Fixed Max Time in Fischer Blitz settings

OGS Development
1

Could we add an option to have unlimited max time in Fischer setttings?

I like to play 5 minutes main time and some increment in blitz settings but max time cannot be higher than the 5 minutes I started with.

Given that the first few moves are played faster than later moves, you cannot really make use of your configured Fischer time.

Thanks!

6 Likes
2

I believe it has been said that true unlimited max would be difficult to implement, but it would be quite easy to increase the cap to a high value which will never be exceeded anyway.

I definitely support this feature: caps on Fischer make sense for correspondence games, but not for live games.

EDIT:

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I think the general feel is that you don’t want too much time to be able to be built up, 5 minutes is a long time in a blitz game, 1 hour is a rather long time in a live game. I don’t mind making tweaks to values if the community at large is in support of changes though.

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I would disagree with that; people can still use low caps if they like, but if you don’t like how much time gets built up, the increment is to high.

We recently had to change an informal Tourney from Fischer to Byo-yomi because Fischer did not support multi-hour caps. I think 4h cap would cover most use cases (it would have covered ours), but I’d put it at 6 or 8 hours to be on the safe side. It’s perfectly reasonable for a player to play more quickly in the opening and then spend a lot of time reading out some midgame fight. There’s nothing wrong with that. If the amount of time the time controls give you is too long, don’t play them.

EDIT:

EDIT 2: Is this change all front-end? It seems like https://github.com/online-go/online-go.com/blob/devel/src/components/TimeControl/util.ts is possibly the only thing which would need to change?

export const time_options = {
    "blitz": {
        "fischer": {
            "initial_time": gen(5, 300),
            "time_increment": gen(1, 10),
            "max_time": gen(5, 86400),
        },
       // ...
    "live": {
        "fischer": {
            "initial_time": gen(30, 3600),
            "time_increment": gen(10, 1800),
            "max_time": gen(30, 86400),
        },
    // ...
    },

Is there anything else which would need to change? I couldn’t figure out if the Challenge dialog generated options from this file, or would need to be manually listed somewhere.

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Hi anoek, thanks for replying - I just read last year’s thread from Harleqin and I actually propose the same.

I mainly come from the chess world and Fischer is THE time control to play with. There is never a cap imposed and the community doesn’t seem to be plagued by long/drawn-out games.

As Harleqin wrote: A cap of at least two times the maximum amount of basic time would suffice in the majority of cases I believe.

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I would also like an option for removing the max time. As other’s have said, the idea that the games will be too long without a max time stems from the fact that we generally use “too long” increments. You can’t convert a byo-yomi of 30 seconds to a +30 seconds Fischer increment, that will give you a much longer game; something like +10 seconds would be more comparable.

For an example of Fischer working great in practice for go, just look at GoQuest: the time settings are 3 minutes + 1 seconds (no max time). 1 second may sound like nothing, but it’s enough that I’m never forced to lose on time.

So why would I care about removing the max time for these short time controls? Even if I could always set the max time high enough that it doesn’t effect the game (right now even this isn’t always possible, since the options are limited by whether you’ve chosen live, blitz or correspondence), having an extra parameter that doesn’t affect the game (like 3 min + 1 sec max 1 hour) looks very ugly to me, and it’s also potentially confusing for the person accepting the challenge. What’s so great about Fischer is how simple it is compared to Byo-yomi, having a max time needlessly complicates it! So having an option to disable the max time completely would be very much appreciated :smiley:

(This is a minor thing, so I completely understand that it’s not a priority; just wanted to voice my support for the cause :slightly_smiling_face:)

Edit: Also like SoDesuNe said, the fact that there’s never a max time in chess should surely be a reason for us to at least support that way of playing, so that more new players can feel at home with the time controls. Probably a much stronger argument than my silly personal preferences :slightly_smiling_face:

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I would also prefer no time limit, but the other thread mentioned that there was a large difference in implementation difficulty.

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Yes, of course just getting a higher cap would be very helpful, so if it’s much more difficult to remove it then it’s probably not worth it at the moment. I’m assuming that would have to be changed in the backend, so I just wanted to state my reasons for wanting it, and then anoek can decide what makes sense to work on :slightly_smiling_face:

6 Likes
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All right, then let’s try this : )

  • Change max time (at least 2x basic time)
  • Don’t chnage it
0 voters
1 Like
10

Could we get rid of the cap in correspondence too? Why not?

Argument about games taking half an eternity is kinda silly, because we have “none” as an option, just as we have byo-yomi with 300x28 days.

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@anoek
We have 11 voters, all in favour of change, and every post in this thread is in favour of changing max time, too.

Granted the thread did not get much traction in the OGS forum per se but since the same topic was debated last year and Fischer time in go is pretty much a niche time setting as far as I can see, maybe the repsonse so far is enough for you to make some tweaks? =)

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