I do not recall any Fischer Mode events here in the U.S. I wonder if the reason is that they do not address the issue of one round possibly running into the next.
Yes, Chris, I think that’s the main reason. In most weekend tournaments, rounds have to start at certain times. There’s no way to do that with games that go on for indefinite periods, as though they were baseball games. That’s also the reason that TDs have the option of deducting five minutes from the initial base time when the five second delay is being used in a sudden death game. The delay shouldn’t add significantly to the base time and throw off the tournament schedule, especially when analog clocks are often being used by other players.
Time is a factor in life, and it must be a factor in chess tournaments, too. I’m sure a near perfect game could be played if each player had 47 million years per move, but tournament chess isn’t about creating perfection, it’s about playing against four or five opponents in one day (for typical weekend tournaments in the USA). Some players don’t know how to (or refuse to) manage their time, and they just aren’t suited to the hectic pace of weekend tournament play. Those players should stick to one-on-one matches or slow tournaments that last several days or weeks, in which they have to play only one game per day (assuming they can find any such tournaments). The reality of weekend tournaments is that many games will be ended by the flag instead of the position on the board.
I understand that players want to finish the games on the board. Ideally, that would be great, but that’s not always practical. Delay modes can help achieve that goal, to some extent, but in the closing moments of a game, players using a delay will still be rushed. I think some players need to learn how to think faster and use their time more efficiently throughout the game, instead of whining about the time limitations. The clock is not an external force that acts against the players arbitrarily. Be it a blitz game or one that lasts for several hours, each player begins the game with the same amount of time, and if one player’s flag falls first, that player deserves to lose.
As for sudden death itself (with or without a delay), I love it. Whether it’s G/5 or G/360, the players know exactly what they have to work with from the start, and TDs can count on the games ending more-or-less on schedule. I don’t see any need for a control with multiple time periods that eventually ends in sudden death (40/90, 20/60, SD/30), because you could get the same total time from a control with one sudden death period (G/180). However, for tournaments that are not on tight schedules, I do see the benefit in using controls with multiple periods that do not end in sudden death (40/90, 20/60, 10/30), where the last period repeats indefinitely, because those controls keep the games moving without forcing them to end. Even then, players still have to learn to budget their time in order to meet the move requirements for each period of the control. In tournaments or matches with one round per day, you can do just about anything you want with the time controls, but with multiple rounds per day, it’s hard to beat sudden death.
Regarding the various delay modes, I don’t like the cumulative add-back (a.k.a. “progressive,” “bonus,” “Fischer,” and “FIDE”) or non-cumulative add-back (a.k.a. “Adagio” and “Bronstein”) modes. Adding time back to the clock after a move has been completed has always seemed strange, to me. I much prefer the standard Andante delay that counts down before the base time begins to run. If the base time starts running first, a player can run out of time before benefiting from the “added” time, which seems to defeat the purpose of avoiding a “guillotine” ending. The delay belongs in front, so that a player can make an obvious move before the base time kicks in. Also, with the cumulative add-back mode, a player can actually gain time on any given move, which can cause further scheduling delays in weekend tournaments.
Our typical Saturday tournaments (which have been very successful for over a decade) consist of five rounds (Round 1 = G/30, Rounds 2-5 = G/75), and it’s difficult enough to stay on schedule as it is. The last thing we need is to implement a delay mode that defeats the purpose of the sudden death control. Because of the time constraints, the Fischer mode simply won’t work for us in those tournaments. Even in slower tournaments, I still think a standard delay is better.
Yet for many years weekend tournamnets ran just fine with old-fashioned repeating time controls. For twenty years (1972-1992) I played mainly “slow” tournaments typically at 30 move in 90 minutes followed by 20 or 25 moves an hour. I had two adjourned games in that period, out of many hundreds. A couple of times a year a round would be delayed because a game had run too long. (Most delays were caused by the pairings being done by hand, and the director dropping a card or having some other kind of mechanical problem with the pairings; that doesn’t happen much with computer pairing programs.)
Now, sudden-death time controls have a place. If you absolutely can’t afford to take the risk of a game ever running long, you need them. If your tournament is in a church basement, say, and the place will be locked up at 9pm–no excuses, no exceptions-- then you can’t afford even a 5 second delay because a 120-move game could take 10 minutes more than you have available (even if you take five minutes off the clocks at the start, that’s only the delay for 60 moves). At the other extreme, if you’re Bill Goichberg, you need sudden-death too. Even though only a game in a thousand goes more than 120 moves, he might have to deal with several of them at an event the size of the World Open, and that really could cause problems.
But in any case where the organizer can afford to have a round run late once in a very long while, I think increment is a great idea. Take the Marshall Chess Club, where I play most of my chess these days. They have one slow (30/90, SD/60) weekend tournament a month, four games in two days, and it draws maybe 60 or so people. That’s less than 1500 games a year. If it were run at G/90 + 30 second increment, only one or two games a year would run over 5 hours (120 moves). And it would have huge advantages. No smash-the-clock time- scrambles! At 30 seconds a move, the players can keep score at all times, so the TD would never have to do a 50-move count of his own, never have to deal with “insufficient losing chances” or any of the other bizarre rules that sudden-death requires. Players would be able to play compicated endgames without worrying that the game will degenerate into smash- the-clock.
C’mon. Let’s try it.
-ed g.
Edgy, I’m with you, in situations where indefinite controls are feasible. In our club’s main tournaments, we not only have five rounds in one day, but we usually have time constraints, as well, depending on the site, so we rely heavily on Sudden Death. I know that human beings somehow managed to function before the Sudden Death control, five-second delay, microwave ovens, indoor plumbing, and personal computers, but I prefer living with those modern conveniences. The Sudden Death control makes life easier in some tournaments, and even makes others possible that weren’t before.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I think it’s preferable to have the time control move the game along without ending it, by using a final period that repeats indefinitely. I agree that it would be more fun to play in tournaments that allowed time for endings to be handled as skillfully as openings. However, I think you have to structure a tournament to do one thing or the other, and either way, sacrifices have to be made.