ok, but pro matches last for hours. So it doesn’t matter as much. People here are not pros, they don’t come to this site with nothing else to do than go, everyone has limited time. And that time should not be a decision between winning a game, or going to the bathroom.
Well it’s online go, not real life. In real life you don’t say brb. You meet less often or you are very lucky, people who are from a far away country.
Besides in real life, not sure that it is always granted, take a blitz tournament for example.
Even in a normal tournament, or even in a club, you don’t have a pause feature. You go if you want but you keep your clock running.
Myself i think the pause system is quite good on OGS.
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Hmm… you know you are a go addict when you play game after game and forget to go to the bathroom in between.
(Happens to me as well.)
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I would recommend that you consider more flexible time settings, if you anticipate that you might have to need breaks or deal with other interruptions.
Our current policy is that it is not abuse for a player to broadly reject all pauses (even if the other player gives valid reasons). Hence, players should choose time settings that meet their individual needs.
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…which is the reason why you shouldn’t be allowed to unconditionally pause a game without consulting the opponent.
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I would resoundingly oppose any changes to the current pausing system. I don’t think it’s broke, so, why fix it? People would have to come with really good reasons why a new system would be better.
To address the proposals so far:
That’s equivalent to adding 10 minutes to your main time. Arguably, just using a longer time setting is a much better solution, since that way the opponent knows what they are signing for.
Yeah, no. Just no. I can already see all the bad losers pausing and escaping their games.
I also don’t see how this would be better than the current system. With the current system, you don’t annul the game, you just unpause it and let it run. I’d rather have a win than an annulled game for no reason.
Some people already “escape” losing games out of spite (meaning they leave you with the game open and a considerable amount of time on the clock). This new system is an invitation to let them get exactly what they want.
I don’t think waiting for confirmation would be a good idea.
One very plausible scenario occurs when your opponent disconnects. You may choose to pause to avoid their time out. Or other similar situations where the opponent is not available for whatever reason.
For example, I have already used that feature to great success in this tournament. Sometimes, some of the players were just not available at the scheduled time due to emergencies and such. So I’d ask their opponent to pause the game and reschedule on their own. We had to do that a few times (you know, we’re all amateurs, and have other things to do).
My point is that the current system just works for the few events where pauses are needed. And, as @yebellz pointed out, the decision to unpause or not works as confirmation.
Now, my personal opinion on this feature is that it is an “extra” that OGS provides. It is a nice feature (like undo), but it is by no means imperative for it to exist. It might as well just not, as it is in many other servers.
So I like it, I don’t want it gone. But I also don’t think users are “entitled” to have pauses unilaterally. I think it’s better to think of OGS games as if the feature was not present at all.
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I think the feature which should be added is the possibility to add 1 minute or 5 minutes to your opponent’s time. This feature exists on KGS.
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We could imagine a bit more securisation, like when you propose a pause, your opponent can accept (or not still) and secure himself the pause for x amount of time.
I m not sure it’s so necessary and what would be the consequences. Myself i hate spaming and such and i am afraid that this could become a new weapon (multiple requests with an answer to give) for bad losers or trolls.
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(Talking about a hypothetical system where consent is required for pausing)
The difference, I feel, is that the current system does open the door for the opponent to not unpause immediately, faking consent, and then unpause when the opponent is away with plausible deniability of not doing it maliciously.
Well, I say “the difference”, but if the permission is implemented naively there would be no difference except the plausible deniability.
But for example, the opponent of the pauser could agree to a specific interval of pausing time, and the game could resume automatically after that interval, with the opponent not allowed to unpause before that time if they agreed to the pause. Edit: essentially similar to the feature @jlt talked about.
Oh, I guess this is (similar to?) what @Groin just imagined 
I was writing this reply for a while!
If we’re concerned about the pauser losing time while asking for permission, consider that they are the ones with the “burden of honor” in most cases, so if they have to pay a few seconds it sounds sensible to me, but if I’m the only one thinking that, you could just let the game pause for a few seconds even before the opponent’s consent.
OK, very good point. Since we’re talking about hypothetically changing the system, this could be an exception (allow the player the option to pause if the opponent has disconnected – technically abusable, but then again not anymore than it already is as of now).
Tournament directors should be allowed to pause games in their tournaments, or I guess in my hypothetical scenario they could have the ability to grant unilateral pausing to tournament players. Edit: same for moderators, I guess. If you find yourself in such a situation you could contact a moderator and ask them to pause the game. But maybe that’s too much work for mods?
Of course, in the same vein as what you just said, there could be other exceptions where unilateral pausing is desirable. I guess it comes down to what to prioritize. Since pausing is a pretty weird feature of OGS, I personally feel that it being limited as much as possible would be a good thing.
I had considered this, but honestly I think the current pausing feature essentially already is a pretty good stalling/distracting weapon that can be abused.
Edit: after thinking about it, I feel that the feature @jlt suggested pretty much solves all of these problems, and it’s nigh-impossible to abuse.
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what if someone keeps accepting blitz games and then giving time to ruin fun of blitz?
Indeed, you are free to leave the board to go to the toilet in real-life tournament games with clocks. However, you are not free to pause the clock when you do so, at least in my experience of tournament Go in Britain, several EGCs, several European countries, WAGC and KPMC. Where are you from, I’m guessing USA with the use of “bathroom”? In some countries, I can’t recall which, pausing for toilet break with opponent’s agreement does sometimes happen, but in Britain it’s pretty much unheard of. In the British championship title matches, which were 3 hours each with byo-yomi, I purposefully reduced my water intake in byo-yomi to prevent time lost to toilet breaks.
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Next up in tournaments: in situ catheters.
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I’d like that a lot!
(Even though back then when I used to play on KGS I once lost a game in a tournament b/c I added time when my opponent was about to lose on time 
but I was young(er) then and believed that courtesy was a fine thing.) (Oh well, I still believe that 
)
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People generally don’t add time for no reason, but only in the following cases:
- The opponent lost time because of disconnection problems
- The opponent has been interrupted (phone, doorbell, toilet emergency…)
- It’s a friendly or a teaching game, you don’t want the game to stop in the middle of a fight.
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Most of my pauses are due to:
- Bathroom break
- Cooking
- Answering door/phone
I am curious who is abusing the pause feature. 
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A better approach is to use fischer timing. Then the phone can ring even in endgame if you maintain a healthy clock.
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Oh, oh, I heard that one. Although it was a long time ago so rules might be different now it’s an interesting trivia.
Byoyomi Explained | British Go Association
In the very next game, while O Meien was giving the commentary on an exciting ko fight that seemed likely to decide the game, the camera switched to the playing room only to find both players absent, even though both were in their final minute of byoyomi. This was on nationwide live TV. It was an unusual enough event to prompt O to explain. The timekeeper doesn’t start counting the time until the player is back at the board. That’s provided he left in his opponent’s time of course. Once his time has started, there’s no interrupting it.
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You can play on OGS using a smartphone, and you can be logged into multiple devices simultaneously! If you don’t like that people can unpause your pauses, maybe just bring a mobile device for insurance 
Otherwise, I’d suggest either longer time controls so you can safely let your time run down, as would happen in a real-life tournament, or shorter time controls, so you won’t need a bathroom break.
I’ve always thought this feature felt more natural between the two, as well. Being able to add time still allows you to keep on time pressure. A lot of games I’ve played that I or my opponent paused ended up just being abandoned.
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For the price of a go board, you can purchase one of these camping toilets
If youre playing a lot of Go online, it’s definitely worht the investment.
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Why does it have a seatbelt? Is this a wearable toilet? Can you use it while walking? Jogging?
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