Talk:Byoyomi

Initial Comments
Fritz and Andre, thank goodness someone finally explained byo-yomi! It's been puzzling me for years. --Ed Poor

Actually, trying to edit this article teaches me that I don't know what I am talking about. I can't figure out how the IGS byo-yomi works. Let's say byo-yomi time is 15 minutes for 25 moves, and I make it in time. Do I get my second 15 minutes when my first 15 minutes runs out (after, say, 28 moves), or do I get my second fifteen minutes when I have made 25 moves (after, say, 13 mintues)? It is clear that time time doesn't carry forward either way, but it isn't clear to me that Canadian byo-yomi is the same as IGS byo-yomi, and which is which. --Fritzlein

In both Canadian and IGS byoyomi (which thus are in effect the same), the new period starts when you have finished the moves, whether or not you have any time left. Andre Engels

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In an article, Byoyomi Explained in the British Go Journal for Spring 1997, Richard Hunter writes:


 * Another common misunderstanding about byoyomi is that the reusable minutes are special to the end of the game. This is not so. Throughout the whole game, no time is deducted if the player plays in less than one minute.

He goes on to explain that the timekeeper only records full minutes. Can anyone confirm this?

He also says that the five minutes of byo-yomi proper are not additional to the N hours for the game, but are in fact the last five minutes of the usual time allotment, distinguished by the fact that the timekeeper is actually reading the seconds.

--Matthew Woodcraft

It makes intuitive sense that the last five minutes are simply the time in which the timekeeper is "counting the seconds". If this is correct, then it is exactly the same as the "Fischer clock" which has failed to catch on in chess. (Also it means I have to revise most every paragraph I have written.) Might it be different for Go and Shogi? Different for Japan and Canada? Different depending on whether a timekeeper, analog clock, or digital clock is used? --Fritzlein

First, this is about the byo-yomi system as it is used in professional games. In amateur games, there is only extra time at the end of the game, when one's normal time has been used up, one gets the byo-yomi, but not before. As for professional games, as I understand it, it is much like the Bronstein (rather than the Fischer) system - the first minute of thinking is not substracted from one's time (but nothing is added if one uses less). Then, when there is 5 minutes thinking time left, one gets in byo-yomi, the last 5 minutes are only substracted by the minute. But I could be wrong, I also have had to piece it together from various sources of information I have gotten through my life. Andre Engels