I'm also very perplexed by this decision.

From a business perspective, why are you giving players a legitimate need to play on other servers?

From a potential for abuse perspective:

* Players know what they are signing up for;
* Admins should deal with blatant abuse;
* If someone wants to waste their opponent's time, a time-honored way to do it is to finish the game then never accept the result. This can happen in games with any time limit. On KGS people occasionally do this (happened to me once) but it's not a big deal because admins are there to deal with it.
* No other server has this limit and yet this does not seem to be an issue in practice.

From an esthetics perspective, it's ugly to have an arbitrary time limit where none is needed.

From a practical perspective, I personally occasionally want to play or watch games slower than 30 minutes, so I'm against this

Yes and no. Most of the time you'll play people you've already played many times before and whose playing habits you're familiar with. When you play an anonymous person, or more to the point, someone unknown to you, their stats should be accessible. What percentage of their wins were escapes? With this knowledge in hand, you can constrain the time limits accordingly.

Of course there will be some arbitrary time limit. But you don't seem to be acknowledging that currently it's WAY TOO LOW.

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finito ludos regula

Ok Gabriel, quick question:

You're seeing lots of people opposing this here, and quite a few of them opposing it strongly. Do you have a similar number of people feeling it's a superior decision to the alternatives? From a business perspective, it's clear you want the best for your server, yet opinion here is that the decision is to the detriment of the server. Much like wms' decision on Fischer timing, it's your prerogative to do whatever you like ... but I'm surprised you seem to be unswayed by the proportionally large lack of support it seems to be getting.

Do you have another reason for the policy that isn't related to the players' desires that over-rides the popular opinion in this thread, or is it a case of you feeling you know what's best for the players more than the players do?

Gabriel, you got $13K in donations. How about investing in a box of Q-Tips? Family size.

[Admin: Please keep post on topic. In what way is this relevant to the Time settings on kaya.gs?

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finito ludos regula

We are all on the same side here, we are all go players, trying to look for a better solution. Lets keep that in mind.



Leaving the game as it is for 40-45 minutes hoping for a disconnection is not against the rules of the system itself. An admin cannot intercede in those cases.
If one user decides to lose on time, there is nothing to do but to wait. Can you imagine the helplessness of dealing with this over and over?



This is not useful at all. First of all, there is a lot of work to do on statistics just to try to predict your opponents behavior, which is a very complex solution for a user to learn to use.

Second, those users are more likely to WIN games because their opponent escaped, if there is any forfeit at all. And lastly, they are playing within the rules of the game their opponent accepted.

Bear in mind that the whole point here is how to respect the rating system, and how good a game with long settings is to the rating system itself.
Figure that if 20% of the 60m+ games ended up in forfeit, they would be pretty terrible.



There is more than one conversation ongoing here. Some believe there should be no upper limit. You imply that you do believe there is a need for one.

They could be different arguments. I said before im not opposed at all to change it. But if i change it to say, 45, then why not 46? and so on. Thats why i asked a very important question in bold.



First of all, let me summarize the request:

I want to be able to play a long time settings with:

1- with any kind of time configuration.

Remember that right now, as it is speedchase can get a slow or even slower game than 40mins 40/5.

If you assume byoyomi starts around move 125, and there are in average 120 moves more, 40mins 40/5
is a maximum of about 168 minute game. (80 min + ((120moves + 10 periods)*40 secs/60secs))

With a 30 minute main time, 50 second/5 byoyomi, he gets a 168 minute game.
Even better, in the second case, if he gets to byoyomi early, the game lasts even longer!

But, the difference stalling in one game to the other is 43 minutes to 34, Might not seem like a lot, but each minute added to the main time enlarges this scenario even more.

Even more, you have up to 120 secs byo-yomi. With this calculation, the longest live game right now for Byo-yomi is over 5.5 hours!

2- and force my opponent to be online/live all the time during the game

When deferred go is in, any player could step out, disconnect, etc and deal with any situation that could arise in a game.

EDIT: As per a user's suggestion on Kaya, im expanding on this:

Deferred game on a live server like ours basically means there is no escaper clock. The clock would still be running, but the user has the option to leave for a certain amount of time, or deal with any technical issue he has with some time to spare.
So if a user is actually planning to spend more than 5hours on a game, he can easisly set up a deferred game, and the case where a user stalls is not terrible: several deferred games could be played at once, and you dont have to wait online for your opponent to lose on time.

3- and has to be rated

Free games have laxer limits and they could easily get expanded. In any kind of problem scenario, resiging is a viable option for any player.

Its a VERY specific request. If any of the above options is ceded, you can play it with the current system.

On the other hand, after hearing some people saying they want exactly this i said:

1- There is the problem of users stalling games, preventing you to play another, or finish the current one, and having to be online for a very long period of time doing nothing but waiting.

2- The current number is arbitrary, but any other number also would be arbitrary. How to make a less arbitrary decision? or How can we measure what would be the best maximum time allowed for rated matches?

3- From personal experience, and by example on FoD, this problem is real
It happens all the time. It happens on 10 minute games. I know for sure that this will happen even on 30 minutes, that we will have to deal with people in that situation that will be much more angry during the occurrence, and there is nothing to do for that case as there is no rule violation.

4- Many games will not be played under high time settings, mainly because only a few handful of users could take up all long games without ever actually playing, just fooling around. Personally i havent seen many non-tournament-rated-equally-handicapped 5.6hour games online.

Even after exposing all this, i still said i would change it to another number we can find suitable, however the only proposal has been "limitless", which is not a viable option without adjourning.

All voices are heard and votes are counted.
This debate could have been the other way around , "why not allow 1 minute absolute games be rated?" And many ultra-blitzers could have the opinion that it should.

This is in the interest of slow players, which are very likely to receive abuse and also affect the rating system with matches as valid as throwing games away.

Are you sure that 5.5 hour games are not enough? And if not, what is enough?

As i said, changing the limit is a single number, i can do it in a second, and im not too attached for a number i picked 4 months ago. IM looking for the next number being less arbitrary than this one. Also, what should we do if we do increase the number, and stalling becomes a regular issue?

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Founder of Kaya.gs

AFAIK, your server is the only one that restricts the rated status of games based on length, so limitless clearly is viable. If I want to play a 3 hour rated game on KGS I can. I can't remember the IGS settings in enough detail, but if I can play the length at all, I can play it rated. Tygem and wBaduk I don't play on, so I've no idea. Flyordie, Playok, Yahoo etc don't really count as proper Go servers (no disrespect intended to those who play on them). You aren't addressing a problem that others have battled with and found clever solutions, you are addressing a problem that no-one else thinks is a problem.

Escapers can be a problem, and there are a number of solutions implemented to deal with them on different servers - but I'd much rather see you address how to fairly handle escapers (and you'd get a really lively debate on here to help with that) than to restrict and hamper the honest users of Kaya, which is what you're currently doing.



I am of the opinion that if two players set up a 1 minute ultra blitz game and want it to be rated, they should be able to. It's their choice, why restrict them? There are loads of 1x0:10 blitz rated games on KGS, even between high dans, and quite a few of those are over in 5 minutes (total time) - more power to them I say.



Develop a system that punishes regular stallers, rather than a system that punishes honest users.

FWIW, I think you're approaching this from entirely the wrong direction (and as someone that has developed a still running and popular Go server, I think I speak from at least some successful experience here) - you're trying to prevent a theoretical phantom problem that concerns you, rather than trying to maximise the potential and power of your server. Your job to create Kaya as a large and successful environment for playing Go is to empower your player base, particularly those who want to spend most of their time there. Features are great, but basic functionality is crucial, and long rated games I see as a core functionality of a Go server. Maybe I'm the only one who does, but I doubt it.

It's like video game DRM. Software pirates don't suffer from it, honest users do, and that's why that's such a fuss about it - it's done with good intentions, but the people that suffer are the loyal ones who are supposed to be being rewarded for their loyalty. You're falling into the same trap here.

Bottom line: Empower your faithful user base, don't restrict and hamper them.

Having said all that, if you want a suggestion on timing systems, I'd say assume a game has 250 moves (125 for each side), and byo-yomi is typically reached after 150. Model your time controls to take into account the maximum time those 250 moves would take under this criteria, and set a per player limit of maybe 2 or 3 hours each. I would assume taking 80% of byo-yomi time for each "life" is permissable, and allow all the lives to expire but the last one.

So for fischer, 60 mins + 15 secs per move would be 60 + (0.25 * 125) = 91.25 minutes, well within the cap. For canadian, 60 + 10stones/5mins, you'd have 60 + (50 / 10 * 5) = 85 minutes, again well within the cap. For Japanese, 60 mins + 5x0:30, you'd have 60 + (2 + (50 * 0:24)) = 80 minutes, again well within the cap.

Looking at those, and using those formulae, I'd opt for 2 hours for each side as a cap (as a compromise, I'd still prefer 3 hours), although I'd probably be happy going as low as 90 minutes if it meant there was at least a change in the system.

I'd still be in favour of not restricting your users at all, but you asked for a proposal, so there's a new cap proposal and a formula that makes it easy to calculate for each of the timing systems I'm aware that you use (obviously absolute time isn't hard to work out )

Just FYI in the op I meant 5periods of 40 seconds each.
Either way, the argument against no limit seems to revolve around the concept that he users are stupid and don't understand what they are getting into, as well as made up data. It's allows any amount to time for rated games, and I have never once hear someone complain about people starting long games and quiting,

I just have to ask the question:

which is worse?

1) The blue moon case where someone takes advantage of someone who did not have time to play the game they signed up for (This is a terrible way to gain rank btw, 2 hours for a single win? Their rank isn't going anywhere anyway... why make it unrated?)

2) A common case where players get suboptimal functionality from the server.

This, as with so many other problems is a risk calculation, and I think you're coming down on the wrong side of it.


Further, you may not be able to adjourn, but the timer keeps on going right? if you get disconnected, you can reconnect no? If anything, disconnects are less of an issue in long games.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

One possible rational response: "Thanks for all the feedback, guys. It's exactly what I need to develop a superior Go server. In respect of your wishes, I effectively removed the time limit. Hope this helps. Thanks again."

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finito ludos regula

A lot of interesting points are being made in this thread.

One comment: Kaya is still in beta and it is under active development. Most parts of the server are subject to future changes. We should keep on making suggestions, but let's avoid offending the developers if possible (and if you are interested in getting them to change something).

More on topic: Personally, I would prefer it if all rated games were forced to be under fixed time settings. We cannot even pretend that 10m/3x10s is even remotely close to being the same game as 20m/3x30s or 45m/5x30s.

A similar solution is to have ratings for different time settings. We could have a "blitz" rating, a "middle" rating, and a "long" rating.

Lastly: If there is a feature you strongly want to see on Kaya, they do have that "Your Feature" donation option...

You could always test out the alternative - remove the limit, and wait for someone complain that there really should be a cap on the limit on rated games to prevent abuse

Maybe the developers should avoid offending their potential membership by dismissing their concerns.


I'd like to see some accommodating taking place amidst these calls for more donations.

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finito ludos regula

As is today rated games have a "practical limit" of 5.5 hours.
When the game is longer than that, the game will have to be deferred to be rated, which means:

1) The players are not locked into playing that single game
2) The players can disconnect for any time period they wish.

You will be able to play rated games at any time you want. What is the problem? Who is being punished?

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Founder of Kaya.gs

From the opening...


This seems to be a completely valid timed game that someone would want to have as rated. I think it's being "punished" to not be able to accomplish that on a server.

The compromise i can think of right now, is to lighten restrictions until deferred go is available. However , and i note again, 30min 50/5 would yield a similar time game.

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Founder of Kaya.gs

I don't think a misunderstanding of how to calculate the time limit is what is at issue. What bothers people is having personal choice and freedom restricted with the rationale being that you have decided you know what is best for them. Nobody wants a nanny go server.

This seems like Solomon's solution given that the issue is a trivial one for a server that isn't fully open to the public yet.

If people abusing the time controls IS an issue, it will very readily become apparent. If a fix is required, I think it should happen after there's some test data showing that this is a problem. I don't think anyone would fault a new server for having a problem like that and then dealing with it.

But they certainly WOULD fault a server for instituting a disruptive fix for a problem they aren't aware of having.

It's your server and you can do what you like. But I recommend taking a reactive approach to these kinds of problems, rather than a proactive one, no one knows exactly what the best go server will look like in 10 years. If you're reacting to the player base, and improving it organically, you'll have the best server.

The top down approach is great for a lot of things that can't easily be changed, but this doesn't seem like one of them.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

Thanks for this. I think it is the spirit that we need to make Kaya a great experience.

My suggestion is to start by setting the limit deliberately high, e.g. 5-6 hours main time per player (after all it is still a beta server). Then we use this forum to actively review and analyze all reported cases of abuse through the time controls (admins should sanitize the data so we are discussing techniques of abuse rather than individuals). Based on a community discussion of actual experience, we could then tighten the limits if and when it is deemed necessary.

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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 is the consensus, Gabriel. All of your "features" won't mean a whole lot without a solid foundation. And they'll mean even less without a critical mass of active members, whom you're alienating by insisting on nannying them. Do you get that??

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finito ludos regula