I usually play long games but at times I will play blitz, 3 ten second byoyomi. I've come to realize that I have a higher winning percentage in blitz games that are handicapped. Like if I give three stones or more. I think the reason being that I can read faster, deeper, more thorough than my opponent. So they start out okay but by the time middle game hits they freeze up in the long fighting. For example, I might see a higher level tesuji almost instantly, whereas someone three stones lower might have to read for a minute. At two stones this doesn't usually happen because they are closer to me and I suppose are almost as fast at reading and recognizing shapes and techniques. In faster games its like you have feel like you should be giving more stones. Anyone else ever come across this or no? Does this happen in your games?

Yes, it's normal for the stronger player to benefit from blitz. For example at BIBA in Korea I played the professional teachers on 3 stones in slow games and 6 in blitz. Another pupil who was a bit stronger than me and 8d wbaduk got beaten down to 8 stones in blitz by On Sojin 7p! A lot of that is psychology and keeping calm under pressure which stronger players are usually better at.

Is there a convergence? With enough time to think, the differences between the pros and the amas disappear?

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- Bantari
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It's funny that you should ask Uberdude of all people. He beat Alex Dinerstein (1p) in a turn-based game on OGS. Dinerstein is probably not the strongest pro out there, but he's still several stones stronger than Uberdude in live games. It probably depends on the person, too. A child who has the same live-game rank as Uberdude probably wouldn't benefit as much from the extra time.

That said, there are plenty of strong Asian amateurs that can beat the weaker pros, even in live games. The gap is really between the strongest pros (the ones who regularly get past the preliminaries of big tournaments) and the rest.

I think Uberdude is a great person to ask, precisely because of that - he is really good at using the extra time, while I suck at it. So his expertise trumps mine my a lot, thus - I ask him. Or anybody else who might have any insight.

In the context of what you say about top pros, let me ask the question in a different way.
Given enough time, would a low-level pro and a high-level pro, when analyzing the same position or game, come to the same conclusions? If not, why not?

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- Bantari
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Think about it. If this were the case, we would not be able to observe the dominance of the historical greats like Dosaku, Jowa, et. al. They had, and frequently used, nearly unlimited time. Also, in modern tournaments we would expect that those with longer time limits would see more people competing on relatively equal terms. We do not. Why not? Ask me when I reach 9p! I may know by then.

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

This sort of thing is often said but it's just plain wrong. Most games were meant to be finished in a day but could go into the wee hours. Some games would spread over several days but this was relatively rare, and the full days were not always used - some of these days were just PR exercises for a sponsor, etc, or days out a temple). In general, players could not expect sponsors to sit for days watching paint dry, and lower ranked players could not try the patience of senior players very often.

Indeed, there were many cases of two or three games on the same day.

There were occasional exceptions, of course, but the famous marathons belong mainly to Shusai's time and were usually seen as abuses of the system.

The real difference between then and now was lack of time pressure. You did not have to press your candle, or worry about your clepsydra running dry.

Well, as John said - there is never really unlimited time. And there is never really lack of pressure. So all the games and matches you are talking about are in the sporting context. My question was more in the analysis context, where the time is really unlimited and the pressure is none.

My guess is that the is a difference between top-level and low-level, so it is not meant to be a leading question. I am really just curious. What *is* the difference, when we take away the time and the pressure? I have no clue and thus the question.

Or, coming back to the amas - what is the difference between, say, the knowledge of 1d and 3d players? I know 1d players who know more joseki and generally read deeper than some 3ds, but still lose games to those 3ds. I have some better understanding of that, of course, but still find it interesting.

PS>
By the way - what does mean? That you posted a lot of words without really answering my question but still somehow beat me up?

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- Bantari
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I think the fact that blitz games favour the stronger player in high handicap situations has less to do with the relative strength of the players and more to do with the board position. Allowing players less time to read things out means that the board position becomes less stable (e.g. "live" groups die) and this is bad for the person who's ahead because that means their lead is less stable. In other words: It's not that the stronger player copes better with the time constraints, but rather that handicap stones become worth less when players are forced to play quickly.

Just an idea.

Off hand (i.e. idle musings) I've read about studies where greater skill was often translated in the mental sphere as being able to use one's time more efficiently. I've seen research referenced, though I don't know the validity of it, that the difference between professional chess players and strong amateurs wasn't in how deep they could read but that the professions tended to be more likely to start at the right reading points. It's very obvious with a weak sdk versus a dan player that the dan player just spots the more important points a lot faster where the sdk meanders around many more dead ends "wasting time," and probably reads somewhat slower as well due too fewer shapes being in memory. Blitz should favour stronger players simply because they can arrive at good move choices faster than their opponent and aren't as inconvenienced by the loss of time. They will also be more likely to end up in situations where they know the shape and their opponent doesn't, again a large advantage in blitz. There're probably often psychological advantages too due to one player being weaker and knowing they're weaker and over or under compensating in some way for this.

Conversely though, for a sufficiently weak player the opposite applies. Thinking time isn't a big factor because they lack the "vocabulary" of shapes to think in and their quality of play is unlikely to improve much with more time on the clock.

Just some thoughts.

If go were a game that could be won by brute force, there would be no difference between top and not-quite top players given unlimited time - but it isn't. My assumption is that there are some things that stronger players know that weaker players don't, so the difference is a matter of knowledge. What exactly that knowledge is is probably impossible to say, but I imagine that if "complete knowledge" of go existed, there would simply be larger gaps in the knowledge list of the weaker player. This doesn't mean that the weaker player couldn't ever win - a single game might by luck develop towards one of the stronger player's gaps. In the long run, I doubt that this would happen often, and were Überdude and Breakfast to play a 10 game series without time pressure, I would be willing to bet the bank on Breakfast.

I think it means that one is enjoying the slugfest - like in go.

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Patience, grasshopper.

I stand corrected.

(But not to go down without a fight, please see Invincible where:
- The first game given, the blood-vomiting game, Jowa - Akaboshi Intetsu, was played over 4 sessions from the 19th to the 27th of July 1835,
- The second game given, Gennan Inseki's 4-point loss to Shuwa, was played over 8 sessions from the 29th of November to the 13th of December 1840, and
- The ear-reddening game (game 14) was played over 3 sessions from the 21st to the 25th of July 1846. So it seems when there was a lot on the line, time was taken.)

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

Actually is my favorite smiley. I think it does a good job of symbolizing my ability to blacken my own eye by the simple expedient of opening my mouth (or in the case of L19 by reaching out to my keyboard). It is not meant as a reflection on my worthy correspondents in any way!

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

Cool. I have to start using this as well.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!