From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 11 dec 1996 Subject: Re: Byoyomi? Stephen J Lamb DEV ALS CO UK> writes: >> Occasionally, I see the phrase "30s byoyomi" in reference to a time >> control. Is this extra time added for each move? How is it >> tracked? Are regular chess clocks used? Stephen's explanation is excellent and should have made the concept clear to anyone. However, I have two minor points to add: > By the way, in Japan byoyomi is handled slightly differently in > professional games. If a player manages to make a move in the game in > less time than the time allocated for byoyomi, then the time for that > move is not subtracted from the player's time remaining. For example, > consider a game where each player has 6 hours plus 1 minute's byoyomi, > and the current player has used 5 hours and 59 minutes of time. In that > case he needs to make every move in less than a minute, since if he does > this then the time for the move will not be subtracted from his time > remaining and he will not run out of time. It is the timekeeper's job > to keep track of all this. This is basically correct, with one slight error. In professional games, the time given to the players is an exact amount and does not have an extra minute for byoyomi. In a 6 hour game, both players have exactly 6 hours. This means that after 5 hours and 59 minutes they enter byoyomi. Since this last minute is only substracted if a player uses more than one minute we are back into a normal byoyomi situation. > I'm not sure what happens in Japanese amateur games regarding byoyomi. > I do know that a lot of amateurs play "sudden death" games though, i.e. > no byoyomi. Also, I'm not sure what other countries (e.g. the US) do, > though I suspect they also use the European way of handling byoyomi. >From my experience in Japanese tournaments I can say now that byoyomi here is also much more common than I expected. In prefectural championships games are usually played with byoyomi. A side effect of this is that games can go on for quite some time. I have had the experience of having to wait for my next opponent for almost and hour and I also have been forced to play games within a couple of minutes from each other. Also, one of the mistakes in European byoyomi is that the counting is wrong. In Japan, the standard byoyomi count for 30 seconds byoyomi is: 10...20.1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9, while in Europe it is the other way around. Interesting is that the blue byoyomi clocks also count down instead of by the usual Japanese count. On the other hand, there is also an expensive talking clock here that counts out loud in the standard Japanese way. Reijer -- Reijer Grimbergen Electrotechnical Laboratory Palcious Tsukuba 302 1-1-4 Umezono 1-24-8 Ninomiya Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki-ken Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki-ken 305 JAPAN 305 JAPAN E-mail: grimberg etl go jp Tel: 0298-59-1606 WWW: http://www.etl.go.jp:8080/etl/suiron/~grimberg Tel: +81-(0)298-54-5080 extension: 67431 Fax: +81-(0)298-58-5918