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Comment by teleforce | Hacker News Reader

>Go grandmaster Shin defeats AI KataGo with a two-stone handicap

English is not my first language but for clarity perhaps the title should be:

Go grandmaster Shin with a two-stone handicap defeats AI KataGo

No. It’s not my first language too, but your version sounds odd. Usually you put an action first and only then the details

Trouble is, from the existing title it's not clear who had the handicap. So the poster is right to try and fix it.

It's not clear from the revised title either though. In fact I found it even more confusing. The issue is the ambiguity of the wording "with a two-stone handicap", not where it's located in the sentence.

I would probably phrase it as 'Go grandmaster Shin defeats two-stone-handicapped AI KataGo'

Are there ads on the page? If so, let’s A/B test that along with “Grandmaster Shin Savagely Beats Handicapped Opponent”.

Sir, have you considered a career in social networking engagement?

Edit: 10 years since i made the HN account and I only now notice you can't see the scores of other people's comments. Here's hoping the brilliance of the above comment is appreciated.

Made my day

I only saw the "revised title" and yes, it's still confusing :)

With a two-stone handicap, Go grandmaster Shin defeats AI KataGo.

Go grandmaster Shin, playing with a two-stone handicap, defeats AI KataGo.

The problem is that "with a handicap" is in itself ambiguous. People sometimes use it positively, sometimes negatively. That is, you say that Shin had a two-stone handicap, that can in itself be understood as either "Shin was given an advantage of two stones over the AI" (the reality) or "Shin was playing with a disadvantage, giving the AI two extra stones" (the more common reading of "to have a handicap").

Idiomatically a handicap is a disadvantage not an advantage. So if Shin had two extra stones, KataGo had a two stone handicap.

Handicaps can be positive, e.g. in fixed distance racing one way to handicap is to "give" a starting distance to the racers who are slower than the scratch racer; in this system a higher handicap is more of an advantage.

Since the AI was playing scratch (the normal, unmodified play style), it seems odd to say it had a handicap. Rather, the human had a positive handicap of two stones.

Youre just mixing up who has the handicap. The handicap gives starting distance to the slower racer, but its still the faster racer that has the handicap.

Yes, but the title has an ambiguous parse (a shift-reduce conflict):

X defeats (Y with Z)

(X defeats Y) with Z

with the latter usually understood as meaning X has Z, as far as I know.

fwiw, as a native speaker, your revised version sounds wrong. I'm terrible at grammer, but i think it's because when you put the "with" early in the sentence, it acts as a preposition modifying the noun, where later in the sentence it acts as an adverbial phrase modifying the verb defeat. The handicap is describing the manner of the defeat and not a trait of the grandmaster, so the with has to go at the end of the sentence.

Or that at least is my guess as to why it sounds wrong.

> I'm terrible at grammer

Also pretty bad at spelling.

lol, you are not wrong.

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