For this page I am alone responsible. You can disagree with me in Open Forum. - rjh
SOME THOUGHTS ON HANDICAPS
12.9.01
BCF ones, anyway. There are two BCF team handicap competitions coming up. Both adjust the scores in the light of the teams' grades. It's a perfectly respectable thing to do if you do it right. Here's a right way. BCF Counties Team Rapidplay 30.9.01 (12 boards)
This is a straight team Swiss, but it incorporates a handicap competition. Handicap scoring is match by match. For each match, you first determine the expected result based on the difference between average grades. Here's their published table.
This table is right. It follows from the way grades are calculated.
Your Handicap Score, for a match, is what you actually scored minus what you ought to have. Of course it can be negative. Add up all your Handicap Scores at the end, and the team with the biggest total is the winner. It's simple, it works, and it takes into account not only your own grades but also the grades of the teams you met.
Here's a wrong way. National Club Handicap Rapidplay 2001-2 (4 boards)
Also a Swiss, over 6 rounds. The handicap is an adjustment to your final score in Game Points. The table:
Average Grade
200+
180-199
160-179
140-159
120-139
100-119
80-99
60-79
Handicap adjustment
-16
-13
-10
-7
-4
-1
+2
+5
Spot the errors. There are at least two.
(1) It takes no account of your opponents' strength.
(2) It has little to do with the way grading works. A 20-point grading jump, over 24 games, is worth almost 5 extra game points against given opposition. But the handicap only goes up by 3.
Try an example. One team has average grade 200, and everyone else is 160.
The heavies, on grade, are expected to score 90%, or 21½/24 near enough. Score, after handicap, 5½.
Some of the 160s are lucky and don't meet the heavies. Score 50% or 12/24; after handicap, 2.
The unlucky ones get 10½/24; after handicap, ½.
Those are the scores if everyone plays to their grade. Some handicap.
It will not have escaped your attention that, in the other competition, if everyone plays to their grade they all come out with handicap scores of nought. Seems fairer, somehow. It may be no accident that the BCF Counties Team Rapidplay has as one of its organisers the BCF Grading Director, who may be supposed to know how grading works. It's a pity the Home Director did not consult him.