Make casual (unrated) handicap games possible.

As the title said, I want to suggest lishogi to add the possibility of playing handicap games unrated with random people. I kind of wanting to try something clever like giving a small handicap to lower rate people by limited the rating range that could accept my public game. (Below 1500 rating for example to somewhat prevent sandbaggers creating new IDs from accepting.).

The benefits are 1) Encourage newbies to play Shogi with other real people more as they could get a handicap, and therefore, are more willing to play a human game. 2) Shogi becomes more complete. As far as I know, chess does not have a piece handicap culture, but shogi does. It is understandable that a branch site of lichess like lishogi is not used to adding handicaps to public games, but shogi needs handicaps to make it more complete as a whole. So, like Go, (Again, I referenced my idea from my experience as a Go player.) having handicap games with random people should be made possible.

Edited: I just played around with "Play With Friends'" customization and want to add a little something. Probably make it possible from positions too, in case the player wants to play certain opening games. It is unrated anyway.

21

Playing casual games from handicap positions is possible on lishogi. You cannot create a handicap game in the lobby, but you can create games against other users and against lishogi's Computer AI (levels 1-8).

To create a game with anyone from a handicap position:
1. Go to lishogi's home page ( lishogi.org )
2. Click on "Play with a Friend".
3. Select "From Position" under "Standard".
4. Enter the "sfen".
5. Choose all other settings like time control, color, etc... (usually only casual games are allowed).
6. Create game.
7. After creating a game, there will be a link that you can share with others personally or on discord or simply enter a friends username from lishogi.

The problem here is you can't select rating range, so maybe when sending the game link you could request on a certain rating range to join the game.

Implementing might take a while. In fact even lichess doesn't support this yet.

@YoBot_v2 I have already known that method before I made my post, actually. In fact, the reason I came to know lishogi or shogi at all is because of a play-with-friends, handicap game in the first place.

The problem is, it is much harder to play handicap games or from position with completely random players. Sharing link seems arduous and you are unlikely to get to play with total strangers; mostly only friends or acquaintances. Unless you make a forum post or randomly messages people, which may work well for a correspondence game, but not for a live game.

Making setting them unrated in public room (create room) possible will make it easier for the handicap games between real humans to be more popular used on lishogi and greatly encourage newbies to play with real humans. And thus, presumably, increasing the active players base.

P.S.

1. I assume it is quite hard to actually find active shogi newbies who want to play a game at that exact moment on a shogi discord at the exact time you create a game.

2. Lichess doesn't support it yet is not weird, as western chess does not have pieces handicap culture. But shogi does.

51