Just looking at some commentaries on recent games in Go World, I noticed what seems to be a change in the byoyomi system.

The Senko International Cup was given with the following meta-data: "Time allocation: 2 hours each; after the time has been used up, byoyomi of 5x60 seconds."

The underlined part is new to me.

The next commentary, on the following page, using exactly the same overall format for the Women's Meijin, has the usual format of "Time allocation: 3 hours each; byoyomi 5x60 seconds. This is apparently the usual format where byoyomi is not really overtime because the last five minutes of the time allocation are used for the byoyomi, i.e. before the allocated time is used up. Likewise for other events such as the Judan.

I have seen nothing to explain why this changed has been made (if it is indeed a change, and if indeedy-doo it is a recent change if so), but two possible factors are available to explain it away. One is the the fact that the Senko event involves foreign players who may not be used to the traditional time format. The other is that the Senko event was on the internet.

Bring back egg timers, I say. Or better still, a burning graduated candle. Drip, drip, drip.

I would rather everyone used the byyo-yomi included in the main time rather than what's happening now . . .

Aren't they using electronic clocks in most of the preliminaries, so no time keeper? Do those clocks do the traditional rounding up to the next minute after each move?

At least our western clocks usually don't do that (although one of the myriad settings of a DGT 2010 might…).

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

Correct, though I don't know the details. But the games I mentioned here were title matches.

Harrumph. In the good ol' days of the Centauri Republic...

If you *really* MUST use clocks, then use Hisashige's, at least [*]. But it would really be better without time control. And at the expense of the Treasury. That hostel in Tokyo for foreign dignitaries is not used near enough.

Take care.


[*] If you're a mechanical nerd, or a horologist, or... someone actually made a wristwatch with that mechanism. Masahiro Kikuno, I believe.

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一碁一会

If I remember correctly, the digital "chess clocks" that I used have byoyomi after the main time.

The clocks being sold by the Nihon Kiin that I saw were analog clocks and specifically did not have a byoyomi capability. I've wondered what clocks they use in the matches.

So, is byoyomi already different between regular matches using a clock and tournament matches using a human recorder?

Maybe some want consistency.

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And now I remember why byoyomi is part of the main time. It's actually not extra time it's just that the recorder does not record time for moves made in under a minute and I guess they also round down the minutes per move.

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

Thanks for sharing. I was trying to remember where else I read about byoyomi and I remembered it was in the book "Just Enough Japanese" so I searched for the topic and realized that it has this same article by Richard Hunter.
Just Enough Japanese 2, Ch. 5-5 has an image of a time record showing how it's done with moves, time, clock time, and cumulative total. It's a bit heard to read though.

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But they left out the most important detail -- what is the make and model of the watch? Mannen Jimeishou? Grand Seiko? G-shock? Alarms & Clock 10.2101.28.0 © 2020 Microsoft?

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It seems like they have a standard digital table clock (black rectangle) and then when it's time to read seconds another recorder sits down with a sports-style stopwatch.

I spent a while learning about game clocks online. If I understood correctly, the Nihon Kiin has their own digital clocks from CITIZEN, at least branded if not actually with specific settings. The clocks do include second reading in the main time, not after the main time as the LEAP chess clock I used did, IIRC. To be fair, the AGA seems to require the second countdown to be after the main time ("30 minutes plus byo-yomi of 20 seconds per play"). Though they call it byoyomi and not overtime.

A fun tidbit is that the Kiin clocks can be set to male or female voice for the reading (and other languages). In the before times they would set the voice to male and female alternatively when everyone was packed into the game room so there was less of a chance of confusion.

The non branded Kiin style clocks seem to be discontinued. Buttons are laid out a bit different. They have a slightly different color pattern I believe (buttons). Functions seem similar and it still have the silver body. The non branded clock has been sold for around $900 USD converted online.

Citizen sells another cheaper clock.

The clocks used in Japanese amateur tournaments are analog Seiko clocks WITHOUT byoyomi capability.