So, I had a thought, came up in another thread. I got to thinking about what makes absolute time so difficult to work with.

The answer is, of course, that the opponent, recognizing a time advantage, can press it into a win, without good play. In chess a checkmate can be forced, so a time advantage is not necessarily enough.
So, I would modify absolute time controls by adding time to your own clock with each pass.

for example, a blitz game might be something of the order of:

Main: 10:00
Passtime: 30 sec

So, for every pass, you are given an additional 30 seconds. This makes it impossible to run a person out of time at the end of the game. And if the margin of victory is already large enough, you could conceivably use this to gain enough time to win. (Although it would come at a heavy cost, tenuki the board for 30 seconds)

I'm thinking a more reasonable longer game might look like

Main: 1:00:00
Passtime: 2 min


Thoughts? what do you think the best pass time length per time control would be? Or is my insanity leaking again?

EDIT: I can't think of any good way to do this with digital clocks in tournaments though, seeing as there's no "pass" button. Could do it with analogs though.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

How exactly would you add these 30s on an analog clock ?

Would be hard, but then blitz is rarely played in tournaments, and really this does a better job of enforcing schedules in longer games than in shorter ones.

For an hour game, adding 2 min would not be difficult though.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

Perhaps it would be better that you have 72 minutes absolute time. Then if you exceed this you will get additional 10 minutes, but you need to give two extra points to your opponent as penalty. This will be repeated until the game ends.

Pass would be too severe punishment, imo.

Somebody has reinvented the Ing's Time Penalty System...

Cheers,
Vesa

Well, it's a different kind of game. In this case, the impact of running out of time really depends on the board position. And that may be a good or a bad thing.

I like the 2 point approach at times, but in a really brutal fight, I might take that extra 10 minutes for 2 points, knowing that the outcome of the fight will decide the game regardless. Thus I take no disadvantage from the 2 points. In other games, those two points could be everything.

Hence, the 2-point absolute rules encourage you to use as much time as you can in a fighting game, and to be very economic with it in a more peaceful game.

This ruleset is somewhat stricter, and more in line with the chess style of absolute. Whether a peaceful game or a fighting game, you must economize, because in either case, the tenuki will be large compared to the score difference.

I don't say one is better than the other, I just think the 2-point rule fosters a style of play, and I feel like a time control system should be egalitarian.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

Yet, you are willing to give up more than 2 points for a mere 30sec of additional time?
(a pass play could be worth much more than 2 points)

IIRC KGS already does this, with pass time of 15 seconds - anyone has experience with that?

I think it's a interesting idea.
And usually when someone tries to win a lost game on time, they are playing unreasonable moves that sometimes can be ignored, so the pass really isn't neccesarily worth anything.
The problem I see is technical, adding 30 sec (or 2 min, or whatever) on a analog timer is of course doable, but not very convenient.

/Mats

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mohsart - games & books
http://spel.mohsart.se/

It's a similar idea, though on KGS it is if you pass within 15 seconds no time is deducted from your clock (as opposed to having 15 seconds added to your clock). You cannot build time this way, but you can avoid losing time.

It is a bit similar to Fisher timing (if you pass quickly) but Modded Absolute Time has more drawbacks.

the main disadvantage against Fisher is that Fisher is easely implemented in digital clocks.

an other problem is

suppose the following situation:

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Promotor and Librarian of Sensei's Library

The problem is that you still need to decide whether you need to answer the opponent's move, but you get the added time only afterwards.

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

Well, that's a really a problem in any time system which isn't implemented on a clock. But it's easy enough to implement on servers. (If KGS does have a 15 second passtime, I wasn't aware of it, anyone know more?)

But even in the case you talk about, you can make the signal for pass be to stop the clock. If the flag has fallen, yelling pass won't matter... The clock-stopping is what's important.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

Another route would simply be for the player to auto-pass when their flag falls. They get an additional 2 minutes on the clock. They can, of course, also pass any other time they like and get the additional time. But you don't lose the game by running out of time. You simply are forced to pass.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

As far as more information, there isn't too much more to know other than what has already been mentioned, but if you're interested you can check the KGS change log:

"S - If you think 15 seconds or less, then pass, then your think time
will not be counted against your clock; instead it will be as if you
passed instantly. This is to make it harder (impossible?) to run down
somebody's clock by making stupid moves after the game ends."


It was implemented on July 20, 2002 at the same time as the Turkish and Hungarian languages, as well as private rooms -

http://files.gokgs.com/changeLog-2002.txt

As far as doing this situation in real life situations, many clocks have a similar feature where you can allow for a delay before your time starts counting down on any move (I think 5 seconds is common). That is probably the closest you can get without having a special pass button available.

This does not seem to enforce a tournament schedule at all.

Fischer time adds time if you do something, play a stone, move the game along.

This system adds tournament time for doing nothing.

Two old friends who enjoy slow games are paired under this system.
They start the game off with 100 passes each.

So much for your schedule.

The game ends when you have 2-4 passes in succession. Also, in order for two players to do this, they would need to collude in fixing the structure and also ignore their own best interests, the latter is unlikely, and the former is an obvious violation of the rules. Players are not allowed to fix games.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

To be fair, no time system short of absolute time limits with no delay will support a schedule if you have two paired opponents colluding against it (realistically, in the vast majority of tournaments they could just set the clocks with more time when the TD wasn't looking).

With apologies to Robert Jasiek, any ruleset/tournament design that doesn't give the TD sufficient powers to deal with edge cases like that is defective.

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Occupy Babel!

But... But... I just said that the TD DOES have powers to deal with this. And in order to keep the game from ending (and give both players extra time, the pattern would need to go like this:

PASS, Play, Play, Pass, Play, Play, Pass...

Now... First of all, this is a game in which white gets two moves and then black gets two moves.
No matter how you do this, if you can't have two passes in a row then you're stuck playing something that is not go.

You're telling me that two old friends who play go together don't want to play go?

I just think this Edge case is frankly ridiculous...

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Tactics yes, Tact no...