Having just returned to chess after a 20 year hiatus, I looked forward to the new time controls with considerable excitement, thinking a delay clock would help my aging brain cope. Now having played for a while with 5 second delays, I have to say that in my slowly advancing stage of senile degeneration, it’s too little to really help. I haven’t tried the 30 second increments yet, but I have to think that might truly make a difference.
I wonder how useful everyone else finds the 5 second delay to be.
Five second delay is intended to help you win an obviously won position or draw a dead-in-the-water endgame. In short, your opponent can’t flag you if you reach R vs R with 20 seconds left. Think about it as an insurance policy–you hope that you’ll never need it.
The delay won’t help you solve a complex middlegame or even an endgame with passed pawns on both flanks. Some experienced or younger players may do better than average with just a few seconds, but truth be told, only Houdini and cousins can find accurate tactics in a few seconds.
In fact, the FIDE 30 second increment is not sufficient to solve a complicated position. Even Grandmasters make elementary blunders with the clock ticking down.
That sounds about right. In fact, it is the precise argument I use when someone moans that five-second delay will “save” a player who unwisely burns all his time, and “punish” a player who moves fast to gain advantage on the clock.
Truth is: In a position that is even slightly complicated, the player well ahead on time still has a big advantage—as it should be. He cannot, however, use his time edge as the ONLY means of winning the game, via cutthroat blitz tactics like making random moves with the nearest piece, even if they lose any objective edge based on the position, or shuffling his King around in a dead-drawn endgame just to flag the opponent.
I have lost more games with the delay in effect through running low on time than I have saved by using the delay time to prove I could hold a simple drawn ending. Same holds true for my opponents.
Rated chess, especially G/30, was not a pretty picture in the days after Sudden Death was approved and before delay-clocks came along and eventually gained preferred status. The ILC rule is inherently imperfect, even if all players and TDs understood it and used it properly when under the stress of extreme time pressure. (Which will never happen.)
If we still used nothing but analog clocks for rated SD games, I would play less rated chess and no rated chess at all faster than G/60.
Despite that, some players see delay as…a crutch, or something artificial or unfair. There are two branches to this: First, there are the cutthroat blitz junkies, who just want to win, period. They are easy to dismiss.
More troubling to me are honest players, decent guys, who truly believe that if you play SD you take a chance—both players. If you run out of time in an ending you would hold against Carlsen 99% of the time…them’s the breaks.
I see their point, but I totally disagree. If you want “pure” chess then do not use a clock at all. Once you introduce a time limit, of any kind, that sullies the perfection they seek.
Whether delay is better than increment, or vice versa, or whether five seconds is not enough and 10 or 30 seconds is better, is debatable. What seems clear to me—and I am glad both USCF and FIDE agree—is that the use of technology to bring a measure of sanity and sportsmanship to SD chess games is a Good Thing.