Online-go.com: Increase maximum time in live fisher games

[Harleqin]

anoeks notes: The maximum time in fisher games is too low for EGF class A tournaments as per http://europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/EGF_rating_system.php - we need to increase the maximum time for fischer games and look at increasing limits on the other timing systems as well.

Original issue body follows

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Summary

Currently, Fischer timing has a mandatory cap on OGS. For live games, this is superfluous at best, but if it does have an effect, it is annoying. Please add the option to select a Max Time of “none”, at least for non-correspondence games.

Related to this: please add a hint about the estimated game time, e. g. by appending (1:30 h/300 moves) after a 20/10 game, to both the Custom Game dialogue and the open games list.

Environment

any

Steps To Reproduce:

1. Go to https://online-go.com/play
2. Click “Custom Game”
3. Select Fischer timing, 1 hour basic time plus 20 sec per move
4. You are forced to select a Max Time of 1 hour
5. If you play a game like this and play your first move in less than 20 seconds, you do not get the normal 20 seconds bonus but less.
6. During the first few moves at least, you will run into this several times. That is: you are being punished for playing too fast.

Additional Information:

There was a discussion in the forum where people expressed the fear that games without a cap might take indefinitely long. This is not the case, of course, because a game has a finite amount of moves and thus a finite amount of added time.

In fact, you can give a quite good upper bound for the duration of a game by adding the bonus time for 300 moves to the basic time of both players. Since 300 seconds are 5 minutes, you can even do this in your head: 2×basic (in min) + 5×bonus (in sec) = estimated max game duration (in min). Example: a 20/10 game would never take much longer than 90 minutes (1:30 h). This is the second part of the request: add this estimate as a hint.

[anoek]

I don't want to remove the cap per say but I am not opposed to increasing the maximum time if the community wants that

[Harleqin]

Again, I'm not asking to remove the cap. I'm just asking to add the option of not having it.

You could add, say, up to 5 hours cap for live games, which would make it very improbable that it would have any effect, but why have a rule that has no effect, and where, if players choose this setting, their _intent_ is for it to have no effect? I am quite convinced that the better UX is where the user's intent is most closely matched by the setting: if the intent is “no cap”, then the setting should be “no cap”.

[anoek]

I understand, the difference is that removing the cap is a feature - we'd have to go through the process of implementing and validating a no cap variation of the clock, vs just changing a variable and using existing logic. Practically speaking I see little difference, although I am not sure that increasing the 1 hour limit on fischer live games is particularly desirable anyways, it's already a very long time.

I'm going to go ahead and close this, if you can garner some support from the community that 1 hour max time for a live fischer game is too short, and come up with a new recommendation (again, community backed), I'd be happy to revisit it and update the clock settings.

[Harleqin]

I thought about this for some time now, and I do not see what discussion you expect.

If you do not want to implement a standard Fischer clock, then I gues I can settle for the option to have a larger cap time than the basic time. For example, if the basic time may be up to 1 h, it should be possible to set the cap to, say, 2 h.

Can we reopen this issue, or should I start a new one?

[anoek]

The discussion I am looking for is some other voices in the community that agree that this should happen, and some sort of consensus on what good limits would be. https://forums.online-go.com/ would probably be the best place for that to happen. When that's done open a new issue with the results.

[BHydden]

This request started on the forums https://forums.online-go.com/t/suggestion-allow-disabling-time-cap-for-fischer-time/21665?u=bhydden
Nobody really objected to the idea rather than a vague "maybe games would take longer?" to which the two fold answer was 1. Not really and 2. Adjust time settings

[anoek]

Right, but in that thread the focus was on removing the limits all together, which skimming it it looks like there isn't much interest in. If there is an interest in adjusting limits, that's fine, but I have not seen several voices in the community speak up and say the current limits are too low need to be raised, and do what value(s), that's what I'm looking for.

[teapoweredrobot]

Hi, I support this request. OGS should support EGf class A tournament timings. These are 65m+5s (or equivalently, 55+10 or 45+15 depending on how you want the end game to play out). However ogs currently limits main time to 60m with a 60m overall cap. Main time for Fischer live games should be allowed to have a higher limit and the cap must surely be set at something greater than the maximum main time to allow for at least some bonus time accrual. How about main time up to 2 hours and cap up to three hours? Or make "no cap" an option at the end of the list.
Thank you!

[samtcifihi]

In the OGS thread was mentioned that a sufficiently high cap would be functionally infinite. So while the basic idea is to have an infinite cap option, that can be achieved, in practice, with a high cap option. I don't particularly care if the option is listed as the actual cap value or as an (incorrect) infinite.

[anoek]

http://europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/EGF_rating_system.php for the EGF timing requirements for my future reference.

[teapoweredrobot]

Having looked at this again there seem to be two things. First, you could just remove the "max time" field. I don't see why it's even needed, at least for live games or even for correspondence. (Maybe for blitz of you want to keep the pace throughout the game but then why would you choose fisher time?)
The potential for abuse is that you can make a game very long by playing fast? It doesn't really seem practical as a cheat.
Secondly the "initial time" field should run to four hours as it does for all the other time settings. It makes me think it was erroneously set to match "time per period" of the other settings when it should be the same as "main time" which can go to four hours for the other time settings.
Hope this makes sense!

[kobakitty]

We do have options like "Japanese Byo-Yomi: Clock starts with 4 weeks main time, followed by 600 4 weeks periods. Pauses on weekends" which is not technically infinite, but regarding human life-span, it basically is the same as having a lifelong cap. So what would be so bad, if we would allow the same for fischer timing too?