The most common would be a required state federation membership.
I guess that even a tournament only open to club members could be a GP event if the club membership fee was $25 or less.
It’s voluntary. A rule requiring everyone to pay an extra $75 would not be allowed, though in practice the organizer would probably just raise the EF by the same amount.
Yes, that’s been done a few times.
Thank you, Edgy, and you too, Smythe Dakota, for providing the kind of answers I actually was looking for… Big help to me… Look for me to use this by Thanksgiving and in the future, if can get approval from our state federation… if anyone else has a recommendation or info please reply soon.
Edgy: I read some of your blog… It is a nice contribution to the chess community too.
Starting last September in Oklahoma we began to run a bunch of tournaments with increment controls. I don’t remember what the first time control was, but it was either SD/90 or SD/120. The first tournament had a 30 second increment, but it wasn’t all that popular, and there was a question of what to do with those who had analog clocks. Lately we’ve run the tournaments with a 10 second increment, and that seems to work well for everybody concerned. I’d guess that allowing for 60 moves would be adequate. It seemed to work for us. There is nothing wrong with adjourning a game if it seems likely to greatly exceed the round length.
I’m mindful of one director in our area who has set up rounds that seemed to encourage adjournments. There was one at the tournament this year, but it was no problem, and good practice for the assistant TDs.
Alex Relyea
I would like to know what you did re: The players’ recording the moves with the shorter increments… Remember that in the very first posts in this thread it was stated that players if given 30 seconds increments per move had to write down their move even with less than 5 minutes remaining on their clocks… I am wondering what happened in Oklahoma or anywhere else?.. And what takes place in the big FIDE tourneys if the players don’t have electonic boards as opposed to digital clocks?
I’m not sure I understand your second question. FIDE uses a 30-second add-on, and the players are required to keep score.
Yes you have stated the obvious… I just wanted to see someone’s response to confirm this…
Now the other interesting part I still hunger for: Under what situations did the OK players with the 10 seconds increments dispense with recording their moves?
Hello, I am back with an invitation to you to examine the flyer for our Washington Class Championships to be held this Thanksgiving weekend. It will be in the Nov. Chess Life. Maybe you will notice something that hasn’t caught our eye. Maybe you want to raise questions. I did use some of the earlier comments from this topic to design the tourney. Last year’s version was 40/2 followed by SD/1. We are hoping to bring in more than last year’s 124 players; with another 56 in the scholastics. Whatever the turnout, it won’t be solely because of the changes. But we will later be seeking a lot of feedback from this “experiment”. Please go to our regional magazine’s website: nwchess.com. It serves Washington and Oregon. The flyer can be found here:
nwchess.com/calendar/WA_Class_flyer_2005.pdf
We expect to have a new online TLA area up and running by the end of October. You can start creating TLAs now, so you could build one for your Thanksgiving event.
Online TLAs that are prepared ahead of time will be processed when we’ve got the other parts of the system in place, including training staff on how to review and approve online TLAs.
In order to enter an online TLA, your affiliate must have signed up for access to the USCF’s TD/Affiliate Support Area.
More information on TD/A is available at secure.uschess.org/TD_Affil
We held our WA Class Champs and Chess Festival this Thanksgiving weekend. About 128 players (11 masters) in the main event, a 6 rounder, with about 30 kids playing for medals only. G/105, with 30 sec increments, was the main time control, with 30/90, and SD/60 for analog clock diehards. We also had 114 players in a one-day, 5 round, G/30, scholastics event in the same hotel. Together with their parents, it was a bit much for a while. !4 players in an 8 round blitz event, and 8 players in a 4 round Chess960 event, both over two evenings. Still gathering feedback on the event; it seems to have been a success, but we made many mistakes. Definitely will work to improve it for next year. Go rummage around our website at nwchess.com and you can see what we’ve been up to, and read some of the responses so far.
Congrats on what was obviously a fine event!
Good thinking. This is something a lot of organizers (or talkers) overlook when planning a tournament with increments – what is the backup plan for those without increment-capable clocks?
I’m a little surprised, though, that you’d allow such a generous amount of time for non-increment games. Unless I have miscalculated, the break-even point (where increment players and analog players would have the same total time) is 90 moves. I would think you’d want break-even to occur at something like 40-50 moves, to reward players who bring increment-capable equipment.
Question – what happens if somebody brings a clock which is delay-capable, but not increment-capable? Do you still declare it preferred equipment over an analog clock, and if so, what time control would you set it for?
Bill Smythe
In my experience, delay is preferred over non-delay, with the same delay as increment, but increment is preferred over delay.
Alex Relyea
In the tourney program I wanted to have the Blitz and Chess960 events start at 930PM on Friday night and Saturday night. So I could not have the increments possibly delay these events by very much. If you do not have that concern, I think you could have the times agree at somewhere between 60 and 80 moves. This was one of our bigger annual events. So it might have been better to have some of the local chess clubs carry out the experiment at one of their weekend events that might have 2 games on Sat and 2 games on Sun. You must also insist on the FIDE rule that with 30 seconds or more increments the players always record their moves, even if they get below five minutes on their clock. You readers could try it out on a smaller basis too. We did revise our original TA and we posted the changes in our local publication, NW Chess. We eliminated all references to inserting a digital clock into games once started. That was deemed an unnecessary interference, and besides, where were the clocks coming from? I had previously seen that only about 20% of the clocks used in games around here were digital, but for the event we had about 80% participation. Many kids have them, and I did buy a few DGTXL’s for backup. I also found great help from some players. We found that for owners of Chronos clocks the setting CHP5 was key to getting the right time control set up. And we also found the right way for the Excalibur Game Timer. So by the end of the tourney, it was almost a cinch to convert the players if they had any willingness to experiment. Along the way in the early rounds, we found the Game Timers were not set right for increments, and when necessary we used 5 second delay as usual.
That’s what I was hoping.
When you say “in my experience”, do you mean as a TD, player, or both? Do several organizers in your area use increments?
Bill Smythe
I wasn’t suggesting you slow down the increment controls, but rather that you speed up the non-increment controls. With game/105 inc/30, for non-increment games you could specify game/125. That would give you a break-even of 40 moves. Or game/130 would give a break-even of 50 moves.
Was this because some of the Game Timers were older specimens? Early versions did not have increment capability.
When you couldn’t get the increment to work (for whatever reason), did you consider using a 30-second delay instead of a 5-second delay? (Hmm, I just realized your probable reason for not doing so – that you must have used the non-increment controls for those games.)
Did you ever consider using a 30-second increment AND a 5-second delay?
Bill Smythe
Sorry folks, once again I don’t know how to use the quote feature…
We were shortening the duration of the time control a little over the previous runnings of the event… It was previously 40/2hr and SD/1hr… So I could not change that very much, even though I wanted to make time on the program/schedule for the late night Blitz and Chess960.
Was this because some of the Game Timers were older specimens? Early versions did not have increment capability.
We (I) did not know how to set the newer GT’s properly at the start of the tourney, nor did we know that the GT owners did not know either. In a later round some of the really smart players figured out how to do it. I thank them very much. Some guys in your group are likewise going to be very helpful and cooperative.
And you asked about whether I considered using a longer delay setting…
I don’t want to start any arguments, but I was trying to avoid having any time delay in the tournament. Came very close to having a delay free tourney with virtually no insufficient losing chances issues.
Both. Mostly as a director. We have a lot of FIDE rated events in my area, and we prefer to use increment for those.
Alex Relyea
Our club was thinking about trying an event using increments and of course clocks are an issue. We know how to set a Chronos CHP5 but not other clocks yet. A couple questions: (1) Does anyone have a list of common electronic clocks, which ones support increments, and which mode to pick for increments, (2) How to tell which early Game Timers (and other clocks) don’t support increments (3) Are there any issues with USCF rated events and events with increments, and (4) what is the typical initial/increment arrangement for a regular and quick event, (5) Would 7 minutes + 12 seconds per move be valid for a USCF quick rated event, i.e., a 40 move game would take 30 minutes? Thanks 
My experience is 1% of my games get beyond 80 moves. In the last 20 years I have played 650 games of weekly club and occasional big open tournamnet play at the A/Expert level and the highest number was 90 moves in one game. Average number of moves was 39.