Posts:
55
Registered:
Jan 21, 2002
From:
ohio
Age:
65
30 MINUTES!!
Posted:
Dec 4, 2002, 5:25 AM
as i like any format chosen by our directors, i feel i must comment not on the format but the time per game. 30 minutes!! as tournament matures i can see that 3 tourneys down the road we will have 3 days to move and become another IYT and start e_mailing in our moves. wasn't the purpose of the site to have "real-time" pente? 2-hour sets?? 6 or 8 hour matches?? Come on!!! think of it! !! whole days to play a match!! e-mails next!! now all who have played me know that i play with some alacrity, and not always well, so i am biased against long games. but if you look at games in which, like pente, one must make many decisions constantly, there must be some reasonable amount of time for action to be taken. bridge and gin rummy players don"t take 10 or 15 minutes to play one card. even pga pro players dont take 15 minutes on 1 shot no matter the supposed importance of that one action. 30 minutes is a LONG time!!
I think those analogies are weak. Golf has no relevance to pente. As for Rummy, again, weak analogy. Rummy involves little thought. As for bridge... YEs, no one uses thirty minutes, but people DO spend some time thinking in bridge, and as far as I know, there is no time limit for bridge... so I am not sure if that is the best analogy either.
I don't think 30 minutes is a long time. MOst of the time it will probably not be used. Besides, for a 20 minut game, that is an average of a minut and a half per move, which is not unreasable. if two or three complicated situations present themselves during a game, the 30 minutes will be needed. I would imagine that as far as thought-intensive board games go, that 20 minutes for an entire game is probably less than any other tournament allows.
on a side note...... I woudl like ot see a speed tournament in the futurte! I think that would be neat.
Posts:
55
Registered:
Jan 21, 2002
From:
ohio
Age:
65
Re: 30 MINUTES!!
Posted:
Dec 4, 2002, 8:18 PM
obviously, dmitri, u play neither golf or gin, buti know that if u take 5 or 10 minutes to take action in nearly any game, people will be bailing in a hurry. even in scrabble if u take an inordinate amount of time on ur turn,u will be hard pressed to find players. even at national levels in bridge, it is nearly unheardof to to take 6 or 7 minutes to take action.
Let's compare Pente to the most appropriate game to compare it with that is commonly played: Chess. A tournament chess game can take 5 or 7 hours to play. I think 30 minutes will allow for a higher level of play
Thanks for your input about the upcoming tournament. We ALWAYS want input from everyone. This is how we make improvements to the tournaments.
We do hear your comments. While the rules are already set for DSG 4, perhaps a suggestion can be proposed in FUTURE tournaments to have 20 min. time controls in the first 3 rounds and 30 min. time controls in subsequent rounds, because generally the more complex positions come up in later rounds. We can't promise anything because the format of future tournaments would dictate how we go about doing that.
In responding to your comments below, I had to use 2 posts, this one for everything EXCEPT your last paragraph and the next one for your last paragraph.
>> as tournament matures i can see that 3 tourneys down the road we will have 3 days to move and become another IYT and start e_mailing in our moves. <<
I wouldn't anticipate 3 tourneys running at once here at DSG because this is a real-time site. We would like to have 3 or more SECTIONS running at a time when we get more players, but each player could only play in ONE of the sections. There would NOT be a reason to ever have turn-based games at DSG.
>> wasn't the purpose of the site to have "real-time" pente? 2-hour sets?? 6 or 8 hour matches. <<
Yes the purpose of DSG is to have real-time Pente. 2-hour sets ARE real-time Pente! But...they would be fairly rare except in the last few rounds. 6-8 hour matches would be EXTREMELY rare and probably non-existent. I believe that typical in the last tournament was 1-1/2 to 2-1/2 hr. matches. Typical for Section-A in this one would probably be 2-3 hrs. This is still less time than many people spend playing non-tournament games in one night at DSG. Section-B will still have the same time controls. If players don't feel that they can't play as long as the match requires in one sitting, there are provisions in the rules that allow players to adjourn their matches and complete them within the time-period of the round.
As an example to the above, my longest match in DSG 3 was 8 games and it lasted about 4 hrs. If we had used DSG 4 Section-A rules, it probably would have lasted about 5 hrs. Please keep in mind that I played in 7 of the rounds AND this occurred in only ONE round AND I am a slow player. The longest match for ANYONE in the entire tournament was 10 games, which occurred ONLY twice amongst all 50 players. The point being, the long matches are the exception and not the rule.
?? Come on!!! think of it! <<
We DID put quite a bit of thought into many of the rules for both sections. One of the main issues that came up was that trying to play a board game with inordinately complex positions in 20 mins. was just entirely too short. The issue surfaced more in the last 4-5 rounds when the positions became more complicated. If the complexity of a game does not warrant spending 30 mins., then a player is not obligated to do so. Many player's games will be done much sooner.
Response to your final paragraph in the next post…
Re: 30 MINUTES!! (#2)
Posted:
Dec 5, 2002, 1:50 AM
Mike -
Here is the response to your final paragraph:
>> but if you look at games in which, like pente, one must make many decisions constantly, there must be some reasonable amount of time for action to be taken. bridge and gin rummy players don't take 10 or 15 minutes to play one card. even pga pro players dont take 15 minutes on 1 shot no matter the supposed importance of that one action. 30 minutes is a LONG time!! <<
This is an apples to oranges comparison which invalidates the point that you're trying to make. We're talking about 30 mins. for the ENTIRE game. What you're talking about is 15 mins. for a single MOVE, PLAY, or STROKE! You can't compare an entire GAME to a single event WITHIN a game.
As far as match length, the only valid comparison that you are making is for Golf, because it is consistent. You can’t compare the length of a Pente match at DSG with a match in top-level Bridge or Gin Rummy. That's because there is VAST array of structures in top-level tournaments at both games and the scoring in Bridge varies a lot depending on what type of tournament that you are in.
BUT...that said, if you slightly change you're comparison to a more applicable apples-to-apples comparison amongst Pente, Golf, AND MANY high-level sporting events, it is actually a VERY valid comparison. It also FURTHER validates the time controls that we are going with! Here are some comparisons:
1. The total time for a Pente match, golf round, or a sporting event is very similar. In Pente, an average match would last from 2-3 hrs. but can sometimes go to 4-5 hrs but at other times less than 1 hr. It would rarely go to 6 hrs. or more. An 18-hole round of golf lasts about 3-4 hrs. but can be longer based on poor course layout, whether conditions, if there's a play-off to break a tie, etc. or faster if the conditions are right. A sporting event usually lasts 2-3 hrs. but can go 4-5 hrs. or more if there are an unusual number of overtimes or breaks in the action. In our Pente structure, you can think of playing more than 6 games the same way as having one or more overtimes or extra innings in sporting events.
2. There are separate distinct breaks in the action in all events. Golf has 17, baseball 16-17, football 3, basketball and soccer 1 or 3 (if no tiebreakers like overtimes, etc.). With the structure of our Pente tourneys, there could be anywhere from 1 thru 5 breaks in most cases or in much rarer cases 7, 9, or 11.
3. It would be RARE for a specific play or stroke to take 10-15 mins. in most sporting events, BUT it WOULD be possible. Pitching changes in baseball and 2-3 consecutive time-outs in football to ‘freeze’ a kicker combined with a T.V. timeouts would be a good example. Injury time-outs also can take quite a while. In Pente, it would only be SLIGHTLY less rare for a player to take 10-15 mins. for a move. But even if you thought otherwise, that is also not a valid comparison. See the next paragraph.
Expounding on #3, it is not a valid comparison to compare single moves in board games to single plays in sporting events. That is because in most competitive board games, there is only a GAME-based time control and optionally only a MULTIPLE-MOVE-based time control. An example in Chess would be '30 moves in 30 mins. followed by game in 30 (more) mins. Competitive Chess and Scrabble are games that always have game-based time controls that I am aware of. I'm sure there are many others. MOVE-based time controls where you have a specific amount of time for EVERY move are the WORST possible thing for board games. Just look at IYT as a good example. That type of time control INCREASES BOTH the length of the game AND the number of forfeits!! I have tried on numerous occasions to get them to go to a GAME-based time control (such as game/30 days/side for the fast tourneys). The players would be much happier because they wouldn’t forfeit, the rounds would be completed sooner because they wouldn’t be waiting for one game that went 25-30 moves, and there wouldn’t be any confusion over how many hrs. for their move during holidays or weekends! Game-based time controls with optionally a multiple-moved-based one are the correct way to go for board games.
>> Let's compare Pente to the most appropriate game to compare it with that is commonly played: Chess. A tournament chess game can take 5 or 7 hours to play. I think 30 minutes will allow for a higher level of play. <<
Now we're talking. Chess is a VERY valid comparison to Pente because it is a board game where the complexity of the positions increase dramatically with the skill of the players and yes, the longer time controls allow for a much higher level of play. I haven't played tournament Chess in a long time, but when I did, the average GAME (ONE game!) was 3 hrs. and the longest one was 8 hrs.! 4-5 hr. ones were quite common.
If you take the average length of a master or higher-level Chess game which would probably be 40-50 moves and compare it to the average length of a high-level Pente game, probably 17-18 moves, there's probably about a 5-2 ratio. So if in Chess the time control was 30 moves/75 mins. followed by game in 60 mins. (one of the shorter ones when I played, but a good one for example), that would be a total of 135 mins./side. That would make a comparable Pente match 135 / (5/2) = 54 mins./side.
Two other tidbits along those lines. I seem to recall that top-level scrabble matches have either 30 or 60 mins./side AND the world championships in Pente in the early '80's were always 30 mins/side.
THOSE are some of the biggest reasons why we went to the longer time controls!
Mike -- Re: 30 MINUTES!!
Posted:
Dec 5, 2002, 4:34 AM
You are correct, I do not play golf, I can't imagine a more boring game. But I do play Gin Rummy, on occasion. And I stand by my statement about Gin. There is little thought involved. Your analogies to golf and gin were weak, I didn't mean to make it sound like a personal attack, because you seem offended by my remarks. If that is the case, I apologize. But I stand by my comments.
I believe mike's scrabble reference is also an invalid comparison. for one, scrabble is a thought intensive game, and although I have never played in the championships, I imagine they get more than 20 minute s to play an entier game.... if I am wrong, someone please correct me. If I were playing competitively, I would be sure to take a good amount of time and make a strong word. Ifp eople are bored and leave, that's their problem. in thel ast tournament, few people showed up to eatch the games anyway, so I don't think people gettting impatient is ap roblem. If an opponent gets impatient, I suggest he take up something like tiddlywinks.
As for bridge.... I know you have played a LOT more bridge than I have, and you p[robsably kow more about hte game than I ever will. But, I havep layed some at duplicate clubs, and I have seen people taker a good amount of time just for a single card play, let alone hte entire hand.
