Optimum game time for beginners/intermediates

[Calvin Clark]

If you try different settings, you'll probably notice that at some point your quality of play starts to drop off dramatically as you turn on the time pressure. You may also find that at some point, more time just doesn't result in better plays. It may even get worse due to overthinking, which can cause you to play weird moves rather than normal ones. In my case, it looks like this. Like many things, the knee in curve is the sweet spot

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[Tryss]

Note that long thinking time means longer game. Can you stay focused for 2 hours? 4 hours?

[neocortex]

I play chess to tournament level, so yes I am able to focus for 5+ hours. However, this is my problem: In chess, it is often recommended beginners play longer games, but it seems (anecdotally, at least) that for Go, longer games are the preserve of stronger players, and beginners are recommended to play shorter games (so you can play more). Just an interesting contrast.

Cheers,
Jim.

[EdLee]

beginners are recommended to play shorter games (so you can play more).

Hi Jim, this , and that .

[xed_over]

In chess, it is often recommended beginners play longer games, but it seems (anecdotally, at least) that for Go, longer games are the preserve of stronger players, and beginners are recommended to play shorter games (so you can play more). Just an interesting contrast.

I usually recommend that beginners play shorter games for a number of reasons, the primary one being...
- they usually don't know enough to use long thinking times effectively, trying to choose between a bad move and a worse move -- it doesn't matter which one they pick. The sooner they pick one, the sooner they'll learn why it was wrong and not to do it again. Else, too much time will pass, and they'll forget what they played or why, and won't learn.

when I was a beginner, I was paralyzed at being able to play faster games -- I couldn't do it. But now I see the benefits of why I should have tried.

As you get stronger, you need more time to analyze different possible variations. Though it can also be good to play fast games here too, to train your instincts.

[Bill Spight]

I play chess to tournament level, so yes I am able to focus for 5+ hours. However, this is my problem: In chess, it is often recommended beginners play longer games, but it seems (anecdotally, at least) that for Go, longer games are the preserve of stronger players, and beginners are recommended to play shorter games (so you can play more). Just an interesting contrast.

Cheers,
Jim.

Well, what do you mean by a long game in chess? Based on my experience you can double that for go, as go is naturally a long game, with many moves.

As a beginner in go, I played fairly slowly, which meant about 15 sec. per move, on average. Years ago, Bruce Wilcox recommended that beginners play 4 times as fast, around 4 sec. per move. I would call that blitz go. Today I think that a lot of go players take 30-40 sec. per move, on average.

Edit: I corrected the average times per move.

[Schachus]

That is the funny thing: Tournament games in chess are mostly 2h basetime plus some extra after move 40(or similar time with Fisher modus, so 1:40h +30s/move+ some extra after move 40), so they are considerably longer than "long" go games, despite having less than half of the expected number of moves.

[Bill Spight]

That is the funny thing: Tournament games in chess are mostly 2h basetime plus some extra after move 40(or similar time with Fisher modus, so 1:40h +30s/move+ some extra after move 40), so they are considerably longer than "long" go games, despite having less than half of the expected number of moves.

Well, I was not thinking about tournament play. When I was playing amateur chess (non-tournament), a game took about 30 min. In Japan amateur go games (non-tournament) took about 1 hr. At that time most pro go games took about 11 - 12 hrs., but could go longer in byoyomi, OC. The games started at 9:00 a.m. and, with breaks for lunch and supper, most finished before midnight, but some continued well past that time. Title matches alloted two days per game.

In any event, I don't think that anyone is recommending that chess beginners take 4-5 hours per game.

[amb]

I think players often feel a pressure from byo-yomi that doesn't exist. They see the timer and think "oh know I won't be able to find a move in 30s!" and panic. But if you just played as if the timer wasn't there, you would probably pick a move before 30 seconds anyway.

I was originally going to argue this point, but now I have more mixed opinions. I just played a game with 10:00 + 10x20 time controls, and I felt like I was *constantly* right up against the byo-yomi timer trying to get my moves in. It was a complete adrenaline-fest! Rush rush rush! What a terrible idea, how can anyone reasonable possibly play this quickly??!!

On the one hand, I was in a terrible head-space, and playing some very questionable go at times. On the other hand, I actually went and looked at the game record, and out of the first 81 moves (during which I used the ten minutes of main time), the number of moves that *actually* took over 20 seconds was... three. (22, 23, and 33 seconds, in particular.) Near as I can tell there's no way to extract actual move times once one is in byo-yomi time, but despite feeling like I was always on the edge of it I didn't end up using any of the ten byo-yomi periods at all!

Feeling rushed is, I think, still generally awful, but it's probably helpful to learn that, really, 20-30 seconds is actually pretty reasonable! Also, if one happens to be playing bots on KGS, note that the open offers generally have reasonably tight time controls (see the aforementioned 10:00 + 10x20s), but there are lots more bots sitting there waiting for game offers that will happily play on whatever time you like.