We've made some changes to the clocks in arena tournaments, effective immediately.
In summary we have changed the default clock time for some official PlayStrategy tournaments, and we have changed the berserk rules regarding how much time is sacrificed in some cases. These aren't major changes, many users will continue to play the tournaments and won't notice the changes, however in case you want to know all of the details you can read the rest of this post...
With the increasing number of games, variants and clock types available, we conducted a review to see if the time control being used was appropriate for each game/variant. This was based on data analysis (frequency of timeouts, berserk usage, average game length, game complexity, and more), consultation with communities that specialise in a game/variant, user feedback, and a review of other platforms.
Every game/variant has numerous tournaments on PlayStrategy: the monthly Shield, a rotating Weekly, and the 24 hour Yearly tournament. We've now standardised that each of these tournaments will use the time control that matches the 'Blitz' option you see when starting a game in the lobby form. This has meant an update to the tournaments for 20 variants:
- All Othello now uses a fixed time control of 5+0 or 8+0 (Grand Othello and Octagonal Othello).
- All Go variants now use Byoyomi clocks with 5 periods of 10 seconds. The initial time depends on the board size, 5 minutes for 19x19, 3 minutes for 13x13, and 2 minutes for 9x9.
- Backgammon variants have been updated to use different amounts of starting time. Backgammon will start with 90 seconds, Nackgammon with 120 seconds and Hyper with 60 seconds. All are still using Simple Delay clocks and have 10 seconds of delay.
- All 10x10 Draughts and Dameo use 5+3, except for Frysk which uses 2+1. 8x8 Draughts variants still use 3+2.
- Amazons now uses 3+5.
- Horde now uses 5+3.
- Mini Breakthrough now uses 2+1.
- Togyzqumalaq now uses 5+2.
We've also updated the time controls for several of the medley tournaments:
- Othello Medley will now use 8+0
- Mancala Medley and Togyzqumalaq Medley will now use 5+2
- Backgammon Medley and Chessgammon Medley will now use 2 d/10
- Breakthrough Medley will now use 3+2
In addition to these changes the berserk rules for Byoyomi and Simple Delay clocks have been updated. Previously these clock types saw a player sacrifice all of their Byoyomi periods or delay (in the same way Fischer clocks lose all of their increment in berserk). This has been deemed unsuitable, particularly for a game like Backgammon where the length of the game can be uncontrollable. The changes to these clocks when berserking is as follows:
- Byoyomi clocks will retain all of their periods, however the time in each period is halved, rounding up to maintain an integer number of seconds. Any increment is still lost, and the rules surrounding the initial time are unchanged.
- Simple Delay will half the amount of delay time, rounding up to maintain an integer number of seconds. The initial time is now always halved, without exceptions.
- Fischer and Bronstein Delay clocks remain completely unchanged.
If in doubt, remember that we display the berserk time on each tournament page below the tournament description, to make it clear and so you don't have to remember the rules. These berserk rules will be adopted by all tournaments, including user created tournaments.
Whilst we think that all of these changes are improvements to our tournament structure we welcome any user feedback, and will review the tournament time controls periodically.
We've also taken the opportunity to fix a few small bugs regarding the display of the clocks and the bots behaviour with low time controls (they shouldn't be timing out!).
Happy gaming, your time starts... now!