The Handicap Games plugin is designed for friendly or club tournaments where weaker players are given a time advantage against stronger opponents.

When enabled, three additional fields become available on the Tournament Settings page:

  • Penalty (secs) – The number of seconds subtracted from the stronger player’s clock. This value is multiplied by the number of Elo steps separating the two players.
  • Elo step – The Elo rating difference that defines one handicap step. For example, if this is set to 100, a 300-point difference results in three handicap steps.
  • Minimum time (secs) – The minimum time each player can have, regardless of the rating difference.

The adjusted times for both players are shown on the Pairings screen.

:information_source: You must also supply the time control settings for the tournament.

:warning: This plugin is intended for informal or training tournaments only — it should not be used for official rated events where players are ranked by Elo.