I don't disagree with your wanting to keep your record clear of unfinished games, but I think it would have taken fewer games to rank up if you had left it unfinished -- another interesting experiment perhaps

Annnnnnnnd then there was Fischer time.

See, that wasn't so hard after all, now was it?!

I've never played a game on Fischer time, so I can't really say. KGS doesn't support it, and AGA tournaments never use it. DGS has it, but I don't consider that the same, as you're never really under time pressure.

Yeah, my comment was a bit tongue in cheek. As far as I know, no online go servers have Fischer time (yet). But it's the most popular timing method on most chess servers, and in my experience it is more suitable for go than it is for chess.

I have my own digital clock which I use for go games played live, and we always play Fischer despite the availability of byo-yomi.

DGS Fischer is different mainly in that it is capped, so that you can't increase your time beyond the original main time setting. But, generally when you are talking about a game that will take months to complete, timing system is relatively arbitrary.

I found the easiest way to get rated was to add a note to my game request: "Please help me get rated". I usually got a game within 5 minutes.

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Well, that was awful, but you really can't complain - and you really are not - KGS absolutley does not approve of resigning a won game and KGS certainly displayed its disapproval, albeit shockingly dramitically.

Mr. Bates - Hang in there, I do not think you are going to find the aspects you like anywhere else. Please stop saying that 30 seconds byo yomi is "blitz". Very few will agree with you. I have no problem with your preference and no problem with you thinking it is too fast for you - but calling it "blitz" is going to make people think you are odd.

Also, when you chat for a game, simply give your time preference - dont put an accent on you wanting it to be slow. I am not a blitz fan, but my preference is faster than you and I probably play faster. I dont mind a relaxing game though - but if I suspect the opponent is actually going to use all of that time...well then I might be less inclined.

A lot of good suggestions here. You are certainly right that most people prefer faster games than you on KGS, but I know you are far from alone and I believe your biggest problem is not having a rank yet, not the time setting.

So bite the bullet, play someone weaker and get a win and a rank - then getting matches will be much easier.

And enjoy some what might be teaching games. Work on playing soundly and punishing properly - discipline that is good for your game in the long run.

Then I am odd, too!

As I said, I'm new to this forum also. With that said, this wonderful thread has been "hi-jacked" a few times, so let me introduce another quasi-hijack...

Some strong player once told me that strong players think in terms of sequences of moves. In fact, I think he said that the term "move" means something different than the common meaning. My understanding is that this strong-player's-move means a sequence - so I'll call it an s-move for now.

When I watch the games of strong players on IGS I see this pattern of time usage very frequently:

think for a long time, then make a series of moves fairly quickly.

I know that this time use pattern is true for me. It takes me a while to determine a course of play, and the s-move to support it, and then once I've decided, I play a series of moves - an s-move - quickly. So to me, this seems natural, and the Canadian system seems more in keeping with this style than the Japanese system.

But, it seems that the Japanese style is very popular on KGS and in this thread. So my sincere question is this: using the Japanese system, how do you handle those times when some deep thought is required?

We rush the process: we trim decison trees too quickly, we make unwarranted assumptions, we overlook possible responses. And we bungle the sequence. Then we lose.

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or try to read ahead at all the easy moves. Use the time of every move.
I don't do that yet, though I try to read ahead complicated fights in Blitzgames while playing somewhere else and start the fight when I 'think' I read enough.

It's not just KGS. You could say that IGS is the outlier here since Cyberoro and Tygem, much bigger go servers, also use "Japanese byoyomi".

I try not to play through automatic moves quickly. Instead, I try to use the byo-yomi time to read out something somewhere else, or count, or determine what I will do after the sequence is over.

The main thing I have against Canadian time is that it encourages gaming your opponent's clock. If your opponent has to make his next few moves quickly, perhaps you should start that complicated sequence in the corner immediately rather than play a couple of forcing moves which would normally be better to play before starting the sequence. Or, if your opponent has a lot of time left, perhaps you should save that complicated sequence for a bit and hope your opponent runs low on time doing something else. While these are good strategies, they make the quality of your play worse. That's why I like Japanese byo-yomi better: its much less effective to try to game the clock. You may mention timesujies as an example of gaming the clock, but these exist in both Japanese and Canadian byo-yomi.

Anyway, that's why I don't like or use Canadian timing, but you're free to prefer it.

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Just to be clear (and as some have alluded to), canadian/japanese byo-yomi is only used in the end game. Often is the case where not as much thinking time is as necessary in the end game as it is earlier in the game.

But you can still do something similar in Japanese Byo-yomi as you can in Canadian...

When you need more thinking time, just use several periods. Depending on the number of periods available, you won't be able to do that very many times -- but again, since its the end game, you shouldn't need to.

I for one will agree with the statement that KGS players don't like Canadian... I'm one of those players and I can't stand it.

If I want to play a nice relaxed game, 20 minutes and 5x30 is pretty easy to come by.

My issue with Canadian is that it creates these arbitrary crunch-times every 25 moves. It's easy to tell a game record played in Canadian time controls, every 25 moves there's some nonsense whose only purpose to move on to the next 10 minutes.

Personally, I'd love to see Fischer time picked up, that's real economizing. But Canadian? No thanks.

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I prefer Japanese byo-yomi, but have no issue with Canadian.

One just has to do better time management and gets accustomed to different time settings.

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I like byo-yomi. I don't have to think about anything tricky. I know that I have some number of seconds per move. Some moves may require more thought. I may end up using an extra byo-yomi period because of this. That's fine to me. It's very simple for me to understand how much time I have to play. With Canadian time, it's difficult to budget my time.

I may like Fischer time from what people have mentioned about it, but I haven't played a game using Fischer time, yet.

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When using Japanese Byoyomi, the cutoff for a game to be marked "Blitz" on KGS is complicated and depends on the amonut of main time and the number of byoyomi periods. I also think there are bugs. In any case, this may influence what players used to KGS consider blitz.

Examples:

Not blitz: 0:00 + 5x0:15

Blitz: 0:00 + 5x0:14

Not Blitz: 0:13 + 5x0:14 (yes, it is possible to get this to register as "Not Blitz" if you mess with the time settings enough. How that 13 seconds of main time helps you is beyond me. )

Not blitz: 0:00 + 45x0:09

Not blitz: 10:00 + 5x0:06

I think many IRL players would consider at least some of these "not blitz" settings to be quite blitzy. So who is perceived odd is a subjective matter.

Speaking of odd, there's a player called "twoeye" on KGS who likes to play the following:

0:00 + 100x0:10

This is interesting, because it totals to 1000 seconds or roughly 17 minutes that you can use any time in the game. If you play most moves in under 10 seconds, then you get to keep this reserve, so it has some aspects of Fischer time. It is spilling, but not much because the byoyomi period is short. Let's call it "slow leak" time setting

(There are other players besides twoeye who do something similar. I have never tried it myself.)

This does suck. I don't mind giving a new person a game to get a rank, so long as they tell the truth when I ask them how strong they are. Some people challenge, I ask them how strong they are, and they come back with "I don't know". It then takes another 2 or 3 questions to establish that they do know how strong they are, by which point I don't feel so much like playing them. Generally, if the time limits suit me, I will play a new guy within 6 stones of me if they have in their games notes "--- X dan/kyu player, looking for rank"

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