Quote:
Originally Posted by ProfCrash
You don't see people whining over having to play tie breakers that go forever in tennis.
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It's the same in darts: if you're in the last set, you have to win with two points difference. That set can become very, very long.
In chess, it is often the case that a match has to be decided by a tiebreak. If a match ends in a draw (let's say, 5-5, after 10 regular games, that'll last around 7 hours, one per day), there are several possibilities.
One is that there are two or four rapid games where each player gets 30 minutes or so per game. If that mini-match ends in a tie as well, they mostly toss for color, and then play blitz games (5 minutes per player per game) until a player wins a game. The entire tiebreak is normally played in one day.
Go, in that regard, is the better game. You win that game on points. Black moves first, and that move is worth 6 points. There are 361 points on the board, so if a game would be played to its utter maximum length, black would play both the first, and the 361st move. If both players play perfectl, black would thus start with 6 points ahead, and because he has the last move as well, white could never catch up.
Thus, white gets 6 points to start with.
Then, the only advantage for black that remains is that he can dictate the direction of play, because he starts first (he has the first choice of move). That's called the initiative. If both players played perfectly, white would forever be responding to black's moves without being able to play by his own plan.
To compensate for this, white gets 0.5 points.
If black scores 61 points, and white scores 55 points (so black retained its 6 point lead, gained with the first move), the end result will thus be 61 for black, and 55 + 6.5 = 61.5 for white.
In Go, nowadays it's impossible to score a draw (except, obviously, if it is agreed before the game that the 0.5 point for white doesn't apply).