From: bogin YAHOO CO JP> Date: 14 nov 2002 Subject: Re: byoyomi, Bronstein, "Fischer" Sorry, but I must admit that I don't know the differences between the Bronstein, Kaufman(Fischer) or other methods of counting byo-yomi with respect either chess or shogi. $B!! (BWhen I was last an active chess player, active chess was just beginning and interval time controls will still just talk. Most tournament were simply completing a certain number of moves within a certain time period, followed by either a secondary time control or a sudden death time control. There was no byo-yomi at all. I've only seen one professional game live, but I've seem countless of other games on TV. I don't think the byo-yomi system is different from the one the amateurs use at all. For example, the NHK Tournament gives is player 15 minutes of initial time. Once they use that the have 10 units of 1 minute intervals. After they use up that time they have 30 seconds to make each move. But, I think this is done for the sake of TV. NHK has a 2 hour window to show the game so if the game is running too long then they will edit it out to fit it in. During the 1 minute interval time, a player has 59 seconds to make his/her move. If a player completes his move with in an interval but uses more than 30 seconds then I think they stay in the same interval but the amount of time they have is reduce from 1 minute to 30 seconds. If they use less then 30 seconds then they still in the same interval and still get 1 minute. And, of course, if they use more than 59 seconds they move it the next interval unit. This keeps going on to the run out of intervals and enter into straight byo-yomi. If they run out of time then they lose. Of course, they are may really get longer than one minute to think, but this also allows their opponent more time to think. I may be wrong here but that's always the way I looked at it. I don't think that any of the big title matches are done this way. Each player has a set amount of time to complete the game and then it goes into straight byo-yomi. Again, I may be wrong but from looking at the games on Reijer Grimbergen's site this seems to be the case. I think that other than the length of time allotted to each player most amateur tournaments here are not all that different. And other than Yahoo!Japan Shogi most Internet servers are the same as well. I actually, think that shogi time scrambles may be easier than those of chess. Irregardless of the fumbling of pieces (even pro's do this so no one should feel embarrassed), the main differences is keeping the score. In chess you have to keep score or at least be able to reconstruct and display an accurate score sheet in order to make any claim. Except for personal choice, keeping score is not required at shogi tournaments. All you have to do is push your clock and make your moves. Of course, 30 seconds isn't a lot of time to think and make a move, but it's not impossible to find good moves. As for the calling out of the byo-yomi, usually on NHK the time keeper during the one minute interval calls out 30, 40, 50, 1, 2, 3,.....9. And during the 30 second interval, he calls out 10,20, 25. For the final 30 second byo-yomi he calls out 10, 20, 1,2,3....9. They use an analog clock for the first 15 minutes and then after words they use numbered tiles from 10 to 0. After a player uses up an interval on of the tiles is removed. when all of the tiles have been removed the player enters into sudden death byo-yomi. I don't know how the time keeper keeps the byo-yomi. Perhaps there's an off camera clock that NHK uses. But, they players very seldom look at the clock. They simply go by the time keepers voice. Since, I've been watching NHK I have only seen a player forfeit once so I don't think it happens very often. That's all for now. Bill Gaudry __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! BB is Broadband by Yahoo! http://bb.yahoo.co.jp/