The Komi people come in two closely related flavours, the Zyrian and the Permyak. They speak Finno-Ugrian languages. Each group has its own region in European Russia, the very large Komi Republic for the Zyrian branch, and the small Komi-Permyak Autonomous Okrug to its south.

Komi, meaning the main Komi Republic (Komintasavalta), has an area of about 420 000 km2 and a population of 1.3 million, the majority Russian. The capital is Syktyvkar (known until 1930 as Ust'-Sysol'sk). The area is now very important for its Vorkuta coal-mining region and its oil. It extends to the Arctic Circle but is separated from the coast by the Nenets autonomous region.

The Komi people were absorbed by the Novgorod republic in Russia in the Middle Ages, and were converted to Christianity in the fourteenth century by St Stephen of Perm, who also devised an alphabet and translated parts of the Bible. Komi became an ASSR in 1930 and became one of the constuent members of Russia on the breakup of the USSR. The presidents since then have been Yuri Spiridonov 1990-2002 and Vladimir Torlopov 2002-.

The flag is a horizontal tricolor of light blue over green over white.

Komi-Permyak has an area of 33 000 km2 and a population of 160 000; its capital is Kudymkar.

Komi is a Japanese term from the game of Go (aka Wei Qi/Badouk). It is provable that ordinarily, the person playing black (Black plays first in Go) has an advantage, in that perfect play from both sides must either result in a draw, or a win for Black. White must therefore be given some sort of advantage to compensate. Komi is a fixed number of points granted to White (or subtracted from Black - there's no difference) to compensate for Black's first move advantage. The number of komi points can vary from country to country and organization to organization, but most rulesets use a komi of 5.5 or 6.5, as those komi are generally believed to give equal players approximately equal chances of winning. The fractional komi serves the double purpose of also preventing a tie (except in exceptional circumstances like superko).

Komi can also be used to compensate for a difference in skill between two players. The weaker player can be given the black stones, and White's komi can be reduced, or even made negative. This is only a good method of compensating for skill differences if the difference is small. See the Handicap Stone node for a more common method of dealing with larger differences in skill.

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