Maybe this was more app feedback than site feedback......so I played my brother in law at a “balanced game” and everything seemed to work well but when we played a rematch I was surprised to see the handicap had stuck with the pieces rather than the player. So my brother in law was now two pawns down when I had just beaten him with this handicap. It didn’t seem fair. Did I mess up in the set up of this game?
Exact same thing happened here. Must be an implementation bug. At least, since we didn't specify the piece modifications ourselves, I believe it is the automation that fails.
I play a lower ranked player on "balanced / odds", I have 2 pieces removed to start. As soon as that game ends, a rematch pops up where the lower ranked player has the exact 2 pieces removed at start.