I’m just getting into Go and last night me and a friend pulled my chess clock out for a game of 5 minute Go on a 9x9 board. I did notice in the chess clock (Chronos) manual there were Go specific time controls including Byoyomi and others which I’m going to look into today.

I was wondering though if it is possible to just play a 5 minute Go game? Each player being given 5 minutes for all his moves and once/if that run out he loses. I mean what is to stop a player near the end of a close game on time just placing his stones in his own or my territory even though he’s just doing himself damage in a scoring sense just to see the last minute or so out on the clock to win by time?

If my opponent was losing badly in a scoring sense but had 30 seconds on the clock to my 20 seconds and decided just to fill the board with his stones each move and that forced me to carry on probably doing similar but since i have slightly less time he’s going to force me to lose by default. That seems an optional tactic but very bad for the game. If this happens in chess it seems more plausible because of an instant kill of the king becoming more probably but in Go there is no instant kill. You both would be just filling in territory with no large gains being made either way.

Can anyone suggest a timing method for quick 5 minute (ish) games?

Play with byo yomi. Absolute time makes the game a joke.

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Patience, grasshopper.

Both of these should be fine for a 5 minute (each) game on a 9x9 board:

3 mins + 3x0:10sec byo-yomi
3 mins + 5 secs per move fischer time

The most common way to playing fast games (also called blitz) is using a 10 second per move byo-yomi setting. If your clock does not support that function you can also use Canadian time where you play 24 moves in 4 minutes (or something similar)


Other question: There is no zugzwang in go, you can pass at anytime. (of course it usually leaves you with a bad position if you do it during the game). But if your opponent is not playing productive moves (like playing in his OWN territory) you can just pass without using up time, right?
Of course if he is playing in your territory and trying to make desperate life you can't ignore it and may still lose on time. That’s why absolute time is despised by many go players. Best example: this thread

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While I was teaching the game to a friend of mine, my mother from the other room:
"Cutting? Killing? Poking out eyes? What the hell are you playing?"

Sometimes you can ignore the threath and pass, and the opponent will lose one time anyway. I played game with absolute time (bad idea) once, and I lost on time when my opponent refused to play the endgame and just kept passing. There was no time for me to figure out how to handle such tactics. If I passed it would not be possible to score the game. Absolute blitz is a horrible invention.

Absolute blitz is fine if you're just playing a quick game with friends - I do so all the time. 10-15 minutes p.p.p.g. is perfect for a 19*19 blitz. For 9*9, 3 minutes is blitz, 5 minutes is casual pace, and 10 minutes is a lot. The key to this is that you don't care too much about who wins the game. Yes, losses by time do happen, but if you're playing for fun rather than for the win, that's just not really important!

One word of caution: if you want to get stronger, blitz doesn't help you too much, so use this advice with care.

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My name is Gijs, from Utrecht, NL.

When in doubt, play the most aggressive move