Any response yet? Thanks
One thing that worries me about doing Blitz at 3+2 is what do you do if there aren’t enough clocks with increment capability? I have a number of the blue saitek clocks which (as far as I can tell) does not allow increment (correct me if I’m wrong here). What about doing the Blitz at G/3,d2?
The blue scholastic Saitek does not support increment—and is the worst clock to use for Blitz, due to the confusing delay countdown before main time countdown issue.
But why can you not play G/3 d2? It’s legal per USCF; not sure about FIDE. At two seconds, the difference between increment and delay is minimal.
I disagree with this last sentence.
With increment, if you’re down to a few seconds of main time, you can build your time back up by playing several moves in a row in 1 second or less. With delay, this is not possible. That’s a huge difference.
My question is, in this day and age, why does anybody buy or own a clock without increment capability?
Yes, G/3 d2 would be an appropriate substitute for G/3 inc/2 in games played with a clock lacking increment capability. In fact, it’s a great idea. Players playing with d2 would quickly notice the huge difference, and would be more likely to furnish up-to-date equipment in the future.
Bill Smythe
If you run a Blitz tournament at G/3,inc 2 and a game is played at G/3,d2 due to not having a digital clock with increment capability, would this violate the rule that all games in a Blitz tournament must use the same time control?
I ran my first Blitz tournament on Saturday uschess.org/msa/XtblMain.php?201409204192. It was played at G/3,d2 and we asked the players what they thought of the time control. The players said they liked it. It avoids the time scramble that occurs in G/5,d0 games.
If you run Blitz events, you should consider running some of them with delay or increment. I agree with what Bill Smythe stated previously in that it would be popular if people would just try it.
Not if all rounds are played at the same time control. What you’re talking about is a clock accommodation or adjustment, not a different time control for that round. FIDE might not consider it the same, but the USCF would.
That shouldn’t be a problem. All games are using the same control (G/3 inc/2), it’s just that some players aren’t using it because of an equipment problem.
I’ll go further than that. Don’t consider doing it, just do it. All of them, not some of them.
Bill Smythe
Are you saying there is no place for G/5,d0 Blitz anymore?
Well, it’s just my opinion, but I think there should never have been room for d0 to begin with – at least not since the advent of either delay or increment.
Bill Smythe
Another thing that is not so common for Blitz events is to have multiple sections. For the Blitz event I am chief TD for, we are going to start splitting it up into 6 player double round robins to try and encourage more lower rated players to play. I have two questions here:
What rating(s) should be used to determine who is in which section (regular, quick, blitz)?
Is it better to do the pairings in double round robin or double Swiss format? (I know ultimately it doesn’t really matter since everyone plays everyone twice)
I would use Blitz ratings (regular when players don’t have Blitz ratings) and round robin pairings. You can have issues when attempting to use Swiss pairings for a round robin. If time isn’t too much of an issue, you might try doing a round robin first and then repeating the round robin, but with opposite colors.
Alex Relyea
It does matter. With a six player Swiss, you can get boxed in to having no legal pairings as early as round 4.
How so?
Round 1
1-4
5-2
3-6
2, 3 and 4 win
Round 2 (colors and score groups work perfectly)
2-3
4-5
6-1
1, 3 and 4 win
Round 3 (colors and score groups work perfectly)
3-4
1-2
5-6
Note that after this round, 1, 3 and 5 will have each played 2, 4 and 6.
Round 4 will require at least one re-match.
Thanks. If you do the pairings like this in Swisssys, will it pair rounds 2 and 3 the way you have them above or will it change the pairings to avoid the possible situation of having to have a rematch in round 4? If you do the tournament in round robin format, is it better to do random pairing numbers or by do the pairing numbers by rating?
Quads are done by rating. Larger RRs are done by random draw.
Alex Relyea
Sometimes you need to think outside the box and not do everything by the book Alex.
Micah, seed the players in by lot, not by rating. This way, the higher rated (top half of pairing numbers) players won’t get an extra White
Well I mean that the top half of pairing numbers will get an extra White, but if you draw by lot, the higher rated players won’t necessarily be in that top half.
It’s the TD’s job to recognize that six players five rounds potentially won’t work with a Swiss. There are probably innumerable threads in this forum with suggestions for how to deal with a section where the number of players is not much larger than the number of rounds. The most recent is:
on the second page of posts.