Unusual Time setting: Canadian Byo-Yomi Blitz

[shinuito]

@ArsenLapin1

Fischer time where the organiser had calculated that Fischer 10 seconds increment was “equivalent” to Canadian 15 stones / 5 minutes. When the main time ran out… Suddenly I had no safety net, and had to play my moves in 10 seconds per move. That means I had to play the remainder of the game as if it was a lightning game, something I’ve never had to do with Canadian byo-yomi, even though it was supposed to be “equivalent”.

That doesn’t sound like Fischer time though. It should just be game over when the time runs out?

I don’t think there’s usually a separation of main time and increment, in that the increment is always added into the time itself?

If you mean once your time got low you had to “live off the increment” - kind of a chess expression - I know what you mean, which is also why I dislike Fischer time. I tend to use my time and the Fischer increments are quite low and I end up with much less time per move than if I had 30s byo-yomi

I prefer just a 3x30s byo-yomi or 5x30s byo-yomi to anything Fischer or Canadian where I can end up with much less time to play each or multiple stones

[ArsenLapin1]

@shinuito

If you mean once your time got low you had to “live off the increment” - kind of a chess expression - I know what you mean, which is also why I dislike Fischer time. I tend to use my time and the Fischer increments are quite low and I end up with much less time per move than if I had 30s byo-yomi

Yes, that is exactly what I mean. If the increment is so small that living off the increment is too uncomfortable, that means you have to manage your time many many many moves in advance and make sure you never end up living off the increment. So this requires a lot more time-managing efforts than Canadian or Japanese.

@shinuito

I prefer just a 3x30s byo-yomi or 5x30s byo-yomi to anything Fischer or Canadian where I can end up with much less time to play each or multiple stones

30s/move Japanese means you have to play each move in less than 30s. You never get any respite to count the points, to read a sequence, etc. What if you have to make an important decision, such as choosing between playing a semeai or living peacefully? With 30s/move you can never stop and read the semeai.
5min/15stones Canadian is 20s/move on average, but every “obvious” move will be played much faster than that, meaning you can afford to spend a minute or two to think about something specific if you need to.

[shinuito]

@ArsenLapin1

You never get any respite to count the points, to read a sequence, etc. What if you have to make an important decision, such as choosing between playing a semeai or living peacefully? With 30s/move you can never stop and read the semeai.

I think one idea is to try get the game sufficiently advanced that you don’t need to make two make big and complicated decisions in byo-yomi.

Doesn’t always work like that, but after forty minutes or an hour main time, sometimes I can get out of middle game and toward endgame.

It’s not perfect, I would prefer to split reading over 30s per move than having to spend a chunk of time reading in my Canadian overtime and now have to play 10 stones in 30s because my opponent didn’t play what I was expecting and I had to reevaluate it has happened to me before, and even in an online 13x13 the game turned into a click fest in the Canadian overtime part to make the time control before being able to read again

(I know we should probably make Canadian blitz distinct and unrelated)

[Uberdude]

There’s a simple UI improvement that would help with Canadian overtime: 2 bars one above the other, which graphically show the percentage of stones left to play and the percentage of time left. So top one would say e.g 20/25 in foreground with bar at 80% fill in background, and bottom one shows timer 3:00 of a 5 min period in foreground with bar at 60% fill behind. This you can easily see at a glance if you are falling behind the pro-rata move rate, which is the main problem with Canadian.

[Groin]

I think that canadian byoyomi took over the classic japanese byoyomi for a simple reason not mentioned yet: it required less assistance from a third person.