what is the best engine for big material handicap?

[todd]

Regarding the rating gap/overwhelming wins hypothesis, I haven't personally noticed overwhelming results more frequently than they appear in chess, but I haven't paid really close attention, so I'm not sure.

What I can say for sure is that the battle between the two top players is quite close. Currently 91.5-75.5 on lichess: https://lichess.org/zCf8pHAm

[Nordlandia]

Crazyhouse is definitely mostly an online thing.

Variant chess is for the most part an online thing. OTB (over the board) Nobody seem to care about it, except the very few, the minority.

[todd]

Except for bughouse! Bughouse is common in skittles rooms at chess tournaments.

[Nordlandia]

Except for bughouse! Bughouse is common in skittles rooms at chess tournaments.

Yes, i know that, for example in the analyze room. When i think about it, Isn't it strange that almost no tournament is arranged for Bughouse or any top variant?

[Nordlandia]

By the way Ed Trice is arranging an Gothic Chess tournament.

http://gothicchess.info/game_04.shtml

[todd]

Except for bughouse! Bughouse is common in skittles rooms at chess tournaments.

Yes, i know that, for example in the analyze room. When i think about it, Isn't it strange that almost no tournament is arranged for Bughouse or any top variant?

Yes. In the US, there are bughouse tournaments at almost every big scholastic event. However, at open events with adults, there are almost no bughouse tournaments. Usually only the US Open and US Amateur Team East have an annual bughouse side event.

The strongest bughouse tournament is the annual summer tournament in Berlin - it's the only strong tournament I know of that is exclusively for bughouse, rather than a side event at a chess tournament. Aronian has played a few times, and most of the online bughouse legends have participated at least once.

[Nordlandia]

Here in Norway at the national championship or (NM i Sjakk) variants like Bughouse and Chess960 is arranged as an side event later on the day, once the classical games has been been finished earlier. Total attendance for Chess960 is very little compared to Blitz event.

Chess960 participants:
http://turneringsservice.sjakklubb.no/s ... kSjakklubb

Bughouse participants:
http://tournamentservice.com/standings. ... sSchakklub

[Ovyron]

Regarding the rating gap/overwhelming wins hypothesis, I haven't personally noticed overwhelming results more frequently than they appear in chess, but I haven't paid really close attention, so I'm not sure.

Have you noticed something like this in bullet chess? I've been thinking this isn't about crazyhouse, but about the time control (the faster the time control, the wider a stronger player is expected to win against a weaker one. Playing decent moves fast is a skill that can be developed, but those that haven't developed it are at a great disadvantage in bullet chess.)

[todd]

Have you noticed something like this in bullet chess? I've been thinking this isn't about crazyhouse, but about the time control (the faster the time control, the wider a stronger player is expected to win against a weaker one. Playing decent moves fast is a skill that can be developed, but those that haven't developed it are at a great disadvantage in bullet chess.)

I have a few plausible explanations but no hard data.

1) In faster time controls, more games are played, and players are more likely to play a series of games against each other, so we can watch live as score gaps open up quickly. In classical it may take years for a noticeable score gap between two players to emerge because they don't play consecutive games very often.

2) Score gaps open up more quickly in games with fewer draws. Crazyhouse doesn't have many draws. In chess, the draw rate goes up as the quality of play goes up (better players & longer time controls = more draws). So blitz and bullet will naturally have a lower draw rate to begin with, and the presence of flagging exacerbates this and lowers the draw rate even further. Perhaps if we looked at scores with draws removed, we'd see something similar in longer time control chess too, but I'm not sure.

3) Crazyhouse is a niche game. When not as many people are searching for a game at the same time, the average game will have a larger skill gap. On a big server like lichess or chess.com, if you seek a 1 0 or 3 0 chess game, as long as you are not a beginner or elite player, you will more or less always quickly get a game with someone near your level, but this isn't the case in crazyhouse. More frequent lopsided matchups -> more big score gaps.

[todd]

Ovyron, also, I'm not sure if what I wrote addresses your hypothesis.

I realized that you might be saying something else, which is that in crazyhouse and in bullet, higher rated players overperform if they are 100 points higher than their opponents. In other words, maybe you are saying that if someone exclusively played players 100 points lower than them, then they would have a higher rating than if they did the opposite.

It is possible that such a phenomenon can exist - in OTB classical chess, we know that in extreme lopsided matchups (400+ points gap), the lower rated players tend to upset the higher ones slightly more frequently than Elo's formula predicts. But in close matchups OTB (players within 200 points), the system has worked properly. It could be that in a different pool of players playing a different game, Elo's formula is off for a different set of matchups.

It would be possible to determine if this is the case, if you are interested enough. You can download every game ever played on lichess, and the ratings of the players are included. It would be possible to find all games with a rating difference of about 100 and see if the higher rated players score more than their expectation of around 64%.