how much of a gap for handiap

Hello i've recently been helping out at a local club by teaching and playing lower rated players (below 1000) and beginners. Well to set an exampleof someone the head coach of the club told me to play someone around 1100ish with odds of a pawn. Already nervouse a bit since 1100 isn't to far down away from my rating and it being my first ever odds game I played and to my delight won the game. So afterthis I started to play more odds games and won every single game that day and during all these games I gave bigger odds but noo higher than a knight. At the end of the day I made this what I believe to be a good assessment of proper handicaps but wanted to know what other's think.

Rook handicap = players 1000 below my stregth.

Bishop or Knight= players 600-800 below my stregth

Pawn = players 300-500 below my stregth

extra move = 200 below my stregth.

I'd love to know what everyone else thinks of handicap game's and how you treat them.

As players get better games are won based on smaller and smaller advantages, so it depends on how much your opponent can make of this advantage.  So instead of how much it decreases your rating maybe we could look at how much different handicaps increase other player's ratings.

Players under 1000... hard for me to judge because I don't have much recent experience playing them.  Lets say a 1000 rated player vs another 1000 rated player wins a knight early in the opening, is that going to be a guaranteed win?  I don't think 100% guarantee.  What about if 1000 vs 1400 and the 1400 loses a knight early in opening?  Not sure but I may still like the 1400s chances.

So yeah, I'm going to totally guess below, but here's off the top of my head...

rating | pawn | knight | rook |

800    |  +0   |  +50    |  +80
1000  |  +20  |  +150  |  +200
1200  |  +30  |  +200  |  +300
1400  |  +50  |  +300  |  +400
1600  |  +50  |  +400  |  +500
1800  |  +80  |  +500  |  +600
2000  |  +100 |  +600  |  +700

Giving more than 1 piece, or giving a queen should be even more exponential... although with some limits of course as you start to get lower class players vs titled players you'd see the titled players preform an all out attack and likely mate the other guy so hard to say.

Anyway with my quick numbers with little experience to back them, you could be giving these U1000 players rook odds without much trouble :)  In this case I imagine you not going for an all out attack, but just some solid opening, avoiding all trades, and over time they'll give you the material back with mistakes.

awww I see being the player that I am I play against players below 1400 I'd say fairly often and I can tell you this era's of chess layers are stronger than the old eras and the reason of course to me is better opprotunities like computer's,internet, more programs and more popularity in chess in general. I've seen 2000 (expert) give pawn odds to 1200 player's and get beat pretty bad or the 1200 could get a draw if he/she puts just enough effort into it. Although 800 players still make mistake's they r more bound to blunder a pawn or 2 but not entire pieces like the old day's so it's because of all this improvement that I think the evaluation of handicap's has changed alot more.

WTH?! Where did you see this anomoly?

 Don't know whynthis is so shocking but I really do see this stuff happen at local clubs and training classes perhaps people in the rating range of 1200 where you live are playing the same while player's at this rating where I live play higher than what there rating say's. I'd say youre a good 1531 so come into the detroit area clubs more and unless your playing below your initial rating you should be able to do the same. 

How did you come up with 1531 for my rating?

I never give material handicaps but will sometimes give time handicaps when playing much weaker players. I only do this when an opponent asks for odds too. 

an Idea of opening handicaps is something someone suggested to me which is playing offbeat openings or openings you just don't play to often against player's lower rated would that be legit a little ?

tryst: I never reveal my rating estgimate secreat's in public sorry.

That is understandable. I too, was a ratings guesstimator for a few minutes. It's not easy keeping the formula a secret from other would-be guesstimators

I don't guess but if you don't believe me then to bad I'm still not posting my method.

Oh, I'm sorry. I misread this word, "estgimate"

That was supposed to be a secreat!