I remember hearing about people creating some cool settings like larger boards via the API in order to bypass front end checks, so I thought maybe this would be in the same category
I’ve hacked in some time parameters in the past to make 8hr/move games.
I think the big question is how does the server determine a correspondence game in this case: does it actually look at the blitz/live/correspondence flag? Or does it do that calculation where “estimated-time-per-move is greater some threshold.”
In many cases, it’s the latter.
2 Likes
Another potentially related post: Correspondence game "timezone" preference
I suppose the broader realization here is, that we’d ideally like to simultaneously:
- allow for multiple hour gaps in game play, optionally spread the game over a handful of days
- have the clock enforce several moves (maybe just 3, maybe 100) per day
But to do both of those at the same time, we’d really support from the web site for some kind of negotiation of when the players are both agreeing to play, because it is not enough for one of the players to be online for 2 hours if the other player is away at the same time - at most 1 move could be made during that 2 hour period.
As noted above, if you can agree to such a game via a side channel (on the forum, chat) then that will work (without enforcement from the site), with pauses or with no clock.
The best that the site can provide right now for this might be absolute time - set 3 days of absolute time and negotiate the times to meet up with the other player at the start of the game. That might be OK?
My favorite idea might be to use Fishcer clock, though there’s a bit of a gap for useful increments/maximums for this purpose ATM (no increment options between 30m and 4h). For 15 moves / day I’d want to set 1h30m increments and 2 days max time, but that’s not supported by neither live nor correspondence time settings. If you wanted wanted to enforce 50 moves / day then you’d want 30m increments with 2d max time, which is would be a combination of live increment and correspondence max time 
IDK if any developer knows if the time settings are limited in this way for simplicity, or if there is a more fundamental reason why it would be difficult for the site to allow for such time settings? In principle, time settings like these describe my ideal situation the best - I would like to play live-ish games but I could also walk away from the game and agree to continue it later in another sitting if the game runs into dinner time, or my daughter asks for help with her homework or whatever.
5 Likes
You don’t need to play the moves as they come. What I usually do is spend less time on moves that are obvious and more time on moves that are more difficult. When I’m short on time I just clear those games that I’m low on time first so that I can think more for the other games.
2 Likes
To be able to play 30 moves a day in a game, both players either need 30 alternating visits to the site or they need to be online at the same time responding to each others’ moves until they get to 30. It’s ok to just come to the site a few times a day to respond to the most urgent moves for games that require a few moves per day. But I don’t think that can work reliably for 10 moves, not without some extra scheduling.
1 Like
One big difference between live and correspondence games is the disconnection timer and with it the expectation that players are available for most of the time during live games. That’s why e.g. the Fischer max time for live games is capped at 4 hours. It’s already a lot, to expect the players to be available for that time.
But I don’t know why the minimum increment for correspondence games is also 4 hours.
To make sure people don’t use correspondance settings for live games and so avoid the disconnection timer?
What’s wrong with that? Why shouldn’t players be allowed to do this?
An increment of 4 hours per move is far from being a live game. Even on a 9x9 board such games can easily take a week.
1 Like
Players under correspondance setting would have similar time setting as live. And so avoid the disconnection timer. Does that timer have no use?
We are speaking of minimum, not of a fixed value of 4 hours. (I was answering last sentence of your post)
We are in a thread about a long all-day game, so…
Besides, it was recently changed to effectively 60 seconds, which is way too short, so I’d take the opportunity to disable it in normal games if I could. Most abandonments I get are at the start of the game, when I can just cancel whenever I get bored anyway
2 Likes
Imagine the following:
- Black plays a move at 8:00 a.m., 9:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m. and so on until 8:00 p.m.
- White plays a move at 8:30 a.m., 9:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m. and so on until 8:30 p.m.
- Both players play 13 moves per day.
- Would you consider this a live game? I would not.
With a Fischer time increment of 2 hours per move the players would not time out, because they get 26 hours per day (2 hours/move * 13 moves), but lose less then 24 hours per day (as they don’t lose time during the opponent’s turn).
But a 2 hour Fischer increment is neither possible for live games, nor for correspondence games:
- For live games the increment can’t be higher than 30 minutes and increasing this limit wouldn’t help much, because of the disconnection timer.
- For correspondence games the increment can’t be lower than 4 hours. The question is: Why isn’t an increment of 2 hours allowed?
5 Likes
Yes, and considering the limits now.
It’s not first time that improvement on one side meet the threat of disfunctionment on the other side.
My own pov is no disconnection counter at all.
When i sign for an hour game, i don’t sign for playing all my moves under 1mn and i want to have time to get up and prepare myself a coffee. If someone wants to spend 10mn on a move, let’s be it. Those long time games are an opportunity for players with bad connection so why restrain them to come and join under that mn?
Better consider how to implement some alarm system when my opponent moves (i mean something i can hear being in my kitchen, a stronger one as the sound produced by a move, and as the counter on the main page or even still ringing if i left the browser?), so i can have another activity as waiting meanwhile.
From that thread
It’s not obvious at all why the timer was reduced to 1mn.
2 Likes
Imagine the following:
- Black plays a move at 8:00 a.m., 9:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m. and so on until 8:00 p.m.
- White plays a move at 8:30 a.m., 9:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m. and so on until 8:30 p.m.
- Both players play 13 moves per day.
- Would you consider this a live game? I would not.
Yep, I guess we would rather describe that as a “fast correspondence” game. But there is potentially another kind of a thing:
- Game challenge accepted at 8:30 a.m.
- Black and white play back and forth for 100 moves over 30 minutes until 9:00 a.m.
- White needs to head to work, they agree with Black to continue the game at 1:30 p.m. after lunch
- Black and white play back and forth for 100 moves over 30 minutes until 2:00 p.m.
- Black needs to run some errands, they agree with White to continue the game at 8:00 p.m. after dinner
- Black and white play back and forth for 100 moves for 30 minutes until 8:30 p.m. and finish the game
I think that is something you might consider a kind of a live game? Maybe an “interrupted live game” or “multi-session live game”?
1 Like
That’s a live game with pauses and already possible.
I think it would be nice to have the game pause automatically during the night, like the pause during weekends, but with players choosing when it is night for them. That’s not as simple as the weekend pauses though.
2 Likes
I’ve tried a few experiments but mostly unsuccessful. E.g. Canadian with 0 initial time and then periods of x moves in x time.
But there doesn’t seem to be a good system, and by that I mostly mean one where my opponent would recognise what it is I want.
It seems like currently the only way is to have a lot of pre-communication in order to select an opponent and then discuss with that opponent the parameters.
I play a lot of games on sites like Boardgamearena where I can freely enter and leave a game throughout the day without anyone getting a penalty and having games finished in a day or two. Sometimes many moves are exchanged in a few minutes, sometimes longer breaks occur. Playing several such games simultaneously means you almost always have a move to make throughout the day, but games are completed usually on the same day they start.
3 Likes
Note, on BGA you can select x moves per day, and select your ‘day’ as eg between 9am and 9 pm (local time). Also that whether you’re logged on or not is irrelevant.
2 Likes
Just to remember your first request. Playing many games simultaneously is the common thing on OGS.
In that case, we could try to offer better tools for this at least like a meeting point for example
2 Likes
It’s not impossible for sure, but I wouldn’t agree that it’s something you could really reliably do on the site right now. Like @IIkkyu says below, you could negotiate the parameters and then sidestep the clock settings (using pauses or no time control, or absolute time control or whatever). But that’s only something you can reasonably do a few times every once in a while, not as one of your main ways of playing games.
1 Like