Polo handicap
A polo handicap is a system created by Henry Lloyd Herbert, first president of the United States Polo Association, at the founding of the USPA in 1890 so that teams could be more evenly matched when assessing players of varying ability.
The players are rated on a scale from minus 2 to 10. Minus 2 indicates a novice player, while the player rated at 10 goals denotes the highest handicap possible. So difficult is it to attain a 10-goal handicap that there are fewer than a dozen in the world today, and about two-thirds of all players handicapped are rated at 2 goals or less. Handicaps of 5 goals or above generally belong to professional players. It is not (nor has ever been) an estimate of the number of goals a player might score in a game, but rather of the player's worth to his or her team. It is an overall rating of a player's horsemanship, team play, knowledge of the game, strategy and horses. At one time, polo was the only sport in the world that considered sportsmanship when rating a player.
In matches played by handicapped players (as opposed to open competition, where handicaps are not considered), the handicaps of all four players are added up. If the total handicap of a team is more than the total of team against which they are playing, the difference is added to the scoreboard. For example, if the "Mounties" polo team has a total handicap of 6 goals and the "Tayto" team has a handicap of 4 goals, Tayto would start with a 2-goal advantage.
10 goal players
9 goal players
8 goal players
References
Retrieved from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polo_handicap
