Ah yes, I see now. I will give that a try 
1 Like
One related question which was brought up in chat recently was:
âIs the time setting, and time management, part of âthe gameâ or âthe game environmentâ?â
Iâve played a lot of blitz chess at five-minute (or even three-minute) / player sudden death and thereâs no doubt that at that level of constraint, time management seeps deeply into strategy.
You can often end up in a very advantageous position on the board and spend some time searching for a forced mate sequence, but run so low on the clock that youâre forced to bail into a draw by perpetual repetition.
In the blitz chess community, the concept of âflaggingâ, which is to say playing irrelevant moves in order to make the game continue until the opponent runs out of time, also has very wide acceptance as an integral part of the game.
The practicality of flagging is the main drive behind the acceptance of time management as a key part of strategy, and flagging is only really practical under sudden death or Fischer timing. Systems like byo-yomi and non-progressive Canadian overtime, quite rightly in my opinion, prevent flagging from being a realistic option (if it wasnât banned on OGS anyway).
So in the Go community, I think as a result of this we have a greater idea of the âdistinctionâ between the âgameâ (the moves on the board) and the time constraints under which itâs played, which could be thought of as lying conceptually between the âgameâ and the âarenaâ or âgame environmentâ, which contains such things as whether pauses and undo requests are permitted, whether the score estimator can be used during play and so on.
2 Likes
This is also an interesting question in a historicalâprofessional context.
The idea of formal professional time control is only about a century old, emerging iirc in the Hoensha at sixteen hours / player in a sudden death (absolute time) format, ie. with a maximum play time of four âworking daysâ (in the general late-20th C. sense). If we assume a game of 240 moves, that provides an average of eight minutes / move.
In more modern times, just like in the professional chess community, the bot revolution has ushered in the demise of adjourned games, making to no longer practical for a game to last more than six â ten hours. If we assume that each player has four hours of main time in which to play a 240-move game, we can see that there would only be an average of two minutes / move available.
Under Ingâs rules, time management is part of the game. Overuse time, lose points. This yearâs Ingâs cup is a good example. Play solid but hard to punish moves can win a game with Ingâs rules (or trick moves, but that would usually backfire)
3 Likes
alongside this, time has long been part of how professionals talk about the game, often making specific reference to the byo-yomi period through ideas like time-suji, a forcing move (much like a ko threat) played to grant the person playing it more time (usually a full minute) and always playing a move on the last second when in byo so as to maximize thinking time. Just because flagging hasnât been seen as part of the game (except in blitz, but even blitz tends to use byo), doesnât mean time hasnât, as âflaggingâ is typically seen as not really possible when there is a sufficient increment (the experts tend to say even 1 or 2 secs is enough that none of them will ever be flagged like that), and in go you always have at least one byo-yomi period for each move (typically 30secs or 1min)
To make this a further point, the introduction of time to a game initially recieved backlash as the way the game was played would change (and it did), and stamina has become a much more important quality of a professional (which is one of the suggested reasons pros tend to peak in their 20s and 30s)
2 Likes
ideas like time-suji, a forcing move (much like a ko threat) played to grant the person playing it more time
I remember reading about a crucial title game Ichiriki Ryo lost to Iyama Yuta by playing a timesuji whch Iyama was able to prove wasnât sente.
1 Like
IIRC, one of the major impulses that drove the introduction of time keeping in various professional games was due to keeping spectator interest as motivated by sponsors. Sponsors and promoters found that they could take and hold the attention of spectators better if games were faster (ie, not 6 hours or days long). Nowadays, as the pace of life and demands for keeping peopleâs eyeballs on events have increased and attention spans have shortened, time controls have become even faster.
Haha, yeah, I heard about some crazy tournament time settings - I think it was Ing - where you can use up all of your time and then get a bit extra but it will cost you one or two points of territory
It makes sense if one is to broadcast games for example that they should fit within a certain time window. I think with chess though, with classical time of many hours per player and a serious title on the line (eg world championship and a lot of money) the games will probably end up as draws. One can tactically draw as well if drawing gives points which push you closer to goal (first to 10 points etc)
I think draws are a bit less likely in lower time settings, preparation can go out the window quickly and couple that with a few inaccuracies it can lead to winning positions.
I think with go with no draws (0.5 in the Komi) weâre not under as much pressure to reduce time settings as a way of avoiding draws or picking a winner between closely matched opponents. The pressure probably is just for fitting an event into a window of time that makes sense.
1 Like
Ing - where you can use up all of your time and then get a bit extra but it will cost you one or two points of territory
See Ing Timing at Sensei's Library
- one gets four periods,
- the first is six times larger than the other three,
- time for each move is deducted,
- and two points are added to the opponentâs score for each exhausted period.
I have recently come up with a solution that works for me so sharing here in case it helps anyone elseâŚ
My problem is taking ages for each move in correspondence games - maybe 5 minutes or more. Multiply that by approx. 20 simultaneous games and I donât have time to get through them all each day so Iâm always under time pressure. 
I play on my phone. So I simply set a timer on my phone and if I havenât played a move by the timer, then I just have to play whatever the best move is that I have thought of so far. My target playing tempo for live games is approximately 30 seconds per move so I set a timer for 1 minute to allow some extra time to remember what is going on in the game (since it is correspondence). In tricky middle game fights I sometimes allow an extra minute (or maybe even two for very intense fights) which would be reasonable in a live game.
With this method, I have found that I get through my approx. 20 simultaneous correspondence games much quicker than before. The reason is, before there was nothing to promot me to hurry up so Iâd just sit reading a position indefinitely. Now my reading is more focussed, and I play more moves in less time so itâs a winner for me. I even now often forget to set the timer and still play faster. 
Hope that helps someone else out there 
4 Likes