The decision whether to handicap versus play poorly comes down to the personalities involved. I agree with David that IN GENERAL handicapping is preferable to playing poorly. For one, it's more honest. Also, there's no problem with "getting" caught. And lastly, by forcing the better player to actually play well in order to come close to winning, it gives the weaker player a way to see good moves in action. The only time you'd want to play poorly on purpose is if A) the weaker player is overly concerned with the possible stigma of admitting to needing a handicap, and B) the people whose opinions matter don't notice the poor play. That might be the person himself or maybe friends. As for the exact handicap, you might want to over-compensate to begin with so that the kid has some wins under his belt before dialing in on the exact level of handicap. You might even go a little further than David's suggestion just to make sure. By the way... IceTowers? How many players are you playing with? I'm not a fan of two-player IceTowers. Ryan -----Original Message----- From: icehouse-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:icehouse-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David L. Willson Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2010 4:53 PM To: Icehouse Discussion List Cc: becca@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: [Icehouse] Throwing a game of IceTowers? I find that handicapping works better than strategizing to lose when playing with little people. A handicap allows the big person to try hard, developing winning strategies, while the little person does the same. True that the strategies won't be completely identical to those used in the "real" game, but they'll at least be very similar. Here are a couple ideas for IceTowers. 1. Have the big person remove 2 smalls and a medium from the table. 2. Give the little person 2 black smalls and a black medium with special rules like "black pieces cannot be capped". Technically, the 2nd one is more of a game-mod than a handicap and defeats the "learning this game" goal I described so carefully, but it sounded like fun to me. David L. Willson