The only tournaments that still use the two-day format are certain title matches in Japan. In these events, each game between the challenger and the titleholder is played over two days. Both players receive a fixed amount of thinking time (for example, 8 hours), after which they enter byo-yomi. Lunch breaks are scheduled on both days. At the end of the first day, one player seals their next move by writing it on a slip of paper and handing it to the judge in an envelope. The move is revealed only when play resumes the following day. Throughout the match, players are prohibited from any form of outside communication, including access to television.
I had no idea this is still a thing.
I wonder how much different the games look compared to âusuallâ time settings. Do you know which title matches that are?
I think thats generally a cool thing (For the players maybe not tho lol)
Kisei and Meijin (the 4th round of Meijin final started yesterday and just finished today). Honinbo used to be 2 days as well, but changed since last year.
If you put the same reading as if you were solving a bunch of difficult tsumego, with devoting enough time on checking your fondamentals for each move, you may find 2 days to be very short.
The key here is that itâs already finished even though itâs barely after lunch. Normally it should last until evening time and sometimes until late at night but many games are ending earlier nowadays.
They have a nice flavor. In principle, I would argue that more flavors are beneficial for the international Go community, but ultimately, it is up to the top players to negotiate with the federation and sponsors on how they would like to conduct their tournaments. I even find it somewhat sad that, in my experience, the significance of being a formal title holder has declined sharply, and it has become âjust another national tournamentâ.
Considering that now there are so much more quick games as slower one, itâs a relief to me that it still exists. Being directly efficient is a marginal debate, as long as something happens in these games. I donât think that pros themselves are wishing for shorter time settings, this has more to do with sponsoring and audience. (Like how a game can be show on tv)
The game itself is pretty unusual, the number of moves is just 124. The first day was already 105. The records of the first day, always involved Ichiriki and Shibano who plays fast (among the Japanese players), and good at faster time settings. And the strength gap between Ichiriki and Shibano also appears to be quite large, when Ichiriki has a lead very early, the game tends to be pretty one sided.
Iâm going to come at this from a slightly different perspective.
I think the two-day games are still valuable, if only just for tradition. These games, spread over two days, have been doing for a long, long time, and Iâm not even going to bother looking up the history, because itâs a well enough established fact.
Getting rid of something simply for expedience, and or efficiency, destroys the heart of the tradition that is placed behind some of these titles⌠titles that have been around equally as long as these 2 day games.
There is also the argument that they should be kept in practice for historical value. Understanding the conditions with which pro players of the past had to play is a valuable lesson for us and indeed the pro players as well.
There is a lot to be said about respecting the traditions of the past and carrying them forward into the future. Itâs not often that I actually agree with such thinking, but in this instance, I certainly think that these reasons alone make the 2-day game format more relevant now than ever before.
The history of â2-dayâ games format is not that long, mostly only after WW2 for tournaments, and previously there were even longer time settings (like main time 24 hours each), and not just for tournaments, but matches in Oteai (pro ranking games to rank up players).
The system of recording the time usage was also pretty modern only starting in the early 20th century, since clocks were also pretty new, and they were originally only recorded up to recording the usage of minutes (clocks werenât that accurate anyway back then). Also, the use of sealed moves was introduced in the 1930s, especially after the Honinbo Shusai retirement match in 1938, and it was first used in Shogi, before that the white player had the right to suspend the game without the need of sealed moves. Some of the first half of the 20th-century games can last for days to a week, and games before that in the Edo period can last for weeks to months. Although the majority of the castle game would be recorded as played in just one day, but they were usually played before the castle games started in other noblemenâs houses, and the castle games themselves were âreplaysâ (the viewers at the time were as impatient as we are, and didnât like to sit and wait for hours as well, especially if they were not particularly interested in Go, viwerships were a symbol of social status than for âentertainmentsâ purpose)