Turn based online play - more fun than expected

I volunteered to play in a tournament with some other GoDiscussions.com regulars. It was being hosted on OGS. I hadn't tried any games on a turn-based system, so I was feeling a bit like a newbie player. But I signed up, and figured I would be playing a game as if we were emailing moves back and forth.

Well, things happen alot faster than I expected. We built a 9 player tournament and that means each player plays all 8 other participants twice - once as black and once as white. The big surprise was you play all 16 games AT THE SAME TIME!!

So, even if a few players don't show up in a day, you still have a bunch of games that you can move in. I think many of the players leave a browser window open to the site and check on their games whenever they get a few minutes. The point is that you can get a lot more than 1 move per game in each day. What I actually expected to feel slow feels really good. There is a lot less anxiety when you only have to play 1 move. If the position is really dificult, you can just skip that game and work on it when you have more time.

Games are played with Fischer time measured in days. Our tourney was set up as 7 days, plus 1 day time added per move, max time on the clock of 7 days. So, you could theoretically wait a whole week for 1 move, and then play 7 moves the next day and be back up to the max time on the clock.

I was concerned about trying to play on a second server, but at this point I like OGS better. Getting back into the realtime games on KGS may be more of a challenge. OGS has some other nice features like official tournaments, ranking via ELO, bots to help you establish rank, and their ladders.

The ladders are a neat feature where everyone who wants to join gets on a big list. There are some rules about who you are allowed to challenge, but basically everyone plays everyone else on the ladder. If you win, you move to the spot above your opponent. So it is a big GO version of 'king of the mountain'. It makes me think of the insei program where all the students are playing each other to get to the top so they can take the pro exam. OGS has 3 ladders - a 19x19 ladder, 13x13 and 9x9.

I have played a few bot games to try to establish rank, and I think I will join the 19x19 ladder soon as well. I say give a turn-based server a chance! Take a look at both OGS (Online Go Server) and DGS (Dragon Go Server) - maybe one will seem right for you!