In chess, I think there are a few reasons why handicaps are not more broadly used:
Chess in its modern form is a game of European origin, and it is my impression that European cultures have valued “equal starting conditions for everyone” always higher than “similar chances for everyone to get their desired outcome”. This might have made use of handicaps less appealing, because with handicaps, the game starts from a position that is essentially known to be lost for one side.
There is no good way to combine handicaps in chess with Elo ratings, making it impossible to have rated handicap games. It is also not easy to use handicap results informally to predict optimal handicap between players who haven’t met (if John can give me a knight, and I can give f7 pawn and move to James, it is not at all clear what the appropriate handicap for John against James would be). This is different in Go.
Material handicaps significantly change the flow of the game (the stronger side can try to just trade down into a winning endgame, and for larger handicaps, this becomes easy to execute), and completely invalidate opening theory. This is different in Go and also in more chess-like games such as Shogi, where I understand handicaps are more popular.
Professional players (grandmasters and above) are probably strong enough to convert even a small material handicap like pawn and move fairly reliably into a win against any human (computers, at a few hundred elo points above the best humans, can give probably about pawn to top players and win, at tournament time controls). This implies any handicap system would use only very few handicaps in games between players strong enough that their games are of public interest (Go professionals I understand have probably 3-4 handicap stones between weak and best professional, and maybe two stones vs the best computers). I think that would have been different in the 19th century, when material handicaps in chess were more popular than today.
That said, chess does use handicaps in some settings, but they are not material handicaps. In informal blitz play, time handicaps are sometimes used, often in a format where players start at five minutes for the game and lose a minute if they win, until one of the players arrives at zero minutes. Simultaneous exhibitions and blindfold play are also handicaps that are practiced relatively widely. Judging just by the number of games played in each handicap mode, I’d say though that time handicap is by far the most popular variant at the club player level.
For chess in particular the piece-trading nature of the game also makes piece handicaps pretty huge in impact. Compare to shogi: in shogi having multiple non-pawn pieces handicapped can still be a moderate handicap, whereas multiple non-pawns in chess is basically a predestined loss unless there is a truly gargantuan skill difference.
I haven’t played many handicapped chess games, but my rough feel for it is that each successive “step” of handicap in chess is something like 3 times as impactful as the comparable shogi handicap. This makes chess handicaps harder to use as there’s much more risk of over- or under-shooting the appropriate handicap level and ending up with one side being highly likely to win.
Is the gap only 2 stones between best professionals and best computers? A reddit thread from 2 years ago said Shin Jinseo has a losing record getting 2 stones from FineArt, and computers have probably improved since then.
In chess, I think there are a few reasons why handicaps are not more broadly used:
Chess in its modern form is a game of European origin, and it is my impression that European cultures have valued “equal starting conditions for everyone” always higher than “similar chances for everyone to get their desired outcome”. This might have made use of handicaps less appealing, because with handicaps, the game starts from a position that is essentially known to be lost for one side.
There is no good way to combine handicaps in chess with Elo ratings, making it impossible to have rated handicap games. It is also not easy to use handicap results informally to predict optimal handicap between players who haven’t met (if John can give me a knight, and I can give f7 pawn and move to James, it is not at all clear what the appropriate handicap for John against James would be). This is different in Go.
Material handicaps significantly change the flow of the game (the stronger side can try to just trade down into a winning endgame, and for larger handicaps, this becomes easy to execute), and completely invalidate opening theory. This is different in Go and also in more chess-like games such as Shogi, where I understand handicaps are more popular.
Professional players (grandmasters and above) are probably strong enough to convert even a small material handicap like pawn and move fairly reliably into a win against any human (computers, at a few hundred elo points above the best humans, can give probably about pawn to top players and win, at tournament time controls). This implies any handicap system would use only very few handicaps in games between players strong enough that their games are of public interest (Go professionals I understand have probably 3-4 handicap stones between weak and best professional, and maybe two stones vs the best computers). I think that would have been different in the 19th century, when material handicaps in chess were more popular than today.
That said, chess does use handicaps in some settings, but they are not material handicaps. In informal blitz play, time handicaps are sometimes used, often in a format where players start at five minutes for the game and lose a minute if they win, until one of the players arrives at zero minutes. Simultaneous exhibitions and blindfold play are also handicaps that are practiced relatively widely. Judging just by the number of games played in each handicap mode, I’d say though that time handicap is by far the most popular variant at the club player level.
For chess in particular the piece-trading nature of the game also makes piece handicaps pretty huge in impact. Compare to shogi: in shogi having multiple non-pawn pieces handicapped can still be a moderate handicap, whereas multiple non-pawns in chess is basically a predestined loss unless there is a truly gargantuan skill difference.
I haven’t played many handicapped chess games, but my rough feel for it is that each successive “step” of handicap in chess is something like 3 times as impactful as the comparable shogi handicap. This makes chess handicaps harder to use as there’s much more risk of over- or under-shooting the appropriate handicap level and ending up with one side being highly likely to win.
Is the gap only 2 stones between best professionals and best computers? A reddit thread from 2 years ago said Shin Jinseo has a losing record getting 2 stones from FineArt, and computers have probably improved since then.