From: Pieter Stouten <stoutepf <at> CARBON <dot> DMPC <dot> COM>
Date: 10 jul 1997
Subject: Re: Byo Yomi (was European Style of playing shogi)

On 97/07/10 at 16:36 +0900, Patrick Davin <patrick <at> lyra <dot> vega <dot> or <dot> jp> wrote:

>Having said this, most amateur tournaments in Japan are
>sudden-death; only some major ones use byoyomi.  This is
>probably due to a shortage of byoyomi clocks more than
>anything else.
>
I have attended tournaments in Japan where no clocks were used. Players
were simply expected not to use outrageous amounts of time. In one of them,
at some point the tournament controller announced it was byoyomi time and
players were expected to move almost instantaneously. This worked fine, but
would probably never work in the West. I also attended a tournament in
Japan were regular (chess-type) clocks were used and when a player entered
byoyomi, one of the other players or an arbiter counted byoyomi. In fact,
well before there were byoyomi clocks this was common practice in Europe
(and  still may be).

I still remember vividly the first ever international tournament in Europe
(Utrecht, 1979), where there was a big problem with a Japanese player who
had a tsume. He had just entered byoyomi and was double-checking his tsume
before playing it out. Not even for a second did he think there might not
be byoyomi. Ever since, byoyomi has been an integral part of European Shogi
(apart from quick play tournaments, that is). My personal bias is that it
should stay that way. I would guess that every regular European tournament
player shares my view, but would love to hear any dissenting opinions.

Cheers,

Pieter Stouten
stoutepf <at> carbon <dot> dmpc <dot> com