Aren't you just the tiniest bit bored with safe chess? Nothing gets the blood pounding like starting off down a queen. 😉

i think you're on the extreme side with a queen down...i've played a lot of games with a 1100 player and struggled with a queen down. and that's a 500 points difference. well it was more like 400 at the time but my point is that if i played anyone when i was a queen up i wouldn't loss that game. not at any level there is on this site anyway. it was different for the 1200, i might have won one or two but that's only because the lower rating you have the more mistakes and less tactical knowledge you have.

a 400 points gap is a lot different between a 1200 and 1600 rating and a 1600 and 2000 ratings. that was something that my tournament didn't address and it's why 2 of the final 3 players were around 1500 (would've been 3 if i had put more effort into my game i think, no offence)

i think this should be addressed with this one, these are all experiments so why not try something different?

Why don't you let David attack?

Let's say the defender, Goliath, looses one point for every 100 points difference in rating. Goliath can choose which pieces he drops.

(pawn = 1, knight/bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9)

Originally posted by Thomaster
Why don't you let David attack?

Let's say the defender, Goliath, looses one point for every 100 points difference in rating. Goliath can choose which pieces he drops.

(pawn = 1, knight/bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9)

I like the idea of choosing which pieces to drop. Not sure about the 1 point lost for every 100 rating points, though. I'd rather see 1 point for every 75 rating points.

Since Kewpie was nice enough to come out of the David closet, I'll post the games I referred to earlier for review:

Game 6391998
Game 6456382

Granted, we didn't play a lot of these games, so maybe my wins were flukes, but I really like the idea of the Goliath starting out in a significantly weakened position.

We played other games where I gave up more pieces but then it was too easy for her to trade me down to nothing to work with. In the interest of seeing if these games really were a fluke, I'd be interested in playing unrated queens odds games against the first ten players who PM me. I play white, down a queen. You have to be legitimately 1250 rating or under, actual rating and tournament rating. I'll report the results back here. Win or lose it's an exercise in head stretching and nothing wrong with that. 😉

Operators are standing by,
Steve

Originally posted by Thomaster
Why don't you let David attack?

Let's say the defender, Goliath, looses one point for every 100 points difference in rating. Goliath can choose which pieces he drops.

(pawn = 1, knight/bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9)

you want black to play pieces down and still be expected to win?

mAdness.

so i would play a 1500 with a pawn down and with black. that's not a fair handicap. not by a long way......

plus like i said earlier, there needs to be a different rating to piece loss gap between the lowest ratings and the highest.

Originally posted by trev33
you want black to play pieces down and still be expected to win?

mAdness.

so i would play a 1500 with a pawn down and with black. that's not a fair handicap. not by a long way......

plus like i said earlier, there needs to be a different rating to piece loss gap between the lowest ratings and the highest.

I agree that a pawn difference between a 1000 and a 1100 is different than between a 1700 and an 1800. but unless I'm way off (which was never conclusively proven is a court of law), pawn odds is not a huge deal at any level, especially if I get to pick which pawn I'm down. Conceivably, not having a pawn of my choice could be a benefit and since none of these will be rated, who cares so long as we have some giggles in the process?

I guess my big question here is who are you and what have you done with trev33's body?

Originally posted by trev33
you want black to play pieces down and still be expected to win?

mAdness.

so i would play a 1500 with a pawn down and with black. that's not a fair handicap. not by a long way......

plus like i said earlier, there needs to be a different rating to piece loss gap between the lowest ratings and the highest.

Black is expected to draw, which seems very possible to me.

Originally posted by sbacat
I agree that a pawn difference between a 1000 and a 1100 is different than between a 1700 and an 1800. but unless I'm way off (which was [b]never conclusively proven is a court of law), pawn odds is not a huge deal at any level, especially if I get to pick which pawn I'm down. Conceivably, not having a pawn of my choice could be a benefit and since none o ...[text shortened]... I guess my big question here is who are you and what have you done with trev33's body?[/b]

i'm hans, trev is locked away in the basement were he and his crazy ideas belong. 😉

if my tournament proved anything is that it was biased towards 1500ish players, like was the fear from the beginning. i'm not here to discuss what material should be taken away and at what rating difference. (ok a little)

what i am though is the difference of quality between the ratings. like i said if i was playing someone 400 pints below me with a knight down i would fancy my chances in that game but if i was playing a person 400 points above me with a knight up i would only give a slight edge to the 2000 person. 50/50 if i was white.

maybe 100 points difference per 1 point for games involving game with a david under 1500 and a 75 rating difference per point for games with a david over 1500?

btw i would actually like 2 games in this in the first round, just to see.

Originally posted by Thomaster
Black is expected to draw, which seems very possible to me.

the lower rated person has draw odds if its a one game tournament. not fair if he's white, is it?