If I was to create a document on how to make a time adjustment (or move counter adjustment) in the middle of a game on the popular digital clocks, would this be something TD"s would find useful?
Once OTB tournaments resume, I would certainly find it useful. I know how to do this on the clocks that I own and use regularly (original Chronos, DGT North American, DGT 3000), but not on other models, and I have found that many players don’t know how to do it on their own clocks (some can’t even set their clocks properly at the beginning of the game). So yes, it would be useful.
Sometimes I wish I had a complete operating manual for each different clock, but that’s asking too much.
You can find the manual for most clocks online.
I would find it useful!
Of course it would be useful. If you can, keep it to one page, or two at most, so that organizers can post it on the wall during registration and throughout the tournament.
Bill Smythe
Why would players need to know this throughout the tournament, let alone at registration? I don’t want players doing anything other than stopping one or both clocks unsupervised at tournaments I direct.
Alex Relyea
Good point. I guess it doesn’t need to be limited to two pages, then. 
Bill Smythe
While recognizing and agreeing with your main point, I think it reasonable to expect that any player who owns a clock, and intends to use that clock at a tournament, should know how to set the clock and how to make adjustments during the game – because inevitably, even with a document such as Micah proposes, there will be a game where the clock needs mid-game adjustment, and neither the TD nor either player knows how to do that, and it’s a weird clock that isn’t covered in the document. It continues to stupefy me that players will bring equipment to a tournament without knowing how to operate it – but they continue to do so.
Thanks for making the distinction. I thought that was what the rule was so reread 5F7 and 16b2c to discover that it only states that players and not directors are responsible for knowing how to set clocks. I’ve always believed that “setting” the clock would also include “adjusting” it. And I agree that having the knowledge would be interesting but unless I am prepared to adjust every single clock model in existence then for equity’s sake the players should be required to know how to adjust them also. I enjoy seeing different clocks though and so would find such a document edifying in and of itself.
While the equity argument may have some strength, consider a hypothetical.
Suppose Black provides a clock that meets requirements and that White does not know how to set. (White has a clock as well, but Black’s is standard and Black chooses to use it.) Suppose further that a situation arises in which the ruling is to add two minutes to White’s clock. White does not know how to operate the clock. Black claims not to know either, and even if you suspect that Black really might know, you cannot prove it (and you’re not sure anyway). You happen to know how to make the adjustment.
Do you…
[]Add the two minutes?[/][]Allow White to substitute a different clock that White is able to set correctly?[/][]Leave the clocks as is and tell the players to play on with no adjustment?[/][]Provide your own clock that you can set?[/][]Something else?[/]
Now consider an event where the same situation occurs ten times, and in nine cases you know how to make the adjustment but in one you do not. Does this change your answer in any way?
Let me take several stabs at this hypothetical.
I assume “you” is the tournament director.
Sure, why not?
That would be my second choice. In fact, it would be my first choice if I didn’t know how to set the original clock.
Only as a last resort.
That’s a good option, if neither the white player nor I knew how to adjust white’s clock.
Another possibility might be to ask if anybody else in the room knows how to adjust the clock.
Nope. I’d make the adjustment in the nine cases, and use one of the other options (provide my own clock or ask if anybody else knows) in the one case.
Bill Smythe