Life In 19x19

I'm beginning to wonder whether Fischer timing or byo'yomi are really necessary in standard tournaments of Go, Shogi, Chess, Xjianggqi . . .

. . . Because you can use absolute timing, absolutely. Set the total time for the round as 3/4ths of the combined absolute time for all players, and of course this means in the case of a two-player match, it would be 3/2hlvs of each player's main time. As long as one doesn't fall more than 5/6ths of the combined absolute time behind, and assuming they can move and place pieces as fast as their opponent, they can guarantee that they won't lose on time in a winning or drawing position because their opponent took advantage of their greater time reserve and kept playing pointless moves.

Some may say this will be unfair on the player who plays quickly. Yes, I agree, go is a game played on two dimensions of space and one dimension of time. But I would counter that by saying that go is a game played on two dimension of space and one dimension of time. The same dimension of time--not two different dimensions of time for each player. In fact this implores one to do away with separate time limits altogether and have nothing but a total round time drawing the game if it's exceeded, but of course any player can force a draw by doing nothing. The exact compromise, the mathematical mean of these two, is to have a total game time that is 3/4ths of the combined individual time limits. And the best way to have a clear picture of the individual time limits is to use absolute timing, which is now possible due to there being a total round time limit less than each players' combined time.

So if a round of a two-player match gives 30 minutes absolute time per person, the total possible time for that round will be 45 minutes, with any games unfinished after then considered a draw. But this would mean players should play as if they have 22.5 minutes on their clock, not 30. So the proper way to state the time would be 22.5 minutes per side plus a third of that time, 7.5 minutes, to prevent a losing player from forcing the winning player into a timeout unfairly--assuming two plyers can make moves at the same speed, if losing player has more than 1/3rd of the total time's time than the winning player, I'd consider forcing a timeout in a losing position fair play (although I won't do it myself).

For really fast-paced tournaments like the New Ryusei Fischer and Byo'yomi do make dramatic sense, but for anything longer than the NHK cup, I'd switch to Semi-Total timing, a kind of Timeout-Prevention timing.

I also wonder whether one needs to use an actual chess clock; just countdown timers seem fine enough. In two-player go, after you make your move, you press your opponent's clock to start theirs and then press your own to stop yours. For Shogi, esChess and Xjianggqi Chess Clocks look like they make sense, however for go it seems it would be better if one had two clocks, each being many times thinner than a chess clock if they're on the left and right sides. I thought of the possibility of a go board with a groove underneath to connect the two clocks, and it would be easier for my preference for having each clock be spherical or square and up and down, on the side of each player in the space their bowl isn't in, but without that one can use this method. Let's assume you don't use ST timing in your tournament; you can still increase the likelihood all games finish on time by having players use this timekeeping system. Tables wouldn't go sideways as much as a Karuta mat or a trading card game table.

Elom0 wrote:I'm beginning to wonder whether Fischer timing or byo'yomi are really necessary in standard tournaments of Go,

. . . Because you can use absolute timing, absolutely.

There are a few tournaments with absolute timing. I'm a tournament organizer - and I do not use absolute timing, because Go is a philosophy not only a game.

But you may read the senseis-wiki to find the answer, why it's not popular: https://senseis.xmp.net/?AbsoluteTiming

Yours

Wilhelm

karlsgo wrote:

Elom0 wrote:I'm beginning to wonder whether Fischer timing or byo'yomi are really necessary in standard tournaments of Go,

. . . Because you can use absolute timing, absolutely.

There are a few tournaments with absolute timing. I'm a tournament organizer - and I do not use absolute timing, because Go is a philosophy not only a game.

But you may read the senseis-wiki to find the answer, why it's not popular: https://senseis.xmp.net/?AbsoluteTiming

Yours

Wilhelm

Thanks, although I don't fully understand, since those issues are mostly addressed when absolute timing is in the context of a Semi-long-Total time limit? The opponent has less incentive to play useless moves and run down the clock than even in byo-yomi . . .

For me, the goals for a timing system are:

- the overall game time is limited
- the limit is symmetric to the players
- the players have to do as little time management (calculations, counting moves etc.) as possible

At any given point in the game I don't know how many moves have been played nor how many are to be played yet.

Applied to your proposal: I don't want to estimate the number of remaining plays (I also would be wildly off almost always), divide the remaining time by that (quickly, what is 10:30 min divided by 150?), keep track of where this goes and then also try to keep the draw threshold in mind. That's a lot of ifs and thens. It occupies my mind, which I'd rather use for playing Go.

To contrast that with Fischer time (which is my favourite): I can directly see my reserve on the clock. If that shrinks, I will sooner or later need to play a bit faster, but I know that I will never go below the time per move. If the reserve grows, I can probably use more time when I need it. So the clock takes all the time thinking from me.

Japanese Byoyomi is a bit similar, but there the reserve only ever shrinks, and there is incentive to »almost fully use« periods for each move, because unused parts of periods are not retained for later. I regard it as a workaround for when you do not have clocks that support Fischer time. But at least you also do not have to think much about time.

Elom0 wrote:...

Thanks, although I don't fully understand, since those issues are mostly addressed when absolute timing is in the context of a Semi-long-Total time limit? The opponent has less incentive to play useless moves and run down the clock than even in byo-yomi . . .

You could play 2,000 moves past the actual end of the game. Even if I can slam a stone in response and press the timer in a second, that's 30 minutes of clock I need to reserve. So now we need a TD to come adjudicate whether your moves are reasonable. Which at move 2,000: clearly, no. But what about 20, 30, 50 moves after the end? Those extremely speculative attacks where you could claim "I'd capture a stone if he doesn't think to respond?" Even if the time limit is generous, you should expect the players to sometimes come into the endgame close to the end of the clock. If they don't, couldn't they have used that thinking time to play something stronger somewhere earlier in the game?

With your proposal the opponent doesn't go from a win to a loss for having a small edge in time and refusing to end the game. But they still go from a win to a tie. So it's still a positive strategy to just refuse to pass in a losing position.

Ties are also a pain for lots of tournament structures.

Polama wrote:

Elom0 wrote:...

Thanks, although I don't fully understand, since those issues are mostly addressed when absolute timing is in the context of a Semi-long-Total time limit? The opponent has less incentive to play useless moves and run down the clock than even in byo-yomi . . .

You could play 2,000 moves past the actual end of the game. Even if I can slam a stone in response and press the timer in a second, that's 30 minutes of clock I need to reserve. So now we need a TD to come adjudicate whether your moves are reasonable. Which at move 2,000: clearly, no. But what about 20, 30, 50 moves after the end? Those extremely speculative attacks where you could claim "I'd capture a stone if he doesn't think to respond?" Even if the time limit is generous, you should expect the players to sometimes come into the endgame close to the end of the clock. If they don't, couldn't they have used that thinking time to play something stronger somewhere earlier in the game?

With your proposal the opponent doesn't go from a win to a loss for having a small edge in time and refusing to end the game. But they still go from a win to a tie. So it's still a positive strategy to just refuse to pass in a losing position.

Ties are also a pain for lots of tournament structures.

Well, it's normally not possible for there to be enough space for more moves than there are points on the board. So 360 is the normal limit, and you can be pretty sure that a game could never possibly be extended to more than 360 moves and at two seconds per move, you only need to reserve six minutes of those three-quarters past its end. If a game is more than 720 moves long, which is something I don't think will ever happen, then an adjudicator could be called, but I don't think this will ever happen in an actual tournament unless both players deliberately try to cause it to happen. I already said that players should play according to the pace of three-quarters of the time on their clock, too!

Therefore the minimum sensible game time is 16 minutes, three-quarters of which is 12 minutes, which means you'll have to play at two seconds per move to reserve six minutes. The minor cost may be that this makes the time part of the game more complicated, but once you do it often enough--take three-quarters, minus three to six minutes--it will soon become simpler than remembering to press the clock!

Chess tournaments deal with draws all the time, and draws are fine in McMahon. However after a London Open in which a 2d woulld have won had he not started with a lower McMahon, which I think was unfair, I think that direct game results should take priority in determining the winner over even their.

It does still seem to make sense to have a swiss in which the early rounds are lightning, and then the later rounds are slow. The fast games create a McMahon based on performance on the day, which is fairer, or at least earlier on in the tournament for multi-day tournaments.