Yes, it is contentious to me - perhaps more, because of the Disney talk, but contentious, nonetheless. Just look at the quality of my Malkovich games for an example. I spend much more time on that kind of a game, but feel worse about the quality.

I can't prove anything about the quality like some of you seem to claim.

So I disagree with the opinion here - so what?

A bigger problem is that I can't help but express it, and this thread continues.

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To further clarify my opinion, I personally suspect that there is some range of time limit for which increased time helps produce a better quality game. But saying that that 6 hours is better than 3 hours is arbitrary. Ok, maybe you analyzed the commentary from these games. Then your decision of game quality is based on commentary and not time limit.

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This may have been referenced elsewhere on the forum recently, but it seems appropriate given Kirby's introduction to his latest comment: http://xkcd.com/386/

Interestingly, the debate about how time limits affect a player's blunder rate is something that computer analysis can probably help us answer objectively. If we were to take a significant sample of a player's games at different time limits and run them through a program like CrazyStone, we could get a good idea about how time controls affects performance. My (non data informed) guess is that the blunder rate is measurably lower at higher time limits (up to a point - at some level additional time won't make any more difference) and that there is less variation in a player's performance from one game to the next when playing with higher time controls. I also think the impact will be most noticeable at higher levels of play. As a 5k, any variation based on time controls is probably overwhelmed by my general propensity for mistakes unless we are talking about extreme settings (i.e. Ultra blitz).

We don't yet have access to a tool that can accurately analyze professional games, but I'm looking forward to when we do. Humans will still have to explain why a move was a mistake for the foreseeable future, but this will at least mitigate the impact of differences in commentary style and/or quality. Then we might be able to actually determine when additional time stops making a measurable difference in human performance.

let's think about this logically...

With each move, there are a number of possibilities to consider, and each of them have a number of permutations to think about. The more time available, the better likelihood of picking a move that leads to higher winning percentages. The less time available to consider all the options, the more likely to pick a bad move.

How much more time? How much less time? That's not really the point. Its more of a generalized statement that more time can lead to better games, while shorter time limits can lead to more mistakes.

I can believe that, but you are an amateur. I vividly remember two shogi pros invited to tea here in London (i.e. well away from the usual sorts of places where they'd fear being overheard) saying that "thinking time is dreaming time for amateurs" and then falling about laughing so much one of them nearly fell off the sofa.

Their point was that a pro can make good use of extra time - he knows what to think about. An amateur, even without a blindfold, is just trying to pin the tail on the donkey. He lacks the conceptual tools to go much beyond that strategically. In a game an amateur needs just enough extra time to avoid gross blunders (such as missing snapbacks) and maybe do a bit of counting. Beyond that: dream on. Amateurs should spend extra time on study instead.

I have yet to come across a pro who does not believe he could play better with more time. There are, to be sure, some pros who prefer to play with fast time limits because they believe they are more likely to win prize money that way, but that is not at all the same as saying they thus improve the quality of their play.

When the Nihon Ki-in was formed, time limits were a BIG issue. But for reasons unconnected with quality of play. One of the main concerns was the physical effects on young players, and so they typically had 8 hours each instead of 13 hours (Suzuki Tamejiro famously insisted on 16 hours each, yet still lost a game on time). The post-war hardships (especially low-calorie rations) put strong downward pressure on time limits, and later the booming sponsorship of go in Japan led to a demand for more games, and so time limits eased yet again to make time for these. The continued trend downwards can likewise be linked with commercial pressures and changes in fans' interests and attention spans. I have yet to come across a comment that suggests time limits are lower because pros asked for that - as far as I can recall (it would certainly be rare nonetheless).

Extra time is associated with higher quality in another sense. The most prestigious title matches span seven games, and generally the more final games there are the more the title is esteemed. The popularity of repechage tournaments can also be included under this heading. There is a general feeling that no-one wants to see the best player drop out early because of a single bad mistake. More games=time enables his quality to emerge.

No, it is exactly the point. We are comparing games played under specific time limits, so the argument is whether that specific time difference results in a different quality of game.

The generalized statement is what I disagree with. Specifics matter when making a conclusion about a specific situation.

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FWIW, at the US Go Congress - I think in Tacoma a few years ago, Takemiya indicated that the time limits for the master's tournament were too long, and that they should be shorter. Players in the master's tournament aren't all professionals, but the level is very high - and professionals do participate. And I don't know Takemiya's precise reasoning. But clearly, there are some pros that find shorter time limits to be better in some circumstances, outside of simply winning prize money.

Maybe he thinks longer time limits are important for professionals - or maybe he thinks he can play better with longer time limits.

I don't know.

But the idea that longer time limits equate to better quality, *universally*, I really believe is bogus. I recall a book, "The Art of Learning", where the guy is a very good chess player. He looks back at his games and finds that his "brilliant" moves were moves where he spent sufficient time, but not too long of time.

To be sure, pros are better at managing longer time periods than amateurs. But they are better at managing shorter time periods, too.

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be immersed

It is possible to overthink plays. However, given the pace of Malkovich games, there is time to overcome temporary delusions. Perhaps you feel worse about the quality of your Malkovich games because you appreciate the difficulty of the game better and realize how little you understand it. (That's true for all of us, OC. ) By contrast, you may be less aware of your mistakes and doubtful plays in everyday games.

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— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

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A related question is how long players take on blunders by comparison with good plays. OC, careless play produces blunders and is quick. However, once careless play is avoided, I am not at all sure that there is a relation between blunders and the time taken to play them.

Back when I was competing seriously, I followed a suggestion of Botvinnik's and made note of plays on which I took a lot of time -- more than one minute, I decided. Botvinnik's point was that the positions that you spend a lot of time thinking on are positions that you find difficult, and deserve study, no matter what your eventual play or how good or bad it was. Well, positions that you find difficult are the ones where you are most likely to blunder. Both slow plays and fast plays can be blunders, for different reasons.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Takemiya Masaki once spent .. five hours on one move..

I think the longer the time limits, the better the play.

It's a good point, and it's very possible. I also admit that it's possible that there is a higher quality in 6 hour games vs. 3 hour games, for example. But I think it's not necessarily the case, and the conclusion is a little arbitrary. The only evidence we have toward that is the comment suggesting that more pro commentary finds more mistakes in 2 to 3 hour games. I'm also open to the possibility that 3 hour games result in higher quality than 6 hour games. Three hours is still a lot of time, and I think it's possible.

Someone on the forum sent me a PM saying that life was not worth arguing about this, and that I should just drop it. Strictly speaking about quality of play for 6 hour games vs. 3 hour games, maybe I agree with him.

But one of the reasons I keep responding to this thread (other than my stubbornness) is that I get a little angry and worked up with the tone regarding modern time limits. Calling them "Mickey Mouse" time limits, and "full of mistakes", and things like that seem to belittle something that I respect.

And I think that is worth arguing about, even if it ruins my weekend.

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I don't know where I sit exactly, but I think I would agree with Kirby. First, even if we accept that slower games are better, that doesn't imply that slower games change results—the better player will win fast or slow, we'll just hear more pro criticism of the moves in fast play. And I don't know that this must imply that the games leave us little to learn because of a higher mistake rate; what assumptions must be made in order to say that the mistakes made in fast play necessarily mask novel, instructive play? —I can't even begin to formulate the deduction chain here.

Isn't there a quote from Sakata saying that "technique" is so much improved, since the time of (say) Dosaku? We're in danger of misunderstanding what pros mean by technique, of course. But e.g. standard techniques for enclosures do have a history, 4-4 point strategies have a history.

As far as the OP's view goes: when I was a mathematician, in fact at my first conference, another mathematician told me that when you "know how it works", i.e. have solved a problem, there comes a moment of disappointment: "just that!" The AlphaGo phenomenon, to use a fairly neutral term, does suggest that deep mysteries of the middle game may be amenable to comprehensible simplification techniques, at top pro level.

"Middle game fighting" is not perspicuous, in human perception, in great games. Perhaps styles that lead to earlier shape-fixing (to come back to Sakata) help to make it so, and perhaps players with more elusive styles might have more chance against AI using current techniques. If not, the slightly let-down feeling might have some justification.

I was intending to contrast plays with concepts. As I said:


Players come up with new ideas in go, and IMO now is a particularly creative time. But all we have from AlphaGo and other strong computer programs are plays.

Now perhaps AlphaGo will come up with a new play in a joseki, or a new joseki. That would be a new idea, I think. But suppose that AlphaGo makes a play that surprises the pros, and that seems to be good, or at least OK. Any new concept that arises from that play depends upon human analysis and creativity, as well. What does the play accomplish, and what features of the position are relevant? Humans need to figure that out.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Well, perhaps I misunderstood what you were saying. However, I think do I agree with the premise A (AlphaGo is unable to articulate any new concepts); but I don't agree with the conclusion B (what we can learn from it is limited).



I also have a problem with this comment. We have, in the field of computer go and human pro go, game records, and commentaries on them by pros (and go writers strong enough to write journalism and books about high-level games, who are presumably at least 6d ama).

For ordinary pro go, we in addition have such commentary and expository works about the games that are written by the participants in the game.

That is the difference; and while it is obviously a plus to have the participant view, I don't think it is as disabling as you imply. We cannot in any reasonable sense have the "intention" of a go AI to discuss; but we could at least in principle, from a stable version of a go AI, reproduce the considerations that led it to play the way it did.



Suppose Kitani came up with a novelty of this kind (happened often); while it was left to Kitani disciples to articulate just those things. We could either take the line that the "Kitani tradition" is doing the exposition you want; or we could be a bit more sceptical about that reification, and say that some writer is claiming authority for what are personal views.

I think the line you are taking is a bit of a stretch, really. There is a connection between concept formation and the need to write commentaries (i.e. to evolve a jargon adequate to describing pro go at some level such as "good amateur"). But there are other ways to improve perception in go, or at least it appears so to me. In a typical multiple-choice question "Black to play at A, B, C, D, E" we do want more than "after A Black is better", but adding a short plausible continuation can show that to the satisfaction of some class of readers that "after A and the continuation 2 to 5, Black is better", as long as we have a way of generating continuations. Which software such as we are discussing can handle.

I don't endorse a pessimistic line on such matters, when it hinges on the "incomprehensbility" of computer go. For games in general, it appears to be a contingent matter: game G might be such that its gameplay made human search of variations that are not very long considerably weaker than exhaustive machine search. This can be called "unfairness" of G; in the sense that go players might understand in terms as "in this position, the bad shape move A works well, a kind of blind spot".

Both AlphaGo and Lee played candidates for such moves in the match, but I don't think the perception is of a lack of "equity" in the gameplay.

Oh, I'm not pessimistic. Not at all.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I think its perfectly fine to express your views on the subject, for as long as it takes to get your points across (within reason, of course), even though there may never be a consensus.

First, let me ask, just to be clear, what it is specifically that you respect: the shorter time limits? or the great game of baduk in general? or maybe its Mickey Mouse himself?

Because I believe Mr. Fairbairn has great respect for the game of Go as well. But it sounds to me like he is offended by the shorter time limits, believing those to be ruining the game he respects so much (forgive me if I'm putting words in his mouth, but this is my impression so far).

erislover makes a good point about the different time limits probably not changing the outcome of the matches, but I don't believe that's really at issue. I hear the issue being the resulting quality of the play as a factor of time allowed to consider one's next move.

So it sounds to me like you're offended that John is offended? That's just weird.

I agree with you (again, apologies if I'm putting words in your mouth now) that I also think that Mr Fairbairn might be a little oversensitive to the time limit issue, and I also don't like it when he refers to that particular issue as "Mickey Mouse time limits", but otherwise I tend to see his points and kinda agree with him about the probable lower quality of the resulting games.

Maybe we should all take a step back and reconsider what we're each being offended about?

1. I don't agree that there is a "probable lower quality" in the games. I think they are of high quality. I think that quality in Go has improved throughout history. While I agree that some amount of thinking time is required to produce a high quality game, I think that 3 hours is quite a bit of time for a pro.

And saying that a 3 hour time limit is only 3 hours is selling the game short. Pros have studied for thousands of hours before the game even started, in order to prepare themselves. Look at a 3 hour game played today by a pro, and you are looking at thousands of hours of preparation that have gone into playing a high-quality game.

Yes, pros make mistakes under short time limits. But to say that the quality of the game is lower than a game played under increased time limits for a *particular* time limit is pure speculation. The only real evidence that we have are game reviews, but those are only real data points if they are reviewed with equal vigor by the same individual.

To elaborate more on the speculation bit, it is possible that it's the case that increased time universally results in increased game quality. Maybe if you graph it, it looks like this:



With more thinking time, there must be more time to fix mistakes, right? This seems to be a common idea.

But it's also possible that increased time doesn't follow that trend. For example, maybe it's like this:



Extra thinking time helps, but only to a certain degree. After that, the extra benefit of extra time isn't useful.

But a third possibility is also there:



Extra thinking time helps until a point... But then it may actually hurt your game quality - maybe it makes you weary. Or maybe you overthink something. Or maybe something totally different.

Who knows? Not any of us here on the forum.

2. Now, let's say that you assume one of the hypothetical trends above. Even if that's the case, you can note that up until now in this discussion, I didn't label any of the specific time limits on the graphs. Therefore, who is to say that a 2 or 3 hour time limit is not enough? Does 2 hours come before the hump in the last graph? After? What about 6 hours?

We don't know any of this objectively without relying on pro commentary. But pro commentary does not provide an objective view toward the quality of the game.:
* A pro commentator from 50 years ago may commentate based on the trends or what was known 50 years ago.
* Maybe the commentary is intended for a particular audience.
* Maybe the pro commentator missed nuances of the game that the players didn't.
* Maybe the commentator wanted to be nice.
* Maybe the commentator wanted to sell books.
* ...
the list goes on.

3. From the above, my strong view is that the "best" time settings are somewhat of a religious matter. Some people think 3 hours is enough. Some people think you need 6 hours for a high quality game. Some people think you need several days. Some people don't care.

4. Because this is subjective, I object to the laid-back criticism of game quality of what I believe to be high quality games. By calling modern time limits "Mickey Mouse time limits", and by somehow equating modern games with blitz, JF has achieved the apparent objective of leading you and others to believe that there is a "probable lower quality" in today's games.

This is what I am offended with.


I respect the quality of modern games, the effort that those playing the games have put into them, as well as the effort and sacrifice today's pros have given in order to produce such high quality games.

(We can talk about it offline if you'd like - I will probably be at the SGC sometime this week to drop off some equipment. While I still believe in the message I am trying to convey, I think you are correct that there will probably never be a consensus on this issue.)

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Myungwan Kim: https://youtu.be/1jrZ16L8JVU?t=1h4m58s

I feel your pain, brother.


I see it as a hard fact. I have the ability to objectively analyse my games. And while I agree with you that in slow games I might make more subtle mistakes than in fast games, I make more obviouse mistakes in fast games for sure. These two facts alone firmly support my statement. And they *are* facts.

The same you can read in Chess, if you care - slower games make for higher quality games.

And anyways - I don't get your argument. Go is a thinking game. It seems logical to me that the more time you have to think the better moves you come up with.

At our level, as amateurs, this might not always be so for various reasons - mental stamina, boredom, overthinking... But we are talking about pros here.


Linearly? I have no clue.
But it is connected somehow for sure. Otherwise - why not just play 5 min games and have the whole tournament over in half a day?

I am really not sure how you can honestly argue that thinking time has no influence on quality of play. Of course there is some cuto-off beyond which this does not apply, but I seriously doubt that 2 hour per game is it for a pro. Do you have any indication that it is?



*You* might. Do you think a pro would as well?

One of the points is - and it is an important one - that you don't *have* to use all the time. But... given more time, you remove the element of time pressure. In 40 min games, to follow your example, you might find yourself in a situation in which you need more thinking time on a move but knowing you only have 40 minutes you rush your decision - just in case you need more thinking time again later on. In 2 hour game you will not rush it - even if ultimately you might also only spend 40 min on the game.

The difference is the comfort of knowing you have the time if you need it. Otherwise, you still play at the speed which is most comfortable for you, on average.


Correct.

Although - there is, of course, a limit. I think that given my average "comfort speed"of 30 min per game, it would not make much difference to me if I had 2 hours or 4 hours per game. I would run out of things to think about in both cases - I am simply not strong enough to need so much time to think. But my assumption is that the pros are stronger, they have more things to think about, can calculate deeper, and can actually use the time which I cannot.

So - I don't know if you would see quality difference between 2 day games and 3 day games, for example. But I think you would see difference between 2 hour games and 2 day games.



And I think it does. I gave you my arguments. I assume you disagree and you think that your personal play is the same between 2 hour game and 4 hour game. It might be so... but since mine is not, we cannot really generalize. I would say a much more general (and safer) assumption would be that more time at least *can* (and often *does*) translate into better quality play. Although sometimes it does not, like in your case.

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