I’ve updated my document that explains the differences in the OTB US Chess Regular and Blitz rules.
Thoughts on the current version?
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How about you run it through a grammar/spell checker first? “Let’s go up the piece”???
Your introductory paragraph is laden with passive voice and hard to follow.
Do you find something wrong with the mm+ss description of the time control limits? You are telling someone to multiply the delay/increment by 60 and then…immediately divide by 60.
It could do with less editorializing if it is supposed to be describing the “rules”.
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I’ve fixed this mistake. Thank you for pointing it out. However, in the future it would be appreciated if you would be a litter nicer in the way you point out a mistake like this (of course given your history I highly suspect you won’t).
How so? How would you write it?
Simply saying you add the total minutes of base time with one move worth of increment/delay time in seconds seems weird to me. I was trying to show you add the total minutes of base time with the total minutes of increment/delay time a player would get if the game lasts 60 moves. How would you explain it?
Can you give an example? I don’t see anything wrong with having some notes explaining what the de facto rule is or when a variation is often used and some other notes explaining some things.
You asked for “any thoughts”? My two main thoughts are:
- It’s objectively poorly written. You may not like to hear that, but it’s true. Grammar/spell checkers are free. Use them.
- It’s not entirely clear what the point is and what the intended audience is, which probably helps explain part of #1. Offhand, it reads the author is trying to convince himself that he understands the rules rather than explaining them to someone else.
But the underlying situation is, that, whether you like it or not, to most players “blitz” means 5d0 clock-move. (For the record, and from a coach’s standpoint, I don’t like it—I think it breeds bad habits). If you see people in a skittles room playing blitz, that’s what they are likely to be playing. (5d0 is the first and default choice on Chronos and DGT and who knows how many other clocks).
The confusion about tournament blitz (to the players) is that it isn’t coffeehouse blitz. For someone who is used to clock-move; touch-move blitz can be hard. For someone who is used to black-with-queenside-play and an edge on time being a near-guaranteed win, a delay or increment time control requires a re-calibration of thinking patterns.
From the tournament director’s standpoint, most (all?) of the rule adjustments are to eliminate floor TD interventions to keep the tournament running on time. If one understands that, the rules tend to make sense.
And the blitz rules chapter in the US Chess rulebook is objectively written much worse than my document.
A lot of clocks simply put all the preset time controls without increment or delay first.