So I keep getting PM'd by a particular member on this forum due to a comment I made about liking byo-yomi.

Anyway, I thought that the discussion would be more productive if it were an open one in which everybody could participate.

So... Do you like Japanese byo-yomi? Why or why not?

_________________
be immersed

It's simple. I like simple.

_________________
FusekiLibrary, an opening library.
SGF converter tools: Wbaduk NGF to SGF | 440 go problems | Fuseki made easy | Tesuji made easy | Elementary training & Dan level testing | Dan Tutor Shortcut To Dan

compared to sudden death, byo-yomi is wonderful.

No, since it is not a system that works easily with analog clocks. Nearly all of the tournaments in Britain continue to use such clocks, so the only way to operate byoyomi would be to have someone sitting by the board reading out the seconds. Electronic clocks are wonderful machines bu the best way to set them is with a six-pound hammer. While analog clocks will continue to be used, by far the bast time systems will be a) sudden death and b) Canadian overtime.

Best wishes.

_________________
No aji, keshi, kifu or kikashi has been harmed in the compiling of this post.
http://www.gogod.co.uk

Fortunately this opinion is one from the Dark Ages. There is absolutely no benefit to using analog clocks instead of digital timers aside from the cost and existing stocks. Of course, I recognize that given an analog clock only situation, you have to play sudden death or Canadian overtime.

However, digital timers can be had for around USD30 these days and in absolutely every tournament situation, a director should give priority to the digital timer if available. Fischer timing, byo-yomi, and Bronstein (time delay) settings are all superior to any possible setting on an analog clock.

So as to completely make this a moot point, simply compare an absolute time setting (a horrible choice for go) on a digital timer versus an analog clock.

To answer the original question, there is a simple hierarchy of optimum go time settings given that a digital timer is available. Fischer time >> byo-yomi > time-delay >>> absolute time.

So, where we have a tournament for 70 people and we already have an acceptable stock of analog clocks, the tournament organiser or the BGA must pay out over $1000 just to "give priority to the digital timer", when the tournament is normally run on Canadian overtime? That is overstating the case a little.

Best wishes.

_________________
No aji, keshi, kifu or kikashi has been harmed in the compiling of this post.
http://www.gogod.co.uk

No, but if any player owns a digital timer of their own the tournament director should give priority to using that clock, with an appropriate byo-yomi setting or other common standard. Canadian timing is a patch, not a solution.

This is how you slowly update an old stock of equipment while at the same time not penalizing anyone. It is a necessity that tournament go worldwide move to the digital timer as quickly as possible.

This is a very personal point of view and one that I (personally) think is wrong. There is nothing intrinsically better about either Canadian or byoyomi: each has its place. As Mark points out, if you have a stock of analog clocks then Canadian is just fine and there is absolutely no reason to switch to byoyomi. In fact, it is totally impractical. If, on the other hand, you have analog clocks then you have equally valid choices between the two. Overall this makes Canadian a preferable choice because it allows a consistent approach with all clock types.

Any system which allows tournament games to finish on schedule should be considered acceptable. Having said that, I have a strong preference for Canadian because it allows thinking time. I generally play quite quickly but I like the chance to think a little even in overtime. Byoyomi does not allow this. When I play on DGS I usually set low time limit Canadian (about two moves a day) and on KGS I usually set low basic time and reasonable byoyomi. Both of these keep the game moving at a fairly brisk pace, which is what I think should be one in a non-tournament game.

So to answer the original question: I don't dislike it but it is not my first choice.

_________________
Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

I much prefer the games I play with Canadian overtime to those with byo-yomi. The ability to play quickly sometimes and think for a decent stretch of time sometimes (while in overtime) is very nice.

I haven't tried Fischer time. It may be better, though I must say the reminder in Canadian overtime to count every 25 moves (if one is slightly ahead on time) is not unwelcome.

Possibly I'm just most interested in overtime formats that trick people into (edit: effectively) giving me more time.

I would set up Fischer time >> time-delay >> absolute time > 3-5xbyouyomi > Progressive Canadian overtime > Canadian overtime >> 1xbyouyomi

For slow tournament time settings (total: 80-180 mins). Fischer increments should be at least 20-40 secs. And delay 20-50 seconds. For byouyomi at least 30-60 seconds.

----

Preferences are little different however for rapid time controls (30-50 minutes including increments and overtime.) Time delay should be 12-20 seconds, Fischer increments 10-15 seconds and byouyomi 20-30 seconds.

Fischer time > time-delay >>> absolute time > 3-5xbyouyomi > Canadian overtime > 1×byouyomi

----

And for IRL lightning:

time-delay > Fischer >>> absolute time > 3-5xbyouyomi >> Canadian overtime > 1xbyouyomi

example settings for time delay is 4 mins + 4 sec delay. 10 second byouyomi. 2-4 second Fischer increments. And 10-15 minutes absolute time control (relevant with analog clocks). For kgs blitz byouyomi is nice, but for real board blitz my handling skill of stones is not good enough for byouyomi. Thus absolute timing with time bonus is highly preferred.

I like to use exact figures instead of vaguely defined generalities, but my preferences can of course change quite easily, so they are not that well fixed.

---

Digiclocks are already quite well available. And we could always use digital clocks for the first 10-20 boards and analog clocks for the rest.

----

[edit:] It seems my preferences has changed little during this discussion. My preference towards Fischer has increased with the expense of Bronsteinian.
[edit2:] In my preferences absolute time controls gets even more relevant. Now I think that overtime is actively bad even if it is compared with absolute time without time bonuses.

The issue has been conflated and that is my fault. I will not disagree that between Canadian time and byo-yomi neither is intrinsically better.

However, between digital timers and analog clocks, the former are certainly intrinsically superior. A serious tournament game among professionals will never again take place without the use of digital clocks.

I do realize that there are two ways of approaching this topic about digital vs. analog. The first is from the tournament director's perspective, which I sympathize with, and the second is from the perspective of overall efficiency and accuracy on an individual game basis. I am tackling the question from this latter perspective, with an eye to the former.

Sorry for the topic hijack.

What is there to dislike about Japanese Byoyomi?

It depends on the choice that I have.

- I am convinced that bonus time is the best possible time system in principle, for all occasions from two-day title matches (330/60) to Blitz (5/2).
- If there are only analogue clocks available, canadian overtime is an acceptable workaround, although it has quite some drawbacks (artificial time borders between periods, difficult to estimate game length, time lost with clock fiddling and stone counting).
- If there are only clocks available that can only do canadian overtime or byoyomi overtime, I like byoyomi overtime better, because I almost do not have to look at or think about the clock. Byoyomi overtime also has drawbacks, though (difficult to estimate game length, inflexibility in time use).

_________________
A good system naturally covers all corner cases without further effort.

I greatly prefer Japanese byoyomi because I tend to forget about Canadian until I'm making 9 moves in 8 seconds.

Also prefer digital to analog clocks in tournaments because I tend to give my opponent 15 minutes or so extra main thinking time (i.e. the tournament director usually has to notify my opponent that he is in overtime)

I have nothing against byo-yomi, and am happy to let it be the default in my online games.

I also have nothing against canadian timing, and I don't understand why it would be a 'patch' in any way. It seems sensible enough to me.

It is a patch because it was designed to be a method for reasonably allowing overtime on analog clocks. It's a clever situation to a difficult problem.

However, much time in Canadian is wasted counting out stones and determining how many moves remain to be made. Additionally, unused time is lost when the overtime period resets, meaning that players are not getting an equal balance of thinking time during the game. (i.e. For the two players, the sum of actual thinking time used by player 1 + time remaining on the clock of player 1 will not be equal to the same calculation for player 2.)

This is good question and it seems that it is not that clear to everybody.

The main reason is that with Japanese byouyomi, e.g. 60 mins + 1x20 secs, around 5-10 % of games are decided due to time loss. And often case time loss has nothing to do with actual time pressure like in the case of Dinerstein 7-dan in Leksand and van Zeijst 7-dan in Tampere. But loss is just a result of human error or other temporary brain fart.

Also many people will in any case end up in byouyomi in half way of the game. Because they THINK that they are able to play 50-100 moves within 5-10 second marginal from the death. But during long tournament there are hundreds of moves that must be done within 4 second marginal from time loss. And it goes without saying that there hundreds of rare events that can go wrong and that even experienced 7-dans cannot take in consideration. Then we need to bother unnecessarily appeals committee.

We need to have smooth time pressure. Unlike with Japanese byouyomi, with Fischer unused time accumulates. Thus you will in any case get maximum benefit for the extra time gained per move. And you are able to keep e.g. 1-2 minutes safety marginal. If you are unable to keep 1-2 minutes safety marginal, then that is due to time pressure and you perfectly deserve to lose on time, because you are unable to use the pace that is allocated for you to play.

Problem is with Japanese byouyomi that you can maximize possible time used for thinking by playing half of the game on overtime and moving just few seconds before verge of death. Thus Japanese byouyomi is always prone to accidental time losses. We can greatly reduce the probability of accidental time loss by using e.g. 10x30sec overtime, but that would only mean that people do fear the overtime even less and instead of half of the game, they would play two thirds of the game on overtime. This would be serious thread for the tournament schedule.

Please notice huge differences between concepts accidental time loss and time loss due to time pressure. Accidental time loss is what we do not want and what we can fully prevent e.g. with Fischer time. Loss due to time pressure is what we really want because tournament schedule overrules everything. And because with fischer you can always keep safe several minutes buffer to the time loss, then if you cannot maintain that buffer that prevents accidental time losses in every possible cases, then it is due to time pressure and there are absolutely no complaints that can be issued after time loss.

With Japanese byouyomi we cannot require people to keep safety buffer, because they can maximize time allocated only by playing as big part of the game as possible on byouyomi and leaving as small as possible buffer. This is just ridiculous. And can be only argued and defended using arguments like "we should use Japanese byouyomi because we have used it on the previous tournaments" etc.

Maybe I just never considered counting out a few stones to be problematic. I suppose I still don't, really

The argument that one player gets a few extra seconds thinking time is also unconvincing. I've been in situations in my games where these few seconds might be useful (if they ever would be), and I don't think it's ever been important. Though I always feel rude looking at the board while my opponent counts out, so I spend extra time fiddling with his clock

The arguments in favour of Fischer time seem to be along the lines of 'it's technically perfect', but I am not convinced that it is realistically perfect - the discussion of 'keeping a 2 minute buffer' etc. involves just as much playing the clock as byo-yomi, which I thought was the problem.

It would be most interesting to have similar tournaments run different overtime systems and see what people preferred and what people lost on time with. I suspect that, if they were used to both systems, the difference would be negligible. If this is the case, it's far more interesting to just look at what people would *like*, and if that's Fischer time then it's fine by me.

This is good point and this is the reason why I disagree with Harleqin that Fischer is good for lightning and rapid time settings. If you have only 10 second increment it is really frustrating and difficult to keep up safety buffer and you need to constantly monitor the clock. Thus it is not much better than overtime.

This is not the issue with slow 30 sec increments and it is enough that clock just beeps when you have less than 1 min time. And it really is not demanding to keep 2-10 minute buffer. Just play few moves fast and you have gained enough buffer.

With 10-20 sec time delay, it is of course even more brutal, because you cannot accumulate time. Then time pressure just keeps increasing until you lose on time. 10 second time delay, although might be in theory more brutal, is in practice more gentle than similar Fischer, because it is more predictable and easy to control. You know that every second you waste on main time increases time pressure. With fast Fischer you can in principle always gather safe buffer, but in practice this much is harder than it sounds.