What it should say is if you are running an event that is dual-rated or regular rated the recommended delay is 5 seconds, and if it is quick rated only then the recommended delay is 3 seconds.
The folks running G/25;d/5 do so to ensure their games affect regular ratings too.
Historically, 30 minute games were regular ratable before dual rating existed, and only games faster than 30 minutes were quick-rated. In 2012 we changed how time controls were parsed and that’s when the MM+SS rule was codified so MM+SS between 30 and 65 became the definition of dual-rated. There were probably G/25;d5 games rated prior to 2012, but the time control field was not being parsed and standardized so finding those events would be challenging.
In 2000, when dual-rating was introduced, it was to increase the number of quick-rated games in the ratings pool, so it did not impact the number of regular-rated games being rated.
Blitz games were split off from quick-only games in 2013.
I think that most only care that they are regular rated. 
I suspect if we got rid of dual ratings (and the Ratings Committee has a proposal to deal with staleness that may make dual ratings superfluous), nobody would notice.
If you haven’t watched the video of the Ratings Committee’s online workshop, I highly recommend it, a lot of time was spent explaining the staleness proposal.
I think with any variant of that staleness proposal we’d need some way to get that “will be rated as X pre-event” number from US Chess for pairing, rating estimation, performance calculations, etc.
I can understand and give the two sentence explanation but in terms of numbers I’d need a spreadsheet and time to work it out in practice
I don’t think we really know what the impact and usefulness of this method is yet.
What gets messy is that this will impact all 6 ratings systems, and adding 6 ‘experimental’ ratings systems so that we can study the impact on each of those ratings systems could be an implementation challenge.
I’m assuming a high percentage of the events played at G/25;d5 are scholastic events. With delay being mainly just a US thing, what kind of time control is used in scholastic tournaments in other countries?
It’s also interesting that the most common blitz time control includes an increment but the most common quick-only time control has no increment or delay.
I don’t know where to go for information on time controls common in other countries, but the US Open is good place to ask that question of many people.
There may be some regional influence on what time controls are used, one organizer running a lot of events could raise that time control in the relative rankings.
Yes, I suggested something similar previously.
I think the recommended amount of increment or delay listed in the rulebook for quick-only time controls should be 3 to 10 (currently it’s just 3). I see nothing wrong with a time control like G/15;inc10 (the time control of the World Rapid Championship btw). Also, I noticed the National G/15 Championship at the US Open this year was played with a 5 second delay so US Chess itself isn’t even following the recommendation in the rulebook to use a 3 second increment or delay for this type of time control!
I think the recommended amount of increment or delay listed in the rulebook for blitz time controls should be 2 to 5 (currently it’s just 2). I see nothing wrong with a time control like G/5;inc3 or G/5;inc5.
This issue came up at the Delegates meeting, too. (And the proposed change was rejected.)
People seem to have forgotten that well before Quick ratings existed, Game/30 was regular ratable. Dual rating was intended to improve the reliability of quick ratings, it had no impact on regular ratings.
I noticed that one player has been using his personal clock (one that always freezes -HoE) rather than the supplied usually a NA-DGT(no freeze) or Saitek Blue.
I overheard him mention to his opponent that he prefers it since it always shows seconds left and not like other clocks don’t – I guess I never thought about this as an issue since I personally don’t care until the time is very low when they are all in show seconds mode. On some clocks this is just not having a the extra digits until both sides are under an hour and how clocks handle the switch (Option, both under 60, one under 60, under 10, …) are not consistent.
I did mention to him that since his clock always freezes that he may not get to use it even if he had black choice.
PS – I really dislike the clocks that are set for 10ths of second for regular/quick games – If I were king, I would make it a rule that has to be set off.
There are two different issues about always showing seconds.
In longer time controls where seconds are not shows until you are under 10 minutes you find out early in the game if the delay or increment was set correctly.
In Bronstein delay you always see the seconds you have left before flagging while in US Delay the delay time has to be mentally added to the seconds shown to tell you how long you have.
I prefer clocks like the newer DGTs that have all of the older DGT functions and also show the seconds. In FIDE-rules events the Bronstein vs US Delay issue does make Bronstein technically more correct unless the US Delay also shows the exact number of seconds remaining in the current move’s delay.
What exactly was the issue that was brought up and rejected?
The motion wanted the 30 to 60 minute time controls to be quick rated only, not the current dual-rated treatment that has such games rated in both quick and regular. It was nowhere close to looking like it had even a snowball’s chance in an active lava flow of passing.
Ha! I went around telling folks it was 30-59 might wind up being regular only – dropping dual – which is infinitely more reasonable than than it being quick only.
It was to eliminate dual rating and make games faster than G/60 part of quick ratings rather than part of regular ratings.
Thoughts on this idea?
For the most part, aren’t those in TD tips rather than the rules?
A logical approach would be to list the most commonly used time controls, but we probably didn’t have that information before about 2015, and what was commonly used 10 years ago might not be what’s commonly used now. (There was a time when G/75 was fairly common but it’s far less frequently used now.)
The Ratings Committee’s proposal for dealing with stale ratings might make dual ratings unnecessary. It needs to be studied with real-world data, though.
No, they are in the rules.
