Think about this carefully.You were never able to force your opponent’s time management. Ever. “Playing good moves” doesn’t preclude an opponent who plays fast without thinking.
So many good complaint memes out on the interwebz.
Postscript…I should have seen this coming. Better late than never, so I’m done posting in this thread.
You can’t force your opponent’s time management, but you can control it. That’s the whole point of having time controls at all. You shouldn’t be able to win a chess game by simply “outsitting” your opponent. But we don’t need to go overboard and make the clock decide every game, either. The purpose of the clock is to keep the length of a game within reasonable bounds, and let the players decide the result by the quality of their moves. In my opinion, a dual time control (such as 40/120, SD/1, d5) accomplishes that better than the equivalent single time control (G/180, d5). It keeps the game moving while still allowing enough time for quality play. I don’t expect everyone to agree with this, but there is reason behind it. I’m not just making things up. After all, the US Open uses the exact time control that I’m defending. If I’m being unreasonable, so are they.
As a TD, I have found I prefer the i30 time controls over any others. It allows me to make half-hourly clock checks. For instance, in a G90/+30 game, on half hour after the start of the game, the clocks should add to show 90+90-30+nMoves remaining. So if the players have made 10 moves each, then the clocks should add to 160 minutes: 90+90 (initial time) minus 30 (time spent) plus 10 (increment).
Also, with i30, players are always required to maintain their scoresheets.
In my experience, whether there is a 5-second delay or not makes a gigantic difference in the games of class players. It may not be enough time to perform extensive calculation, but at least you can make sensible moves without flagging. The difference between having 10 seconds on your clock with no delay and having 10 seconds on your clock with a 5-second delay is immense, even for a 1600 player. I see a lot less of chess-as-an-athletic-event these days.
Think that about sums it up
Rob Jones
I truly do prefer no delay and no increment games. Really, time
SHOULD be part of the game of chess, as should proper time
management. It adds a great deal of fun and excitement to the
game.
Rob Jones
Thank you for sharing your unique perspective.
With emphasis on “unique”.
I believe he is saying this as a Tournament Director and not as a Chess Player.
Rob’s MSA shows his play being either with a delay or only a Quick event.
Of course he last played on January 1, 2014. Before that his latest rated play, as a player, was in 2012. So he cannot be saying this from a person that plays USCF rated Chess consistently.
I know that here in Peoria, Illinois we have put on some events, on club night, with no delay. There is a consistent drop in attendance and participation in all of these events.
When we have the same time controls, G/30, G/20, G/10 and G/5 with a delay of 5 seconds down to 3 seconds for the faster times, we consistently have higher attendance and participation.
From a TD point of view, we also do not have our rounds or events take too long using the delay either. I know that when we first started using delay we had the concern that the individual rounds would take longer and too long compared to the events we had before without the delay. Practice showed this was not a problem.
Rob mentions that it is the Soccer Mom personalities that have brought him to having G/30, d/0 events because they want their children out in a minimum amount of time. Well, our experience has shown that adding the delay does not lengthen the event whatsoever.
Have tracked the use of delay across a series of tournaments. A 5 second delay adds about 6 minutes to the longer games, ie. 60+ moves. In shorter games, no more than two minutes is added to the length of the game. That is a pretty small amount; a scholastic tournament using delay as part of the time control should get the kids out around the same time as using no delay. A “soccer mom” in a tournament that I was at went to the bookseller on site to purchase a delay clock when her son ran out of time in a winning position using his analog clock. Getting out early is one thing, losing because of time is quite another for “soccer moms” and “helicopter moms” when their little precious is playing. They just have to see it happen and be advised of the risks of not playing with delay.
When we used only analog clocks back in the time of the dinosaurs, there were always arguments over whether the flag fell early or whether the clock was defective. Usually, a minute was added to both clocks to take into account the fact that the clock may not be entirely accurate. That is two minutes added to the length of a time control that was 50 moves in 2 hours, followed by 25 moves in an hour, adjournment or repeated 25 moves in an hour sessions.
What if both players have used “proper time management”, and have a dead equal position, but one player “wins” because his opponent’s clock ran out 2 seconds before his did? This is not some crazy scenario – I was there when G/30 became popular and we didn’t have delay yet, and saw this kind of thing happen over and over again. It might be “fun and exciting” (for some players) – so is blitz – but it’s a travesty of chess to have players’ ratings based on this sort of game. Delay was introduced for a very good reason. Call me crazy, but I think the result of a chess game should be decided by the quality of moves made by the two players, not by the clock. The clock is there to insure that games finish in a reasonable amount of time, and to prevent players from “outsitting” their opponents. It’s not there to decide the game. If you want the clock to decide games, stick to blitz – or better yet, bullet. If I never see a “time scramble” again (in a serous rated game), it’ll be much too soon.
Best post ever on this topic. I have said the same thing many times, but not as well.
Proper time management starts before the event. Ratings belong to the players and when all the rules are known up front, it is up to the player to decide if they will participate in the event. I remember the initial clock-bashing spectacles of no-delay G/30. I remember witnessing people use the clock as their partner to harvest points. The only time these people complained was when someone was going to do to them what they did to others. I loved watching Karma in chess. Why not give more latitude to what equipment is acceptable for rated-games? I argue that delay and increment both add an element of gamesmanship to chess as well as insuring that even the most expensive digital equipment can become obsolete when the delay-rule of the moment changes.
I remember, too. In 35 years of playing rated chess and coming to terms with the fact that this would be a lifetime hobby bordering at times on obsession despite glaring lack of talent…the clock-bashing spectacle of no-delay G/30 rated games was the only thing that ever put that in serious danger of coming true.
Sometimes I wonder how many people left rated chess because of this.
In conjuction with the clock-bashing spectacles we both witnested were tournaments with repeating controls and adjournments. One master I know who was a specialist at making the repeating time controls pretty much quit playing when sudden death made his skill obsolete. Wisely, he stayed far away from G/30. Chess is a game of honor, what if the repeating time controls and adjournments returned? Players would be honor-bound not to get outside help so what would be the problem? The “good old days” had choices, you could play long marathon games or take a chance with the clock bashers (or both).
Her son could have used rule 14H to get at least a draw. Also, assuming ignorance of this rule, her son has no one else to blame for leaving too little time on the clock to win a won position.
Funny thing though is that all of the old analog clock bashers became digital clock bashers once the new technology was more widely used. They still ran their time to almost zero and banged away in their delay time. In fact, it gave them more confidence and comfort to know that they could bang away to their heart’s content using digital clocks. The clickety clack of Gametimers and the thumping sound made by banging Chronos on a table are still prevalent and maybe even noisier than banging the buttons on the BHB clocks that were the norm.
I do miss the soft ticking of the analog clocks.
Let’s assume 60 moves is typical. Then G/180 and 40/120, SD/60 are both saying “you need to average 3 minutes/move or faster”. What the two part time control really adds is a constraint on the variability of the move times.
With G/180, there is no constraint on variability other than the need to meet 3 minutes/move overall. With 40/120, SD/60, the variability in the first 40 moves is limited compared to G/180.
It’s possible to have a single period time control that also puts additional limits on variability. This could be achieved by having a large increment with a small fixed time, such as G/20 inc160. That would still require averaging 3 minutes/move or better (still assuming 60 move games), but the variability allowed would be less than with G/180.
I did a tournament this weekend at 40/90, SD/30; +30. I’ve found that sometimes the second time control really helps. For example, on one of the top boards I had a player make move 22 with 14 seconds left on his clock. With one time control he would have had to spend the rest of the game on increment. This way he could refresh himself after move 40.
Alex Relyea