steve uurtamo wrote:
i think that maybe you misunderstand how byo yomi is used in
practice.
you have a giant pile of time that should be enough to account for
basically all of the hardest parts of the game.
then you have several (more than 1 !) byo-yomi periods, which are
like grace periods on top of what would otherwise be sudden death.
however, you don't enter byo-yomi until you have used all of your
main time. some people don't ever enter byo-yomi. you certainly
can't lose on time unless you're in byo-yomi.
once you're in byo-yomi, each byo-yomi period is *plenty* of time to
make and answer the reasonably unchallenging final moves of the game.
if, however, a challenging move does come up, you can "go over" your
grace period.
that's pretty friendly from a sudden-death point of view.
you're just only allowed to "go over" some maximum number of times
(often 5 or 10).
the reality is that if your opponent is playing moves that you can't
answer using byo-yomi, then he's perhaps trying to beat you with the
clock, but he's definitely better at the game than you are, and maybe
you deserve to lose anyway. it's something that he might do if
you're in byo-yomi and he isn't. he wouldn't play moves that he
didn't know how to answer if he had fewer byo-yomi periods than you
did, because he'd just be beating himself with the clock.
all of this adds up to: i think that what you're worried about
(someone losing on time while having spent less time playing) is
unusual, or deserved. here's my thinking.
the only way this could happen would be if (correct me if there's a
flaw here):
both players were into byo-yomi time. player A starts to play moves
very, very quickly. player B plays moves more slowly (and presumably
more deliberately).
at some point, player B plays one or more moves that player A has to
think really hard about. player A goes "overtime" 4 separate times
during this stage of the game and is left with a single byo-yomi
period left. at this point he can take up to 30 seconds (say) for
every single move that he takes if he wants to. player B plays a
very challenging move that player A can't answer in a single byo-yomi
period and then player A loses on time.
now, from my way of thinking, there's a sense in which player A
deserves this -- either he should have spent more of his time
thinking during the endgame instead of just making quick moves, or
player B is better at generating and figuring out complicated fights
(in which case, well, no use crying over losing by time, as that's
almost the definition of what it means to be good at go).
I'm jumping in here, but how about this? Byo-yomi time is complicated.
Fischer time is simple. By other factors, I think there are legitimate
pros and cons to both systems, but personally would like Fischer time
better. Managing your own time whether in chunks or as a whole _is_ a
sub-game/task either way.
-Matt
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