British Go Championship game 2 Saturday 13th

[HermanHiddema]

Whether the rules allow it would depend on the rule set used. The EGF rules, for example, specifically allow stopping the clock for going to the toilet. But personally I wouldn't care as either a player or a referee. Stopping the clock to allow someone to visit the toilet is just the sportsmanlike thing to do.

But more to the point, I was expressing surprise that you (and Dave) are apparently not just refraining from stopping the clock, you're playing extra fast specifically to make the opponent lose more time. That, to me, is just unsportsmanlike behaviour.

[Uberdude]

But more to the point, I was expressing surprise that you (and Dave) are apparently not just refraining from stopping the clock, you're playing extra fast specifically to make the opponent lose more time. That, to me, is just unsportsmanlike behaviour.

I can appreciate that view coming from a culture where it's normal to pause the clock for toilet breaks. But as I go to the toilet more than my opponents and lose more time from it, doing the same to them as they do to me seems fair, though you can also say its more sporting to be voluntarily generous to your opponent even if they are not to you. I would prefer it if I paused the clock after my move if they were not present, and they did the same to me. I do feel we are too much slaves to the clock: Matt (the broadcaster/ref) mentioned at the end that if Andrew K had played atari on all those stones would I have been able to pick them all up in 30 seconds and if not would I lose on time (or do we get into AGA/BGA rules about illegal board states and rewinding). IMO that's going RJ-style bonkers over rules: the clock gets in the way of a nice game.

[Javaness2]

I don't really keep track of where my opponent goes when he leaves the board. In any case the rules for this event seem to say that you cannot stop it by yourself.
"It is open to the Event Organiser to instruct players to stop their clocks in the case of an unusual event or emergency. Unless the Event Organiser specifies otherwise, players may not stop their clocks themselves during a game except to set the clock for overtime, to call for the referee or to repair the position when it has become disorganised."

[HermanHiddema]

...doing the same to them as they do to me seems fair...

I'm not sure this is true? My point is not about stopping the clock, it is about playing extra fast in that situation specifically to make your opponent lose extra time. Are you saying Andrew K also plays extra quickly when you've gone to the toilet?

[Uberdude]

I don't know if he plays faster than he otherwise would when I am not there, but I'm pretty sure that despite my playing a12 earlier than I otherwise would when he wasn't there the average length of time I spent per move played when he wasn't present was longer than the average time he spent per move played when I wasn't present. And just to be clear I spent I guess 5 minutes (can maybe check KGS record) on a12, when I might have spent 7 minutes on it if he hadn't left (and then the question for him is if he plays in 30 seconds when I'm not there might he have taken 45 seconds if I weren't there), it wasn't like I played it instantly when he left, more like I'd been thinking for a while about starting the semeai, wondering if my L9 was a mistake if I was going to e7 anyway, then found a12 and with the misreading of the liberty thought it was a good move, then noticed he's not there, and "oh ok, might as well play it now instead of reading more to check it's good".

@Javaness, that confirms my understanding of the tournament rules in Britain.

[dfan]

US player here. I use the toilet a lot during tournament games (stress) and I don't expect my opponent to stop my clock while I do. I'm also perfectly fine with them playing a move shortly after I get up to leave; they can make a move any time they like, and making moves more quickly than usual has the downside for them that it's more likely to be bad (as Uberdude demonstrated). Similarly, if they get up and leave for a while, whether it's to use the toilet or to stroll around looking at other games (more common in chess tournaments), I have no compunction about taking that into account while deciding when to make my move.

By the way, it's not relevant in this particular case, but in a multi-player tournament, being "sportsmanlike" and stopping the clock while the opponent is absent, or not starting it at the beginning of the round if they're not present yet, can result in delays for everyone else if multiple rounds are being played per day. The usual tournament around here is a single day with four rounds, so this can compound pretty quickly.

Meanwhile, I don't know about BGA rules, but AGA tournament rules let you pause the clock if removing more than one captured stone.

[John Fairbairn]

There are some lessons to be learned (apart from potty training, of course).

1. It seems as if specific rules about toilet visits will eventually be needed anyway once people cotton on to the common chess practice of taking a phone there to consult Lizzie.

2. Making the rules now would be a good idea, but only after consulting widely first. The range of views here is already broad, and I might add there could be discrimination against old or disabled players, and of course female players may need longer breaks. What if the toilets are far away or occupied? What if there's a delay because of an unfamiliar Asian toilet, as go-playing Sazae-san showed in a famous cartoon. She bent over, as one does in these places, and her scarf made the long drop. The modern version might be a phone making the long drop before Lizzie-san can pronounce.

3. The business about capturing lots of stones before the flag falls is an old issue, and I can't remember what was agreed before. But I believe there was/is some sort of agreement that the clock should be stopped if more than five (?) stones to be removed.

Pro practice doesn't help in either case. Kitani was a great toilet goer and his opponents sometimes gave him extra time and sometimes didn't. But when you're a big star and you have young pros doing the clock watching, you would just glare at them and they would count the seconds off v e r y v e r y s l o w l y. I'm not sure what happens in lower-level games where both players have to press their own clocks.

In the case of removal, I believe the Japanese pro thinking is that the rules say a move is made when a stone is played, whether or not it also constitutes a capture. And there is nothing that specifically requires removal to be made within the time limit. There is, however, a separate rule that says if you do not remove captured stones and play goes on, you lose (this has happened in real life). If time limits are relaxed 9in this sense) to allow removal, this can get messy, too. What if it's Mickey Mouse time limits and it takes so long to remove stones during the opponent's blink-of-an-eye time allowance that he runs out of time? In pro practice a referee would make a ruling (i.e. apply common sense) and the world would move on. Amateurs, for some reason, often seem to want to codify everything down to the last, er, drop.

And just to keep that rule-obsessing in check and to keep go in perspective as only a game, let me mention a story up on the BBC news website as I write. A wheelchair-bound person was forced to wait so long at a bus stop until a bus driver deigned to pick him up that he ended up wetting himself. I think we all have a long way to go, in a different sense, in many respects. Yet so many of these problems, both in life and go, would be avoided if people were just plain considerate (or sportsman-like, but in the proper English sense, not the RJ one).

[HKA]

US custom is definitely not to stop the clock for any reason other than big captures or some kind of dispute. And, I think, this is correct in a tournament where it is important to keep to a schedule. In a one off game like this one, where a delay is not going to hold up the next round, rules can (should?) be more flexible.

[Kirby]

I find nothing unsportsmanlike about playing a move quickly when your opponent goes to the restroom:
1. If there are rules to stop the clock when someone uses the restroom, OK, then follow those rules
2. If there are no such rules, each person is responsible for their own time management. Time management is a tournament skill, and if someone wishes to use the restroom, they should know that they are making this choice at the cost of potentially losing time on the clock
3. If I play a move quickly to run down my opponent's time, that's my choice. But if I am truly playing the move faster, just for that purpose, it means that I'm doing so at the expense of my own thinking time, which I might otherwise take

Whether this is a good strategy or not is a different question. I think that if I haven't fully understood the position, playing faster just to run down my opponent's clock might be a bad strategy. But it's certainly not unsportsmanlike. Unsportsmanlike behavior would be some sort of expectation that you should get special time privileges outside of the rules, just because you didn't plan ahead to use the restroom before the tournament.

[yoyoma]

I found a partial live commentary by Macfadyen:
http://files.gokgs.com/games/2019/10/5/Macfadyen.sgf

Seems he was going to create another one halfway in, but I couldn't find it. Anyone have a link to it?

[Uberdude]

I won the second game, so the third and deciding game is Saturday 30th November at 10:30 GMT on KGS again with commentary by Macfadyen.

@yoyoma, records are at http://britgo.org/bchamp/2019. I think in the first game Matthew was commenting as a guest so part of the review got lost.

[Bill Spight]

Bonne chance!

[xela]

Looks like I'll miss the first hour of the game (the first five moves?) but will otherwise be part of your online (and invisible to you at the time?) cheer squad.

[ez4u]

What was the result!?

[Uberdude]

I lost again.