The Rules of Go

Page 08
Ranking, komi, and "handicap"

1. Go Ranking System

Go has a ranking systems. It is a system which may be familiar to the practitioners of other eastern disciplines like the martial arts. It is based on a series of levels called kyu and dan, with the kyus being the lower ranks and the dans being the upper ranks. 

It works like this - when you first learn the rules of Go, you are about 30k (this stands for 30 kyu). This is your level. Then, as you progress and your understanding of the game grows, your level changes to 29k, then 28k, then 27k.. and so on, till you reach the highest kyu level, which is 1k. When you become even stronger than this, your levels start counting in dans. First you become 1d (this stands for 1 dan), then 2d, then 3d... and so on. The theoretical limit on the dan grades is 9d, but there are no amateurs of that level. By common consent, the highest amateur rank is 6d (although there are some higher ranks floating around, but they are mostly honorary).

The distance between amateur ranks of two players is defined by the number of handicap stones the stronger player has to give the weaker one to have a equal game (equal means with equal chances of win). So, for example, a 3k would have to give a 7k 4 handicap stones, and a 3d would give a 5k 7 handicap stones. If the difference between two players is 1 level, the weaker player just takes black and has the advantage of the first move to even out the rank difference. If two players of equal strength play, black usually gives komi to compensate white for the disadvantage of the second move.

This is on 19x19 board - on smaller boards the handicap stones are worth more than one rank!

And then there is the professional grades. They start with professional 1 dan (or 1p as they are called) - which are the weakest pros. As a pro gets better, he progresses to 2p, and then to 3p, and then to 4p... and so on, till he reaches 9p. 9p is the highest professional level - and there are quite a few pros who attained it. Pro ranks are not measured in handicap stones - and if they were they would come to around 1 handicap stone per 3 levels. But the pros seldom play with handicaps. All pro competitions I know of are non-handicap competitions, so all the games played there are even games - with black giving the komi.

Different pro organizations determine their pro ranking differently. The Japanese organization, the Nihon-kiin, makes its members go through yearly matches with other pros - and the advancement in rank is determined by the pro's result in these matches. You have to win a certain percentage to be promoted.

Professional 1 dan is, in strength, a little above amateur 6d - so we can say that the strongest amateurs are very close in strength to the weakest professional.

So - let us now put it all together. It goes more or less like this:

Now, as an amateur player, how do you determine your rank? This is a pretty good question, and the answer is that you have to play with players who know their rank, and see how they do against them. If you usually win against 15ks and usually lose against 12ks, then you are probably around 13k or 14k. You may also try to play on one of the servers which provide automatic ranking, but such ranking usually does not have much of a meaning in real face-to-face play. There are some organizations which will let you obtain diplomas corresponding to certain strength levels - you usually have to play in special tournaments, or pass certain exams, or both. But most people just determine their rank by playing with others - and so this is the most common method.

The situation is confused a little by the fact that ranks from different countries do not really correspond to each other. Sometimes these ranks vary from city to city, or even from club to club within the same city! For example, an European 1d might be as strong as an American 3d, but only as weak as a Chinese 1k. The Koreans have a very tough ranking system in which all the strong amateurs seem to be 1k - so beware if you play a "Korean 1k" for he may well be everybody else's 6d, hehe... The second-toughest system is probably the Chinese! The weakest systems are the ones in US and Japan. This means that a Chinese 1d is probably much stronger than an American 1d or a Japanese 1d. But there are exceptions (and I am one of them, hehe) - so do not quote me on this!

Even more confusion is created by the fact that various Go servers use different algorithms to determine players' ranks - and so they vary among themselves and very much diverge from the "real world" rankings. So - this is important where you rank is from, or against who did you play to determine it - and don't be surprised if people will ask you this. To tell the rank alone may not be enough anymore in this global village of ours, hehe.

Additional Info:
You can find more about the issue of different ranks and ratings can be found on the Rank Comparison @ Sensei's Library (among other places) - although you have to dig a little to find it. Have fun.

2. What is komi?

When two players of equal strength sit at a Go board to have a game, one of them has to take black, of course. This one would have an advantage of the first move - which would be unfair since both players are of the same level, so why should one start with an advantage? To compensate for this advantage of the first move, the black player usually gives his opponent a few prisoners before the game starts - so that white, even though he moves second, starts with some extra points which balance his second-move disadvantage. These extra prisoners are called komi.

The common amount of komi seems to be 5.5 (the half point is to rule out a possibility of a jigo, or a draw), but there are different systems, some of which define komi as more than 5.5 and some of the as less than that. The highest amount of komi in even game, as far as I know, is defined by the Ing system, and it is 8 points.

The concept of komi is a relatively new one, and for centuries the Go players (even the pros) were playing without it - thus the win average of the black players was a little higher. Even today the oteai system, which is the pro ranking system in Japanese Nihon-Kiin organization, prescribes games without komi. Still - most of the even games (pro or amateur) are played with some kind of a komi, and the most common amount of komi is 5.5.

3. Go Handicap System

When two player of different level meet and they want to have an equal-opportunity game, they use what is called handicap stones.Handicap stones are black stones which are placed at the board at the beginning of the game - they are placed on the thick-marked points on the board. If the level difference is 2, then 2 handicaps are placed, if it is 3, then 3 handicaps are placed, and so on... all the way to 9 handicaps. In a handicap game, it is white who moves first, since black already "moved" by placing the handicap stones on the board.

The purpose of the handicap stones is to enable a game between two players of different level so that both of them have a fair chance of winning. This creates games interesting for both players - as opposed to a game in which the winner is practically determined before a single stone is played - especially for a larger rank difference. If. for example, a 1d player were to play an even game (i.e. no handicaps) with a 7k player, the game would be boring for both - the 1d would be able to win easily without even applying himself, while the 7k player might not even know what hit him! If they play a proper handicap game though - both of them would have to strain their resources and it would be by no means certain who would win - and the game would be interesting for both!

On 19x19 board, the placement of handicap stones is as follows (on the thick-marked stones, which are called star points) - this shows the pattern the handicap stones form on the board.

Handicap 1	Handicap 2	Handicap 3
Handicap 4	Handicap 5	Handicap 6
Handicap 7	Handicap 8	Handicap 9

Fig 1. Handicap stones placements on 19x19 board

On a smaller boards, the pattern is the same, except that one handicap stone has a much higher value that one rank difference - for example on a 9x9 board 2 handicaps may correspond to 6 levels difference (just a guess). This is not because smaller boards are weird - but because the whole ranking system was designed with respect to playing on a 19x19 boards and thus so are the playing levels defined.

Another, somewhat esoteric form of handicap is the so called Chinese handicap (that's how it was called when I first heard about it) or the free handicap. It basically works like this - both players start with an empty board, and then the stronger player passes consecutively as many times as there is rank difference between the players. So for example, for a 5 level difference, the stronger player would pass 5 times, thus allowing the weaker player to place 5 stones on the board unhindered. In effect, it has the result that he weaker player chooses the locations for his handicap stones any way it suits him. Free handicaps are usually considered much tougher on the white player than the standard handicap placement - and this is obvious since the weaker player can choose which placement he feels more comfortable with and he is not confined to the star points. Free handicaps are rarely used, though.