At what time control does chess become serious? G/45,G/60, G/75, G/2 ? I ask this since I do believe G/30 is too fast, but at the other extreme where my opponent take 45 minutes to play his first 8 moves and I almost pass out from fatigue about 5 hours into the game, can the play at that point really be quality. And I've seen "serious" games become blitz in the last few minutes; is that serious? Does serious equal quality?
It’s impossible to draw a bright line, since obviously reducing/increasig the time control by one minute would not have a significant effect. In my opinion, 40/2 is “serious chess.” G/30 is not. Does serious equal quality? Yes. The point seems too obvious to be worth discussing. Fischer’s games from the Herceg-Novi blitz tournament were very impressive, doubtless better than anything you or I are ever likely to play. Would anyone seriously claim that they were of the same quality as his games from Rovinj-Zagreb shortly afterward?
Excellent Larry Niven reference!
Forgive the potential can of worms, but has the concept of a sliding K-factor scale for various time controls been examined recently?
Get rid of Quick ratings, but rate G/120 or slower at 1K and anything faster at the appropriate fraction of K (e.g. G/30 is 0.25K).
Again, sorry if this has been beaten to death in th past.
-Matt
I don’t know that having a sliding K factor based on time control has every been SERIOUSLY studied, I’m not even sure how one would study it.
Of course not. And I personally run a lot of slow time control tournaments too (30/85, SD/60 and 40/1:55, SD/60, and even the occasional 40/2, SD/1). I’ll bet I run as many slow tournaments as any of the “serious” organizers, so I don’t think it’s fair to be considered just as someone who only runs fast chess, or who is only interested in advocating fast chess. But even in my own local slow tournaments, I try to schedule the rounds tightly, so that the 1-Day Schedule can have Rounds 1-2 at 10 am and 11:15 am Sunday, then mege in Round 3 with the 2-Day Weekend Schedule, which has slow rounds at 12:30 and 5:30 pm both days. Even in this case it’s very helpful to have the 5 minutes deducted, so that Round 3 doesn’t go on too long. Someimes some games do go the distance, and then those players usually request some additional time before the next round. But if the first time control did not have the 5-minute deduction, then many more games would be “delayed” as well. Having the last round start too late would be very unpopular, both on Sunday and on Thursday evenings.
But just because it’s important to run slow tournaments, because most people want to play serious chess slowly, does not mean that fast chess is irrelevant either.
I’ve noticed that in the trenches, i.e. U/1600, that those sections finish more quickly than the upper sections. Should lower sections be treated differently when you organize your tournaments? Comments appreciated.
I tried that once or twice, but it didn’t work out too well. You’d have to start the rounds at different times, which is a real pain (distracting to the people whose games are in progress, and you wind up pairing an awful lot of rounds). It might be workable with the right room setup, though.
Before computerized pairings, it was common for CCA tournaments to have staggered round times in different sections. This allowed a single TD to direct a large multi-section tournament.
The only trouble was, unless there were separate rooms for each section, the earlier-starting players would be disturbed by other players arriving and setting up in the middle of their games.
Bill Smythe
Of course, if my proposal were enacted, you could just deduct 5 minutes from all games, digital or analog, and advertise those rounds as G/25 d/5.
Bill Smythe
Can somebody please tell me where this updated rule is posted? You are going to get a lot of organizers that aren’t aware of this new rule because they don’t read the forum.
More organizers than not deduct the 5 minutes, but don’t announce in the tourney ad, including:
- Local Club (Games are G/90)
- Continential Chess (Most tourneys of theirs that I attend are 40/2, SD/1)
- Tourneys organized by various TDs in the state (i.e. for NC, there’s Land of the Sky, LPO, NC Open, etc.)
Current rule 5Fa allows the deduction without a prior announcement. The new rule about the announcement does not yet show up in
uschess.org/docs/gov/reports … hanges.pdf
but that is where I’d expect to find it.
Such a deduction is currently so common that there have been many times in local and national tournaments where players have made the deduction even when the announcements have been to NOT apply a deduction.
Which version of the updated rule are you talking about? The changes to the printed (2003) rulebook are available here: uschess.org/docs/gov/reports … hanges.pdf
In general, after passage rule changes do not become effective until January 1st. There should be a revision to the file that has updates to the rulebook posted some time between now and then, the Rules Committee usually puts it together.
However, the final status of that particular motion at the 2010 Delegates Meeting is that the effective date of this particular change is 1/1/2012, so there’s lots of time to get the word out, and I’m pretty sure the issue will come up in Orlando next August, so it is not clear yet just what the rule will actually be on 1/1/2012.
Oh, so this isn’t finalized? UGH!
I have always hated the stupid deduction time. Maybe 10 to 15% of my games go 60 moves, and that’s what it takes to make up the 5 minutes.
Even worse, not every director understands the rule either. There is a director in South Carolina that I typically avoid going to his tournaments for 2 reasons.
The first is that I went in 2006 to his tournament in June, and the hotel was $34/night, $109/week, was full of crime, thugs, and even an arrest occurred during round 4. It was also scary just going from the tournament hall to your room. I go again in June 2008 and it’s in some $120/night (discounted!) hotel (I stayed elsewhere) and he makes no effort to find out what other events are taking place. A wall is all that seperated us and a Wedding Reception full of loud music.
The second, and MANY players have tried to tell him that the rules DO NOT say what he interpreted them to say. He takes 5 minutes off EACH time control, so it’s 35/90, SD/60 for Analog, and 35/85, SD/55 for Digital. That would take 120 moves to make up the time. In the 1770 games I have played over the board, I had exactly ONE game take at least 120 moves, namely 134 moves, my longest game ever. Next longest, 113! Then, of course, I’ve had many games between 90 and 110, and it shoots up significantly when you go down to 80 moves. Either way, still takes 120 moves to make up the time in this case.
Also, I saw the announcement about getting rid of G/25 with 5 second delay as “Standard” and making that “Quick Only”. What about the other crossover point? If I run a tournament today, and it’s a 1-day Saturday tournament, and my time control is G/61 (I have seen this before, to avoid Quick ratings) or even G/65, and I have you deduct 5 minutes for delay, is it now Quick chess? All the more reason to get rid of the 5-minute deduction once and for all. If directors don’t like it, learn to plan your tournaments better, and don’t make the rounds of a 35/90, SD/60 tournament be 9am and 2pm for Sunday, make it 9am and 3pm.
As I understand the CURRENT rule (and as it has been implemented), it is basically what you publish (and indicate on the rating report) as the time control.
If you say G/61, then it is regular-ratable only, regardless of whether delay-capable clocks are set to something less than 61 minutes.
The same thing is true with regards to G/30 events, they are dual ratable even if delay-capable clocks are set to something less than 30 minutes, eg, 25 minutes.
But if you say the event is G/25, then it is quick-only.
What I have heard is that the Rules Committee may propose an exception to the CHANGED rule which will say that G/30 with a five minute deduction on delay-capable clocks is (still) dual ratable, but will need to be mentioned in all advance publicity and announced on site.
What that will also mean (I think) is that since it will no longer be in the rulebook, time may not be subtracted from delay-capable clocks UNLESS that is mentioned in all pre-tournament publicity and announced on site.
Whether G/61 with a five second delay and an accompanying five minute deduction from the clock is regular or dual rated is not clear yet. Hopefully the Rules Committee will address that potential ambiguity and any others that may arise.
And now, Max said, let the wild rumpus begin!
This criticism is unwarranted. I’ve directed tournaments where I had to reserve rooms three or four months in advance. I did this so that I could be ensured a reserved room, AND so that I could advertise in Chess Life. A TLA has to be sent to CL by the 10th day of two months before the magazine, so if I held a tournament on August 25th that I wanted to be in the July and August Chess Life magazines, I’d have to submit the TLA by May 10th, which means I’d need to start at least talking to the hotel (or wherever) at least two or three weeks before that date.
Four months before the tournament, many events in adjacent rooms have not been scheduled yet, or those that have been scheduled sometimes cancel and are replaced by other events.
I used a hotel for tournaments six times over a three year period. They had two rooms of similar size. Every time except once I had my pick of the two rooms. Every time, the other room filled up with another party. On two occasions, it was a loud party. It’s a bummer, but it’s not the TD’s fault.
I’ve known organizers who actually book more rooms than they need for the tournament, in order to prevent noise (e.g. from wedding receptions) from coming from the other rooms.
That seems beyond the call of duty, however.
Bill Smythe
A strategy I’ve seen used more than once is to place things like the skittles room, book vendor area and the TD room between the playing hall and other rooms. It isn’t perfect, and IMHO there are few things worse to have going on at the hotel than a wedding reception with an open bar, with drunk wedding guests wander into the playing hall, even when the tournament is two floors removed from the ballroom where the reception is.
But even a good site can change on you. We used to use a site in Omaha that had a very good playing hall, well isolated from the rest of the hotel. Until they turned some storage space into a bar with LOUD music, opening two weeks before our next tournament and with one thin wall between it and the meeting room where we had the Nebraska Closed booked.
The hotel was good enough to give us two empty suites and some tables and chairs to move the Closed to, but we have never been back to that site because loud music next to a chess tournament just won’t work.
Unless it’s by Frankie Yankovic, of course.
Bill Smythe
At a Pan Am Intercollegiate Ch. in the 1970’s in Louisville, the tournament with over 100 teams was bumped down to a basement area to accomodate a wedding for some big politico’s daughter. Being enterprising chess players, some of us with ties and coats filtered, ah crashed, the reception, ate their food and drank at the open bar. A couple even said hello to the bride and danced with the southern belles. We were polite, so they did not catch on for quite a while. So the next time your event has to endure a noisy wedding, hey, don’t get mad, have some fun at their expense. Next time, the hotel will be more sensitive. Or they will ban you forever from their doors.