I've only just started playing with Fischer time. But I must say I like it. The purpose of timing a game is to ensure fair and even use of thinking time without turning a match into a marathon of caffeine tolerance. Fischer time seems to reward steady play, which is the point, no?

Beyond Fischer, I prefer Canadian over Japanese styles. With Canadian I can glance at the clock during my opponents move to see how I'm doing. With Japanese, I feel I'm looking several times during my move to ensure I'm not to close to the limit. Canadian therefore gives me a smoother, less frantic experience. Again, I feel like Canadian rewards players for steady play by giving them any leftover thinking time at the end of each timing round. I can't really enjoy the extra 10 seconds in Japanese Byo-Yomi if I move quickly . . . hehehehe.

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RazorBrain


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I actually have a harder time with Canadian.

Having 4 moves for one minute, for example, is something I would try to convert to 1 move every 15 seconds. I don't like doing this division for every move I make.

If I don't do the division, I sometimes end up with 8 moves to make in the last 10 seconds, which is no good at all.

I can slap down one move quickly if time is short. But it's harder for me to slap down 8 moves quickly in 10 seconds.

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be immersed

It is a bit similar to Bonus time. At the start of each move, your time reserve only begins to count down after a certain delay.

You could say that it is like Bonus time, but you are forced to use at least the time increment at each move (otherwise the rest of the increment is spilt).

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I like Bronstein time actually. If I had a stock of digital clocks I would probably use this. Bronstein's aim is (IIRC) to eliminate the time taken picking up and putting down the pieces.

Bronstein's delay can be also thought to guide players for good playing habits by not rewarding instant moves. Thus it gives the same grace and glory to the go what is the idea with Japanese byouyomi but of course without thread for instant death.

(notice: a player who has good playing habits is a person, whom I personally enjoy to play with. So in this case it is just my personal preference.)

Well, not quite. A 5 min + 10 secs / move, just means that if you move in 6 secs, you only get a 6 sec increment. The increment is fixed to the smaller of the base increment value (10 secs) or the amount of time it took for you to move.

I prefer Fischer timing as I like the time management advantages of Canadian overtime and, for me, the possibility of "earning" time gives some of this value.

I'm going to throw this out here, because it hasn't been said yet, and I'm... well, feeling like saying it.

I just don't care.

Byo Yomi, Canadian, Fischer, Absolut (Now with higher proof) as long as the time constraints are consistent with the tournament's needs, and consistent across the boards of the tournament, why should I care?

Everyone plays with the same time constraint, everyone plays.

What does it matter one timing method or another? Time constraints are made to push the games into finishing in a reasonable amount of time. No one expects the same game to be played under byo-yomi as would be played under absolute time, no one expects the same game to be played with no time constraints as would be played under blitz timing.

Tournaments, however, are only interested in one thing: With this set of rules, with this set of players, who wins?

As long as the rules and time settings are internally consistent, I really couldn't care less.

I understand that there are people out there deeply engaged in what ruleset/timesetting/otherdetail is 'best'. But it doesn't matter. Play go. Play the best move you can. Everything else is just.. distraction.

But then, I'm a crazy 5k.

C Sam.

Side note, if you click 'reply', then sign in, it takes you to a new post thing rather than a reply thing. Very funny. Good thing we can delete our own posts now.

All I ever play are either no time limit (at the club in person) or Byo-Yomi on KGS. I have a feeling I'd like Canadian better, but I never got around to finding a good amount to make it.

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Word!

/Mats

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Zinger: I suspect that one difference regarding clocks is that tournament chess players are typically more serious than tournament go players. Because the pool of go players is small, most people who play in person play at clubs and naturally end up attending tournaments. In contrast, I suspect many chess players with an equal interest in the game just play with friends because they will have more friends who play chess. Asking participants to provide their own clocks would help discourage participation.

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As an experienced tournament organizer, I can say that Canadian byoyomi is the worst system for keeping your tournament well scheduled. I've experienced with a time setting of 1 hour each, plus 15 stones per 5 minutes, that players managed to play longer than 3 hours total (which means that together they played more than 180 moves in byoyomi). I've never seen this at 1 hour each plus 20 second per move. For this reason I strive to always have enough electronic clocks to be able to do Japanese byoyomi on all boards.

The cause for the above is that players spill less time with Canadian. Which is also why many people prefer it over the Japanese way, they like the flexibility of scheduling their own time. Personally, I prefer Japanese byoyomi slightly over Canadian, because it allows me to think about my moves, rather than about scheduling my remaining X minute for Y moves.

Another issue is punishment. As mentioned elsewhere, Dutch tournament rules punish running out of time in Japanese byoyomi with a forced pass, rather than a loss on time. I think that is a more reasonable, and more logical, punishment than an immediate loss.

Actually, the cause for the difficulty of estimating a game length is that there is no requirement to play even a single stone in your main time. When you set 1 hour plus canadian overtime of 15 stones per 5 minutes, you actually allow a game length (assuming 300 moves as an upper bound) of 3:40 h. Of course, you hope that all players use their main time for a significant part of the game, but that is not required by the system.

There are two ways to alleviate this problem, when you want to stay with canadian overtime: reduce the main time, or make the byoyomi faster. I think that the former way addresses the root cause, but 1 hour plus 20 stones in 5 minutes should also usually be fast enough to schedule round starts 3 hours apart. 30 stones per 5 minutes is fast enough to entice players to use their main time for most of the game, but it also opens the possibility of driving the opponent over the time.

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And what is your opinion as an organizer and as a player when comparing Canadian/Japanese overtime control versus absolute fischerian timing?

I have no experience of dutch penalty system. But it feels that it rather tells that it is recognized that there are some ethical problems with byouyomi and there is some efforts made towards fixing the problem. But without knowing how it actually performs, it feels that this fix does not lead significantly better results. Although at least some unjustified defeats might get saved so certainly it is better than nothing. I would still eliminate the whole problem altogether with Fischer timing.

Yes, I meant to say that the cause for the difference between Canadian and Japanese is in less time spilt. Of course both systems still allow players to play any amount of moves in byoyomi, which is the root problem in scheduling such games.

In my experience, 3 hours has always been sufficient to finish all 1h+20s games, but it is not guaranteed.



Yes, nowadays I prefer to use 20 stones per 5 minutes, when the (Japanese) byoyomi is 20 seconds. But I try even harder to just get enough electronic clocks together, and I can usually get them nowadays.



I have no experience either organizing or playing in a tournament with Fischer timing, I have only played Fischer timing in casual games. That said, I think Fischer time is an excellent system from an organizer point of view, because you can calculate the maximum total time of a game accurately from its number of moves, and with the knowledge that games of over 300 moves are exceptional, you can choose your Fischer parameters to fit your schedule.

I know that a friend of mine, who won the endurance prize for most time spent in byoyomi at the EGC 2009, recently played a German tournament with Fischer time and was very happy with it.



In my opinion, the purpose of pretty much all timing systems is to make sure that games finish within a reasonable amount of time. That is why they were introduced. The purpose of byoyomi is to make sure that players don't lose on time despite playing with time limits, which they would do if it were sudden death. That is why I think a forced pass is more logical. Byoyomi is meant to prevent time losses, therefor there should be no time losses with byoyomi. A byoyomi period is given in order to make a move. If you fail to do that, you didn't make a move, ergo you passed.

Still, I think these problems can never be wholly eliminated, there is no guarantee with any timing system that players will make a move in time, but they can be reduced quite a lot.

I would imagine that in most games on dan and SDK level a forced pass virtually guarantees that you will lose.

And of course the possibility that the opponent might instantly pass again and end the game opens a whole different can of worms.

I guess the forced pass rule might encourage people to keep playing a lost game in hope of this to happen, I'm not so sure it's a good thing...

/Mats

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I'd guess they'd actually be less likely to keep playing with the forced pass rule, compared to a situation where it is an instant loss. Also, if they're really far behind, the pass might not even help them enough.

Heh, good point :-)

/Mats

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I don't know about all rulesets, but I believe Japanese rules allow a player to resume the game even after both players pass, except that it becomes the other player's turn. So, if running out of time caused you to pass rather than forfeit the game, it really serves no purpose for your opponent to pass and try to end the game, as it will fail.

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Passes should simply never end the game by themselves. They mark a good opportunity for the players to agree to end the game, but nothing more.

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