Sunday, February 25, 2007

12.4 minutes

I set my games typically to a base time-limit of 20 minutes plus 5 x 30 seconds of byo-yomi (Japanese Timing). yoyoma, who often said that I needed to slow down, once chided me that I was being rather generous to myself given how fast I actually play.

Out of curiousity, I took a sample of my last fifteen games to see how much time had elapsed on average.

The answer was 12.4 minutes; only 62% of my base time-limit. Of the fifteen games, only four games lasted more than 15 minutes, and only one of those went into byo-yomi. For those who are into statistics, the standard deviation was 4.9 minutes.

This, of course, is only a simplistic analysis. I recognized a few games that were played-on even though Black or White had already won. There were also shorter games that, if my opponent chose to do so, could have been drawn-out with the possibility of winning on time by creating complications.

This still points-out however that I may be playing just a bit too fast and that I'm not taking the greatest advantage of my time allotment. I know that Sorin advises us to play fast games, but I'd also like to cultivate the habit of thinking a little deeper.


Plateau ... again. No big deal.

Click on image to enlarge.

This investigation into my elapsed game times was, in fact, prompted by a remark during one of my reviews. One of the commentators said that the difference between where I was (8k) and 5k is currently a matter of reading deeper.

Admittedly, there are days when I start a game on KGS, even when I know that I'm not ready to dedicate all my mental energies to it. It's a very bad sign when I feel an impatience for my opponent to make his/her next move.

That image above is a 20-month composite of my entire record on KGS to-date which I constructed using Photoshop. It should be noted that there was a dramatic change in the ranking method when KGS switched from CGoban2 to CGoban3 in September 2006. For many of us in the mid-kyus, that resulted in a five-rank jump.

As can be seen, I've gone through several plateaus and am currently in one of my longest ones. I remember how my early plateau back at 22k briefly made me wonder if I might be forever stuck at that rank (HAH!). If you enlarge that chart, it becomes quite obvious that my 22k plateau was one of the shortest ones I had experienced.

I expect to move forward eventually. Either something has to sink-in my brain, or I just need to change my style of play (i.e. take ... my ... time ... and ... think).


Yes, I'm you're fan!


I've made a lot of friends and acquaintances since I started playing Go on KGS, and just about all of them are on my "Fan" list.

Bill Shubert added this feature to CGoban3; a third option to marking an account as Buddy (so that it appears at the top of the logged-in roster) or Ignore (so you don't see any of their remarks). If you have the "Fan Games" room active, you will be alerted whenever a fan account starts a game.

It seems to be a natural extension of playing in the virtual world; one strolls about from board to board to see how their friends are doing in their games. It's always nice to root for your friends or just try to see how your thinking compares.

6 Comments:

At 8:51 PM, February 25, 2007, Blogger Awod said...

I usually take my time and don't even consider time [at all] not sure if thats good or bad...

still don't understood all the fancy timing there is out there but usually I finish a base 30 min game with about 4-8 mins left.

I think I went into...byo-yomi [was thinking bomi :P had to go back and look at what you wrote] once.


~Awod

 
At 8:57 PM, February 25, 2007, Blogger Awod said...

I never knew that's what the -fan feature did was always curious. Thanks.

~Awod

 
At 9:20 PM, February 25, 2007, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi ChiyoDad,

My advice to play a lot of fast games is needed for one to improve, but it's not the only thing, of course, and also it doesn't exclude playing long games - as it's often misinterpreted.

By all means, try to use more of your thinking time in the crucial parts of the game - you learn to recognize them in the game reviews.

Sorin

 
At 4:44 PM, February 26, 2007, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Chyodad,


You don't know me but I read your blog regularly and I have recently joined Godiscussions and KGS. Taking a look at your KGS progress graph, I was impressed by your fast ascendance from 15kyu to 10kyu. Do you remember what you did during that short period in which you advanced 5 stones?

 
At 5:21 PM, February 26, 2007, Blogger ChiyoDad said...

Hello Awod,
Most competitions seem to just stick to an absolute time of 45 minutes. That's still much longer than most of the games on KGS are played.

Hello Sorin,
Thanks agains for your consel. I need to re-read your advice; and carefully examine some its nuances.

Hello Brenno,
That sharp spike of "improvement" was actually due to the rank modifications from CGoban2 to CGoban3. The server was upgraded and the ranking system was adjusted.

As I mentioned in my post, many of us kyus saw a jump of 5 ranks. Thus, 15k became the new 10k on KGS.

 
At 12:17 AM, February 27, 2007, Blogger Unknown said...

wow..how did the rank graph go so far back?

 

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