Byoyomi / Discussion

Byo-Yomi Strategy

amadis: What is the optimal strategy for playing with byo-yomi? I would guess that if the byo-yomi periods are 30 seconds long, it would be best to use an average of at least 30 seconds per move during the main time.

Gaius: In general, I'd try to avoid getting into byo-yomi (unless there are very long and very many byo-yomi periods). Quite often, players start to make errors once they get into byo-yomi. I would try to play in such a way that, on average, the game end is approximately at the same time as the end of your main time. This way, you won't get into byo-yomi very often. So, as a rule of thumb, divide the main time by 120 (I think this is the average number of moves in a completed game, correct me if I'm wrong) and try to spend approximately that much time for each move. Additionally, you might want to use more time in the late opening and early midgame than during the rest of the game, but that is probably personal.

Byo-Yomi and Overtime

From the ByoYomi page: The term is also used loosely (and inaccurately) to refer to other forms of overtime.

Dieter: This may be inaccurate usage, but I fear it is a case of "Too late." It is impossible to teach all Western Go players not to say "ByoYomi" when they mean overtime. In my language there are several words that have been misused and abused for such a long time and by so many people that the dictionary now contains the erroneous usage and no longer the correct one. Regrettable but inevitable.

BobMcGuigan: A definite point in favor of using "overtime" is how badly many people mangle the pronunciation of the Japanese term.

SAS: In the UK, the incorrect usage of "byo-yomi" has not taken over. (To check I wasn't imagining this, I looked through all the recent tournament entry forms I could find - none use the word "byo-yomi", almost all use the word "overtime", and two manage to avoid either word.)

Question: Should we consolidate the wiki Byo-yomi with Japanese Byo-yomi, and Time Systems with Overtime? -- Sebastian 2003-09.12] (deleted TJ's comment per his wish) Sebastian: What I meant with my question was if we should, for each of these pairs, move the content of one of the wikis into the other wiki and change it to an alias. There are only few lines in Overtime and Byo-yomi, so it doesn't look like they really need to be independent. -- 2003-09-12

TJ: Hehe. Okay, sounds good to me, then.

Sebastian: I started doing these changes. However,

• I left the wiki overtime since this has actually two meanings - see my changes there.
• The article on ByoYomi (formerly JapaneseByoYomi) seems misleading. Before it defines what byo-yomi actually is it switches to discussing byo-yomi on Go servers, which, as far as I understand, is NOT byo-yomi but rather CanadianOvertime.
• I did not touch CanadianOvertime, since I'm not decided what to do about "An overtime period has two main properties...". This seems to be a statement that applies to any byo-yomi-like overtime. Should this be moved to byo-yomi, to TimeSystems or to Overtime?

Can someone who understands this better than me pls look at the pages and clean up the mess? Thx. -- 2003-09-15

The Best Translation for the word Byo-Yomi

Sebastian: Bill or John, WRT to "second reading" you wrote:

As John Fairbairn indicates elsewhere, "calling the seconds", or the like, may be a better translation. --Bill

AFAIK, yomi means "reading", or did you want to make a point by changing it to "calling"?

(John's reply below is with regard to my subsequent change of the first sentence of the page to: 'Byo-yomi (秒読み) literally means "reading the seconds" ')

John F. No, it doesn't. It means counting the seconds.

Sebastian: Can you back up your statement, please?

John F. I've already explained it in SL but several people have mangled the byoyomi pages to a degree I find incomprehensible, so I don't know where it is. Otherwise a good dictionary.... Since yomu is cognate with yobu, Bill Spight's suggested rendering as calling out needs to be considered, too.

Bill: Gee, John, I thought I was repeating your suggestion. ;-)

Byo wo yomiageru means to call out the seconds. If you nominalize that, you get byoyomiageri, but that's a mouthful. It might readily be shortened to byoyomi.

Sebastian: Oh, I see now that John F. = John Fairbairn! So you are an authority! (I read and enjoyed your "In Pursuit of Elegance" in the Go Almanach.) Are you saying that yomiageru (=yomigaeru?) is not derived from 読? If it is, then my problem is that 読 (or 讀 or 读 in Chinese), according to all I know means "to read, to read aloud", so I would like to understand why "reading the seconds" could be wrong. Unfortunately I can't find your original statement from which Bill quotes (in Byoyomi / Discussion). Would you mind giving us your rationale again? Thanks!

John F. I'm home now and can refer to books. Here's a summary of yomu - 読 - from Kenkyusha: 1. read {books}; peruse; recite; chant; count; reckon the numbers of; 2. read {gauges, etc}; see; guess; divine. A related yomu (different kanji) - 詠 - means to compose poetry. Morohashi of course gives more meanings but he starts off with "to recite out loud" (this meaning is referenced also to the Shuo Wen). The point is that ancient reading (or composing) was done out loud, and yomu (like cognate yobu = call) has always had this nuance. So the operation described by byoyomi is one where the seconds are read off aloud, which is better conveyed by the words count or call in English. But in any case, if you ask a Japanese person to byo wo yomu he'll usually do something that you would call counting, like using his fingers as he speaks.

Sebastian Thanks, John, that explains it. I changed the first sentence to "counting...". Also, I inserted the two kanji in your reply above, pls correct it if I made a mistake.

BTW, let's move this discussion to Byoyomi / Discussion, once the dust has settled somewhat. -- 2003-09-15

Bill: To make it clear, I'm the one who suggested a possible link to yomiageru. In any event, reading the seconds is a poor translation.

Sebastian: I see - John meant "呼". Interesting! So, in the light of what kokiri says below, one has to consider two (sometimes) independent families of cognates in Japanese: One from the kanji side and the other from the kun side. And from a kun pronounciation, 呼 =cognate_to= 読 =cognate_to= 詠.

John F. Eh? You're just creating confusion. Kanji and kun are not opposites or even related, and I think you need to check out what a cognate is. This is (a) a go column and (b) you're supposed to write for the general reader. The byoyomi pages are already spaghetti-ed enough.

John, your professional experience is certainly valued in this forum. But please remember that most of us contribute merely for fun. If you find something that doesn't meet your standard, please consider that the contribution may still contain a valid point and assist constructively in clarifying it for the sake of all readers.

Thanks,

Sebastian 2003-09-16

kokiri 詠む also is read yomu. I thought it referred to reading poetry, but the dictionary seems to give it a meaning of to chant or recite.

Sebastian What a nice image: Poetry = eternal words.　　

Bob Myers: Unfortunately, as with the majority of kanji, the right-hand component has a phonetic, not semantic, basis. Here it gives the kanji 詠 the reading EI, the reading of 永.

Sebastian: I agree; officially, this is a phonetic complex. But don't give up all hope! Poetry reconnects what the grammarians stricly divided^[10]. You can regard it as a logical aggregate, as well. This is actually a pragmatic view, because there is quite an overlap between these categories. From ancient words like 陰 (and maybe even 侌 itself - see Gender Discussion) to modern words like 湨 (bromium) there are plenty of words that fit in both categories. 2003-09-17

I'm not saying that this is necessarily this kanji and not 読 that is used for Byoyomi; rather that a simple verb such as yomu can mean subtly different things in different situations. It's just the same, in English where read could be read out or read into for example.

One interesting thing that I've never really seen highlighted about Japanese is that in spoken Japanese you only hear the word but where it's written down there's more information. for example, toru is the Japanese word for the English "to take". An online dictionary gives 取る (usual) 撮る (take a photo) 採る, 執る, 盗る(steal) 捕る (catch a fish) as different ways of writing toru.

Sebastian: Wow, that's an amazing variety! And I thought Chinese was bad already for having up to 3 or 4 different hanzi for one reading (such as 它~他~她 or my pet peeve, "妳"). -- 2003-09-15

[10] "Deine Zauber binden wieder, was die Mode streng geteilt". -- Schiller, Ode to Joy