Suggestion: allow disabling time cap for Fischer time

[Harleqin]

I have raised an issue on github here: https://github.com/online-go/online-go.com/issues/839

Anoek is requesting community pressure to at least always allow longer caps than the basic time (the option of disabling the cap seems to be surprisingly hard to implement and roll out). So, please get your voice in there.

Best wishes.

[BHydden]

I think it seems reasonable that if main and increment time can both be selected then cap should be able to be selected as well. But even if that is too much, I don’t think it’s too much to ask that cap is always at least > main time.

I don’t play Fischer controls all that often, but off the top of my head I would say the cap should be a minimum of 2*(main+increment) though I’d be fine with keeping 1 hour as the lower bound.

However, if the problem is that for functionality the cap needs to be an integer, it could always be something functionally infinite like 1000 hours?

[smurph]

You can start a corr game with infinite time per side. How much longer does your game need to last?

If you really wanted a reasonable pace, you wouldn’t play Fischer corr.

[Harleqin]

Again, this is not about correspondence games, and it is not about the overall length of the game. All I actually want is a standard Fischer clock, or, as it seems the case, if the cap cannot be made optional, at least that it can be set to a value that makes it irrelevant.

[teapoweredrobot]

I signed up to GitHub especially to support this! Hope it helps! Current setting limits don’t really make sense.

[BronzeV]

I just want to point out that one of the benefits of Fischer time is that it is better for dealing with escapers and rage-quitters. For instance, if you play a Fischer time game with a 5 minute cap, you have to wait a maximum of 5 minutes to get your victory if the opponent quits.

If I were to change anyting about Fischer time, it would be the default values (including Automatch). Right now Fischer time (2 min + 30 sec/move) already results in significantly longer games than Boyoyomi (20 min + 3x30sec), so maybe having +25 or even +20 sec/move as the default would result in better time parity.

[Harleqin]

That’s right. We have (in Europe) settled for a rule of thumb: that the bonus time for a 19×19 game should not exceed about 1/120 of the basic time. For example, typical weekend tournament settings are 40/15 (that is 40 min basic/15 s bonus time, about 2:45 h ). A reasonably fast evening game (1.5 h) can be played with 20/10.

So, I think default Blitz setting should be 5/2, default live maybe 15/7 or 20/10.

[yebellz]

I support @Harleqin’s suggestion. Why not give people more flexibility when setting up a game? Maybe some people won’t want to use it, but what if others do?

@Harleqin

I am not asking to remove the time cap option entirely. I am asking to add the option of not having it in a game.

Even if adding this option is not easy due to technical reasons as @anoek mentioned, a similar change would just be to allow a much larger maximum cap.

Personally, I could see some utility for this feature in setting up ultra-fast correspondence games. Currently, I think there is a bit of a gap between correspondence and live games that could be useful to open for some people that can maintain the pace.

@AdamR

If there was no cap and a player chose say 10 mins increment (which is not even the highes number) the game might be 2 days long, no?
300*10/60 = 50 hours (feel free to correct my math, it is not my strongest area)…

I think @Harleqin was talking about a 10 second increment to get that figure. Note that even if the cap was only 10 minutes, a game could still theoretically drag on for days.

[flovo]

Would 4 hours be enough? That’s 1h base time + 180 * 60s.

And 35min for blitz?

btw the server doesn’t care high the max time is. One can create live games with arbitrary max time via API.

[_KoBa]

KoBa still likes the idea of having only +1d/move without any caps

[flovo]

@_KoBa

But oh dear god i can be a real slowpoke when i’m losing xD
No matter how long i stare the thumbnail at the overview page, if i can’t see a move that could help me win the game, i will let the game be and keep thinking about it if i just have some time remaining.

So… if you’re ever having a corr game with me and i start constantly dropping under 24 hours, you should feel pretty happy about it ^____^

4 weeks of thinking should be enougth

[BHydden]

@flovo

4 weeks of thinking

Don’t forget strategic vacation time use
#guilty

[trohde]

I’m not sure I like the apparently prevailing notion that slow playing or even long pauses are due to some “strategic” use of time.

For example …

• in the past ~8 years I used to do a stressing and demanding job,
• I’ve been fighting with depression, and sometimes with anxiety, for the past 30+ years,
• I often had to visit my increasingly demented mother in order to relieve her husband for a while,
• and then, by end of last year and beginning of this year, three people close to me, including my mother, died in rapid succession … and suddenly I dropped out of everything. Unable to do any work, unable to read my mail, etc. Gladly my doctor realized that I needed to be “taken out”.

Now, this all may be an extreme case, but I’d like to remind everybody that there may be MANY reasons in Real Life that can cause people to play slow, or … extremely slow.

All we lastly know about our opponent are those pixels that they leave on the screen we’re look at.

<edit>
Oh, and of course, this:

• I’m old

</edit>

[yebellz]

I’m so sorry for your loss.