Japan to adopt 6.5 point komi

The international trend in recent years has been to increase the size of the komi that Black gives to White to compensate for the advantage of having the first move... http://www.nihonkiin.or.jp/topics2002/brandnew-e.htm

Is this increased number for 9x9, 13x13, AND 19x19?

This is for 19x19. (I don't think the Nihon Ki-in has an official opinion about the komi for other board sizes.)

Are there many 19x19 games finishing with 0.5 point win for black? This seem the only affected games, if it would change here.

I can't give you percentages, but when you get stronger you are able to count the final score many moves before. If you see that you are behind, even with only half a point, you'll try something to get back in the game... so you may as well resign if nothing works for you. A half point loss is still a loss, right? :-)

Yes, and if a professional sees a win by half a point, he (or she) may not look for a way to win by more; A win is a win. So, the number of games won by half a point is not necessarily an accurate measure of whether the komi used is appropriate or not. Regarding 9x9, komi is also usually either 5.5 or 6.5, which surprised me. I have no clue about 13x13.

The article referenced in the initial posting explains that the change was prompted by win/loss statistics for more than 10000 professional games over five years. During that time Black had a 51.86% to 48.14% winning advantage.

This difference was said to be convincing.

Korea and China have already raised the komi.

Will Little Golem change the komi for games on this site?

Imagine that we will play 100 games and in every I will win by half point. So we change komi and because that so I will start to play more agresively. Do u think that there u will win next 100 games? :-)

More agresively does not mean worse! Probably it could mean better. :-) U could lost next 100 games by 1.5 points :-)

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, those 10000 games were PROFESSIONAL games. Is anyone here a Go professional? Would a one point change in komi make the slightest difference here at all? I don't mean to be insulting, but with all the fires Richard is currently putting out, this hardly seems to be a high priority issue.

It's not an issue for us, personally I don't see 3.5% more for Black as that big of a margin. The desired 50/50 split is imo impossible.

bump