People keep talking about this like it's a reasonable thing to do, and it may be in serious IRL tournaments where some money is at stake, but I wonder how many have seriously tried it online.

If everyone starts using every drop of byoyomi, games are going to get pretty long if it's Japanese byoyomi. Think about it. Let's say an average game is 240 moves or so. At 30 seconds per move, that's 2 hours, and that's assuming no main time. With 45 minutes main time, it could get to 3.5 hours. Okay, that's an extreme case, but even if you assume a player is playing at byoyomi pace during main time so that hitting byoyomi isn't so jarring, that's still 2 hours (i.e., up to move 180 in main time, last 60 moves in byoyomi for both players. I'll bet most people who play a 0:45 + 5x0:30 game on KGS don't budget 3.5 hours. (Or 3 hours in the more common 0:30 + 5x :0:30 setting.) Many don't even budget 2 hours. But oh, no, the real problem on KGS is escapers, right? Hmm.

Time systems that encourage you to waste time on trivial moves are evil.

FWIW, one thing I did was pretty extreme. I actually used a screen capture program to record my online games while I was playing. I would talk to myself while playing about what I was thinking. Later on, I'd review the recording with my spoken comments. With 20-20 hindsight, it's pretty enlightening to see where impulsive moves are made and how much they cost if they are mistakes. I didn't feel that burning myself out on every move was the solution. That's too tiring. Uniformly adding more thinking time everywhere isn't really the solution, IMHO. I just tried to learn to short-circuit the playing reflex in situations where more thinking is indicated. I was also amazed at how much I was following my opponent's playing pace, too.

Impulsive moves are mental problem. People play them even in Malkovich games, so I'd don't think the clock that's the issue. If you can understand what your thinking when you play them and get rid of, say, 80% of them, you play almost as fast as before.

A Starcraft example: There was recently a Day 9 Starcraft cast about shifting priorities. Basically, the topic was this: when you are trying to improve, you have a laundry-list of items that you want to practice. In Starcraft, this is various macro elements, unit control, scouting, creep spread, and so on. In go, one could count reading depth, remembering to keep strong groups, opening ideas to try, and so on. In either case, the point is that you can only strongly practice so many things at once. Beyond that, things just kind of fall off your radar. As a result, when you want to improve at something, shift it to the top of your priorities. As a matter of fact, be willing to do so at the cost of everything else. For example, in the podcast, a player wanted to focus on creep spread (for the purpose of the example, you don't have to know what that means). He focused on it so fully that he was unable to control other aspects as well as he normally could. He even lost the game that he may not have otherwise, because while his units were being destroyed, he continued to spread creep. At the end of the game, though, he felt great, because his one goal had succeeded very well. After practicing like this, in theory, his creep spread will have improved, even when he spends less attention/effort on it. Similarly for go, if you pick one thing to work on for a game, you can reward yourself based on that. Spend a few games where you just try to make sure you read at least two alternatives for every move- even a known joseki. If you do, even if you lose on time, you will know that you improved. Losing on time, in a way, would be a great mark of success (though it would point out something else to work on for later). Basically, if you occasionally spend a whole game JUST trying to improve on this, it may be easier to work on. If reading depth is only number four on your list of things you think of all game, it's much easier to lose track.

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Someday I want to be strong enough to earn KGS[-].

@ChewTerr

That sound's like a good idea. I'll definitly try it in my next games.

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Go is easy: don't play bad moves.

Actually there are many. Whenever I attend a tournament, of course I want to win, but I also want to play stronger people. Ideally, I want to win those games too, but, in reality, by wanting to play them, I am, at least as a statisticaly realist - wanting to lose to them.

The first step is clearly to recognize that such a problem exists, which you seem to have done. Then I think it's useful to think about what situations exacerbate the problem. One thing I have noticed, is that if I have an impatient, quick playing opponent, the likelihood is greatly increased that I too will play too fast. This may also be a bad habit, but it's not the number one problem, so one of my solutions to improve my thinking/reading habits, is to play slow opponents. How does one find them? I have two suggestions: First is the ASR League, where I've rarely found an impatient opponent. Second is to play on IGS instead of Tygem or KGS. I don't know why it is, but players of my level just tend to take their time there.

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Patience, grasshopper.

I have had this problem for as long as I have played Go. Recently I have given it a lot of thought because I feel it is a fundamental barrier to success in more serious games (whatever those might be for you). I have concluded that there is more than one problem involved:
*On the one hand there are the issues of depth and accuracy versus breadth and vision. But that is the topic of another thread!
*On the other hand there is the question of time management. This really has to be practiced in games. It is certainly true that you can only practice using longer blocks of time while playing games with longer time limits. At the same time, the basic issue of time management comes up in every game. To take a stark example, when you play a blitz game with a single period of 10 seconds per play you know exactly what you have and it ain't much. However, as mentioned elsewhere, if you watch the 8-9d's play blitz, you notice that they do use their time carefully. You can do the same.

Part of it is thinking about it in advance and deciding how to use your time. What can you do in 10 seconds and what can you not do? If you are like me, for example, you can not accurately count the board in 10 seconds. Decide in advance that you are not going to waste any time doing that. What else? You are not going to recall that complex joseki that you were fond of a couple of years ago but have not used since. In fact you are not going to read out any complex corner fights in the early going because there are too many possible branches to read through in the time available. And so on.

But those are things you won't do. It is much more important to decide what you will do. Why? Because you really want to practice doing productive things rather than just practicing not doing impossible things. What you would practice in 10 seconds should be different than what you would practice in 30 seconds just as what you would practice with 40 minutes main time should be different than what you would practice with 5 minutes main time. So what? So be happy if you have the opportunity to regularly play under a variety of different time limits. I personally do not think that playing a lot of longer games is the best way to improve. If you improve at your time management, you should improve across the range of time limits. In any case, plan ahead! Prepare a little plan for different time limits. That means you are not just floating if there is a game offer with different limits than you have thought of yet. Having a plan written out in advance will also help you objectively review you games later. In your 10-second game perhaps you decide that your basic plan is to spend half you time on an immediate local response to your opponent's last play and half your time on non-local possibilities. Now sometimes when the stones are in contact, you can't afford to spend any time on the non-local possibilities. If you develop the ability to hold your plan in your mind even when you are under pressure and mentally keep track of the extent to which you are falling behind in your global assessment, that by itself will probably be a major improvement in your ability to handle the wider game (I know it would be for me! ).

One thing that won't work is deciding how to use your time and then just doing it. Time management is like reading, it will require practice. And the more you expect to need it in high-pressure situations like formal tournaments, the more practice it will require! Unlike reading, however, it can not be practiced outside of games. In that since it should perhaps have a higher priority than other practice when you play.

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

Dave's story is wonderful and other people make very valuable contributions too. Here's my addition to those:

The problem of playing too fast can be translated as essentially wanting the game to be over. It's like runners who exhaust themselves by running too fast and not enjoying it. They run to improve their physical condition, not because they enjoy it. They care about the result, not the process.

In go the game result is win or loss. The process is playing and learning. If you really enjoy thinking about Go, then there is no need to rush the game. When it's over, the joy is gone. Unless ... deep down you're on the drug of victory. Then of course, you want that drug as soon as possible, even at the expense of a loss!

I think you have a point here. I thought about your remark this weekend and you're probably right that I'm more interested in victory than in having played a beautiful (albeit possibly lost) game.

I'm going to change my point of view, although this could be quite difficult. I remember that L19 had a discussion on it, but can't find it. Any hints?

- mic

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Go is easy: don't play bad moves.

Snorri, I have never understood this point of view. If you don't want to budget 2 hours on a game, then why on earth are you starting a 45 minute + very generous byo-yomi game?? A few years ago I sometimes played long games online, and it always surprised me that some people were actually annoyed that I used all of my time. They shouldn't complain, they just shouldn't have accepted a game with those time controls! These days I don't have the time and energy to play long games online, so I just don't start long games. IMO, something like 10 min + 3*20s byo-yomi is excellent for casual fun games when you don't want to blitz, but also don't want to agonise over every move.

In a long game, I believe a serious go player should do everything in their ability at every move to avoid oversights as much as possible. Of course, you will not use every last second of byo-yomi at every move, but it doesn't hurt to use most of it whenever you can. Until you get to high dan level, there are not that many trivial moves! Even playing small endgame well can be very complicated. Playing like this is very exhausting indeed, but it does wonders to your tournament performance and really helps you progress because you consider every move seriously. And isn't progress one of the things that makes go so much fun?

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My name is Gijs, from Utrecht, NL.

When in doubt, play the most aggressive move

I think reading shouldn't be forced. It should be a natural part of your game, and the way to make it natural is to do tsumego and ask yourself what your opponent is threatening with his moves.

Asking yourself while playing 'can I tenuki?' 'Should I tenuki'? 'What would happen if I tenuki'd? etc should prove very helpful.

Well, it's byo-yomi. The expectation is that there will be averaging going on. Leaving aside the games that I know I play in a rush, I still sometimes finish towards the end of main time, and sometimes play until I'm down to my last period. If every game went until the last period, I would reduce the time settings I allowed, and me and my opponents would lose out in those games that demand the extra time.

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Occupy Babel!

I agree. I'm very aware of the actual budgets because when I play online I often have a "hard stop" so I won't take a new game if I'm unsure it can be finished if we both wind up using a lot of time. However, if there is a kind of unwritten expectation that players will not use up huge amounts of their time, then that can make it confusing for people, and I think there is some of that going on. Some defenders of Japanese byoyomi will dismiss criticisms of that system by saying, "well, you're supposed to finish the game in main time. The overtime is really for emergencies or unexpectedly long endgames." But clearly this is not a universal opinion, as many players, especially stonger ones, get into byoyomi while the game is still in the opening or early middle game!



It depends on how many games you to play that day. In IRL tournaments, where there are sometimes 4 serious games crammed into a single day, later games may suffer from burning oneself out on earlier ones. I suppose it depends on one's physical and mental endurance, but more time does not necessarily equal better moves or fewer mistakes. There are mistakes that come from rushing and carelesses, but others that are related to fatigue in long games.

It's not just about the moves of one side, either. I think sometimes players choose longer time limits when they want to "get serious." That sounds great. But especially online, it is hard to get any guarantee that your opponent is serious. They often play blitz even with generous time limits. This is one reason why many players believe they really need IRL tournaments to improve---they want their opponents to be trying as hard as they are...

Indeed it is true that your opponent may not be very serious in an online game - in fact, this is one of the main reasons that I stopped playing serious games online. And in a real-life tournament, it may indeed be sensible to save energy in earlier rounds, but for some reason I never manage to do so...

But most importantly, there are NEVER unwritten rules about not using all your time. Those who pretend that such rules exist are only hampering their own improvement. Ignore them at all costs!

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My name is Gijs, from Utrecht, NL.

When in doubt, play the most aggressive move

You sure about that? Maybe they're playing more games and improving faster. Seems like it could go either way.

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Occupy Babel!