No preferred time setting can take away the fact that (usable) "time will be up" at some point.
This causes stress, inherent and normal to playing games.

Furthermore, the discussion here has shifted to the usability of (different kinds of) ING clocks.
This causes an unfairness for the first player to encounter the mal-design of particular clocks,
resp. other particularities of tournament settings/rules/etc.

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Greetings,
Tommie

3dan EGF (AGA no 13477) || Tommie on KGS: 'June'|| DGS: 'Zhi Laohu' 纸老虎 = 'paper tiger' || Senseis : http://senseis.xmp.net/?tderz ||
ENFP (MBTI) - 'Find your own style within the Fundamentals of Go! '

Not the byoyomi itself causes the losses but the lack of a time warning while the clock seamlessly goes from "main time" to "byouyomi time". This problem is the same with all systems where the transition does not make itself known to the player. It would even occur when the clock automatically went to canadian byoyomi, counting moves by itself. When using analogue clocks, players get their time warning because of the requirement to fiddle with the clock when the main time is over.

Besides, Bronstein timing (delay timing) is inferior to Fischer timing (bonus timing), because under Bronstein timing, unused time is spilt and players thus have an unnatural incentive to delay a move they already have decided on. Estimates of the overall game time are also more imprecise, because the additional factor of time spill has to be included. So, it is inferior in time management flexibility for the players and inferior in overall time estimation.

Overall, I think that the main point is, independently from the used time system: We need guaranteed time warnings.

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

I dislike fisher time. I think canadian byoyomi with chess clocks is the best... Ing clocks are just too lame.

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While Ing clocks might be "lame" in certain aspects, I think that digital clocks are in general more fair (and useful) than chess clocks, especially considering byoyomi.

Canadian byoyomi (for instance, 25 moves in 5 minutes) can actually mean that one player has 4:35 minutes for making his plays, and the other one 5:12... Not to mention that on digital clocks it is clear at a glance how much time is left (in seconds!), while chess clocks with their flags provide only vague approximation.

So I cannot agree that this would be "the best" option.

Harleqin, your reasoning is little simplistic. Japanese byouyomi is itself awful overtime. And causes __lots of__ troubles and accidental time losses no matter what clock it is used and how well it alerts. I myself lost one EGF-A class game on time and _ the only reason_ for that loss was that there were used 1x30 sec Japanse byouyomi. Accidental timelosses are ALWAYS bad thing and they must be prevented. Time pressure is of course ok. And for that Fischer time or even progressive Canadian overtime is is possible to adjust in good balance so that tournament schedule does not get affected too much and players do not suffer accidental timelosses.

It is just bare fact that some people think on main time for the first 60 moves and then play the rest of the game on overtime. If we make sluggish overtime that prevents accidental timelosses, it is bare fact that tournament schedules loses meaning. Thus we need to disable overtime altogether and introduce Fischer approach.

Bronstein is better for lightning and rabid games than Fischer (because it does not allow accumulation of time), but for slow tournament play, Fischer is perhaps better system, like you argued. The very idea of Bronstein is that it does not allow instant moves. Thus it slows the pace of game and increases the overall quality of the game. In tournament settings however optimal delay is perhaps too long. Thus I think that Fischer is better for slow tournament games. But for rapid games delay is superior.

I usually play club games using 20 mins main time + 12-18 second delay. This gives very pleasant experience for rapid game. Japanese byouyomi is for KGS-blitz, however decent (because it gives lots of accidental timelosses usually for the opponent =)




I totally disagree with that! The main point in this issue is Japanese byouyomi. Poor Inc clocks are just extra salt for the mix. Too bad if people opinions are blurred and they are unable to see real reasons behind the easy target of Ing clock.

I like Japanese byo-yomi. It's my favorite system. To me, it is very clear what the requirements are. You have X seconds per move for some value of X.

You can improve tournament smoothness by ensuring that all clocks act in a predictable way. But I think that getting rid of byo-yomi would be a mistake. I like it much better than any other time system.

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be immersed

Is it really not clear to you what the requirements of the other time systems are? None of them are rocket science.

Fischer is simpler than byo-yomi in that:

• A clock needs to display only one number - the time remaining - instead of two numbers - the time remaining and the number of periods remaining.
• There's no transition from main time to overtime - the timing is the same throughout the game. There can't be any confusion about not noticing that you have entered overtime, because there's no overtime.

Not that I'm advocating Fischer; it just seems odd to praise the "clarity" of japanese byo-yomi in the context of this thread.

It is completely irrelevant how much you love Japanese byouyomi, but the fact is that 7-dans do not have enough experience so that they could place hundreds of stones in single tournament on go board within 5 sec marginal (that is factual requirement for 1x20sec etc. Japanese byouyomi (e.g. in EGC). Accidents happen and they are very likely, because there are about million things that can go wrong and cause immediate loss by time. Some of them are separate from the player's themselves.

Also, accidental timeloss is complitely different thing than loss because of time pressure. Time pressure is of course what we want so that people finish within schedule. But we do not want accidents, when people are quarter second too slow in placing go stone AND pressing the clock.

It's not irrelevant if a majority of players would prefer to play with Japanese byoyomi. The same can be said it is irrelevant how much you love bonus time. You can bring it up with the EGC if you want to change the time rules used at congress and see if a majority support it.

Personally, I agree with Kirby.

Perhaps I was thinking mostly of Canadian time. I don't like Canadian time because it is hard for me to schedule my time correctly.

I've never played with Fischer time, so I have no real objections to it. However, I still like Japanese byo-yomi better. My comment was mainly in response to somebody's suggestion to get rid of byo-yomi... And I don't think that byo-yomi causes a problem.

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be immersed

You have a set number of time to play a move for each byo-yomi period. If you don't want any accidents, just glance at your clock now and then.

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be immersed

*Sigh*, if only the chess players could see us now...

They have no "Black/White Time, Counting, Begin"

Somehow they manage to survive several transitions(If I remember correctly, in many tournaments they have 3 main time sections to the game) without a single Sirius Robotics-issue Clock.

(It is their pleasure to count for you, and their satisfaction to then not count for you with the knowledge of a job well-done)


As far as counting systems, I have no problem with J-Byoyomi, (mostly because I almost never leave my main phase), but Fischer strikes me as a system that lets players choose how to allocate their time to the game, and does not force them to use one kind of time for the opening and middle-game and another for the endgame.

J-Byoyomi seems to me to be prejudiced against strong endgame players. It doesn't treat all sections of the game equally, and I fault it for that.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

In my time the "standard" was :
2h for 40 moves, then 1h for 20 moves, then 1h sudden death.

Looks a lot like canadian overtime, but with longer times.

Games started at 14h, and most were finished before 19h or 20h. The rare ones that were still running were continued in the morning.

How can it be avoided and what are they going to do about it? I too, agree that this sort of thing shouldn't really happen in such a very important game. I found this very crucial situation.

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No Good War

Does anyone know EGF Rules Commission decision on this topic?

There is no decision yet.

We have been working on a decision and it looks like there will be some soon.

How does Fischer time setting solve this problem here? The sound will magically come out when it knows the clock is running Fischer time not byo-yomi?

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长考出臭棋.

I agree with you and Kirby. I can use other time setting, but there's nothing wrong or unconvenient to use byo-yomi. In fact, I just love it with Go.

Off-topic: Second time I agree with Kirby other than solutions of L&D in the forum

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长考出臭棋.

No, it solves it by taking away the (apparent) need for sound entirely. The time control never changes into a different phase, and so the same time economization takes place during the entire game.

In chess, the popular clock is the Chronos (a fantastic clock, leaves the ing clock in the dust), and though it has the functionality, even when playing super fast, it's rarely ever used audibly.

Personally, I hate the audible alert, it's distracting to the other player, and serves mostly to disrupt my own thought process. You have a visual display, use it.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...