From: DANERUD MARTIN <martin.danerud <at> TELIA <dot> COM>
Date: 6 sep 2000
Subject: Re: Time limits

Dear Larry and other shogi friends,

Thanks for your quick reply, Larry! Of course you are right that professional games are not played with what we call
"byo-yomi" before the last minute. I just thought that "increment time" maybe had been used in an experimental
tournament in Japan for amateurs or professionals, just in order to test the principle for shogi. Among the Swedish
shogi players we have had a lot of discussions concerning "increment time", but as I mentioned earlier we have
wanted to have an international standard for the players in order to get used to the same conditions in different
tournaments.
Your information that "increment time" indeed could be used for rating games in the USA is very interesting! Is it
the same in Europe? What do you think would be a suitable time for shogi games with approximately the same total
playing time as for 1 hour + 30 s byo-yomi? My proposal would be 15 min + 1 min increment, which would result in
(15 + 50) x 2 minutes = 130 minutes for a 50 moves (100 "Japanese" moves) game. In the organiser nightmare
game with (15 + 80) x 2 minutes = 190 minutes for an 80 moves (160) game, that would result in just a small
delay from a three hours per round schedule. That would roughly be comparable to (60 + 50 x 0.5) x 2 = 170
minutes supposing that the players play 30 moves in the first hour of a 1 hour + 30 s byo-yomi game. However, in
the last case, one has to consider that some seconds are lost in several byo-yomi moves, if the moves are made
before 30 s, so that will give a maximum time, whereas the first case is more likely to give the real time, since most
players use most of their available time.

Sincerely yours,

Dr. Martin Danerud

President of the Swedish Shogi Federation, Vice President of FESA