Byoyomi time

[Umsturz]

Hi I just played a very quick game and while looking at my rest time I thought that 0:07 + 1x10 means that I have a total of 17 seconds left. But it turns out that this means that I have 7 seconds left. Maybe this should be changed to 0:07 + 0x10? Otherwise the “+” sign is a bit confusing. But maybe thats just me.

[ckersch]

I’ll +1x10 this idea

[flovo]

If you do math 0:07 + 1x0:10 would be 0:17

When playing go with Byoyomi time settings it reads like:
7 seconds main time plus 1 (byoyomi-)period of 10 seconds byoyomi time.

This means at the beginning of the game the clock shows 7 seconds. On your turn it counts down til it reaches 0 seconds.

Then the byoyomi time starts. The clock get set to 10 seconds and count down again.

When you do your move while there is time left the clock resets to 10 seconds.
If you spend all 10 secs thinking one of your periods got spent (the period counter decrease by one). If the period counter reaches 0 you lose the game by timeout. If you have some periods left, the clock resets to 10secs and count down again. Repeat this paragraph til no periods are left.

On your game, you had only 1 period. Therefor you should have 7 secs main time followed by 10 secs per move. This should be much more than 17secs total.

If you had only 7 secs total, this would be a bug on ogs’ time handling.

[smurph]

I like KGS’ solution: while you have periods remaining, it displays, say, 0:07 (1) for 1 period, when that runs out it shows just 0:07. It’s a nice minimalist way of saying “you have no periods left”, without getting into the 0/1 discussion.

Tygem adds the “last overtime” audio cue, which is also nice.

[Umsturz]

Yes I only had 7 seconds. Try starting a game against a bot with 5 byoyomi periods a 10 seconds without main time. The time settings reads 10 + 5x0:10 in the beginning that should be 60 seconds if you do not make a move. But in fact you only have 50 seconds.

Let me rephrase that: If the clock reads 0:01 + 1x10 you do not have an additional 10 second byoyomi period. You loose after 1 second without making a move.

So what I am saying is the setting 5 byoyomi periods a 10 seconds are 50 seconds (this is correct), without making a move. But the way it is displayed 10 + 5x0:10 is confusing, because the “+” suggests additional time.

[flovo]

I tried against GnuGo with time settings 0+5x10 and I got my 50secs and for 10+5x10 I got 60 secs.
At the start of the both games, the clock showed 10+5x10

@Umsturz

But the way it is displayed 10 + 5x0:10 is confusing, because the “+” suggests additional time.

I agree, this is confusing. There should be an indication if we are in byo-yomi or main time. The + suggests that we are still in main time since the notation is always “main + periods x byoyomi”.
We have a similar ambiguity for canadian time settings

@smurph

while you have periods remaining, it displays, say, 0:07 (1) for 1 period, when that runs out it shows just 0:07

That sounds good to me.

It would be good if this ambiguity will get changed.

[opuss]

See also:

In game user UI - Clock and Name

I personally feel that thew new clock interface looks bad. I understand it is more space efficient but the fact that nothing in the “user box” is bordered makes it look cluttered and “basic” to me eye. I understand this is pedantic but I feel it cheapens the look of the site. In addition, I have a hard time reading the names and ranks of the white players when the site is using the night theme. Below is a screenshot from the old system, for reference. [image] …

Bug in clock display

For example: clock starts at 1m + 2 x 10s. When the minute runs out, it then goes to 10s + 2 x 10s. Shouldn’t it decrease to 1 x 10s at that point? It then runs out at 0s + 1 x 10s, which is misleading. This would seem to indicate that there is time left on the clock.

[flovo]

There is also an open issue in the bugtracker on github tagged as “discussion needed” and last activity in April 2017 without any apparent result

Issue: Byo-yomi extra periods presentation is confusing