Problems with time limits

For some time, I had been planning to organise a Chu Shogi tournament, and had therefore been thinking about the problem of a suitable time limit.

About a year before the Münster tournament, I played a game with time limits of 150 minutes each, and 1 minute per move overtime. This seemed quite adequate, and since I was intending a five-day tournament, to be played at the rate of one game per day, I decided that this would be satisfactory.

In the end, I had to drop my plans for the tournament, but in the mean time, Peter Banaschak had decided to organise a weekend tournament in Münster. The idea was to play for three rounds, two on the Saturday, and one on the Sunday. And I proposed that we used the 150 minute time limit.

However, on the day we had an odd number of players, so we all decided to reduce the time limit to 90 minutes each plus 1 minute per move overtime. This was because it was felt that 5 hours was too long for one person to sit out. We also decided we could therefore afford to have a second round on the Sunday.

I already knew that 90 minutes would not really be adequate for a good standard of Chu Shogi game, and the tournament results bear this out. I effectively won all four of my games, and hence the tournament, on time. This is far from ideal, but as I won, I'm in the best position to argue for longer time limits, without being accused of sour grapes.

In hindsight, it is clear that we would not have been able to fit two rounds into the Saturday, if we had used the original time limits. Therefore it seems to me that one game per day is much more suitable. In which case, the time limits may as well be three hours each.

We had a sufficient number of electronic clocks at the tournament, that we could easily have used the Japanese professional time system, where the whole game is played as in overtime (only whole minutes that are used count). I think this is more suitable for Chu Shogi, as you can save your time until you need it. In particular, you can probably play the first 40 or 50 moves without using any time at all (N.B. that in my game against Thomas Majewski, I played the first 40 moves in 11 minutes. If this had been using the overtime system, it seems quite likely that I would not have used up any time at all). In Chu Shogi, you tend to need your time most as the game progresses.

In this case, three hours each might be too much to fit into a day. So 150 minutes is probably right.

With only one game per day, you cannot have much of a tournament in one weekend. Therefore it would be best if we could have a series of tournaments. I am hoping Peter will run the Münster tournament again this year. Thomas Majewski says he may well run one in Hannover. I might hold one in England. Then the whole thing could be considered to be a single tournament (you wouldn't play the same person twice), and a proper European Championship would result.