I'll express my opinion here, but keep in mind that my engine (cogito) has only played 44 games as of now on CGOS. I have a few problems with separate time controls.
--It dilutes the rating pool. If there is only one time control, everyone can play everyone. If there are separate time controls, then there will probably be some players that only play in certain time controls. Thus the rating pools must be kept separate to not introduce bias. Separate rating pools reduce the amount of useful data available. --There are better ways to accomplish the same goals. As you suggested, you could simply wait until half of all players are idle, and then start another round. You could take this even further. I suppose in the current CGOS you have some measurement on whether two players would make an acceptable match in the next round? Whenever a player becomes idle, and there is at least one other player idle, try and match them if they are close enough. There wouldn't be any more "rounds", but I think this would be a better solution. --It introduces complexity. Some players (like mine) don't have any time control code. Mine has to be recompiled to play at different numbers of playouts. This is because it's an ultra minimal engine, only 1937 characters of C at the moment (by IOCCC counting rules). It plays on CGOS using an adapter shell script. I'd rather not have to rewrite that! There are plenty of players that play at fixed playout counts. Zach _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
