In your opinion what are the pros & cons of playing G/29 vs G/30?
For scholastic & adult players
I believe the difference is that G/30 is dual rated, while G/29 is only quick rated.
At the adult level, some players would rather not risk their “real” rating on such quick time controls. Thus, G/29 tourneys are likely to draw more players than G/30.
On the other hand, scholastic players are used to playing at these types of speeds, and usually don’t use anywhere near all their time. Since they’re trying to establish “real” ratings, I think most of them would prefer G/30.
With the rules change passed in Orlando, this questionwill largely be moot after 1/1/12. Since one will then add the clock time and the amount fo delay or increment to get the rating system, most events of 25 minutes and up will be dual rated.
If a tournament is G25 d/5, then one adds the 25+5 =30 so this is dual rated. If a club wants something rated quick only then the time control plus the delay will have to be less than 30. G29 without delay would do the trick as would G24 d5.
How popular are G/15 tournaments? I remember when Quick ratings first came out, that G/15 were popular, but kinda fell off of the popularity band wagon pretty quick.
I experimented by running tournaments of nearly identical conditions, except one group was G/29 and the other was G/30. I found that the G/30 always was more popular, and the number of players who wanted their action chess games rated regularly evidently was much greater than those who only wanted them Quick-rated.
Are you talking about adults or kids?
Answers will probably vary from one group of players to another. A group that already plays a lot of G/30 are likely to give a different answer than a group that prefers G/90 for regular rated games.
Just try things in your area and discover what works.
Aha! I was hoping something like this would happen. It ends the necessity for an organizer to advertise deceptively in order to get his G/25 d/5 events regular-rated (dual-rated).
There is one minor drawback, though. G/29 d/3 will now be dual-rated. I’m hoping that current organizers of G/29 d/3, if they want to keep their events quick-only, will switch to G/26 d/3 rather than to G/29 d/0.
Back to the positive side, the rating method will now be determined solely by the time control, and this is a good thing.
Question: Would a control of, for example, G/10 d/20 now be regular-rated (dual-rated)? Or is there a limit (of, say, 5 seconds) to how many of the 30 units can be delay seconds rather than main minutes?
Second question: If a player brings an analog clock to a G/25 d/5 event, and his opponent lacks a clock, is the organizer allowed to specify that his game be played at G/25 rather than G/30? (I certainly hope so. A player shouldn’t be allowed to gain extra time by furnishing obsolete equipment.)
Bill Smythe
There is no limit stated in the new rule. (For instance, any time control with a 30 second increment would be at least dual rated.)
In fact, the default is that the game would be played with each player having 25 minutes on the analog clock. If the time control is “thirty minutes per player with analog clocks, twenty-five minutes plus five seconds delay per player with digital clocks,” that must be stated explicitly in all advertising. Rewarding provision of obsolete equipment without explicit advertising is over once the repeal of 5Fa takes effect January 1, 2012. (And I, for one, will be celebrating.)
I was under the impression that the base time control had to be the same for all clocks, delay and non-delay, and that advertising a dual-time-control would no longer be possible.
I’ll join your celebration!! This change is even better than I had hoped, and is long overdue.
The only further change I’d like to see is that, if player A furnishes an analog clock and player B arrives late with a digital, player B would have the right to immediately substitute his own clock – provided, of course, that he does so before playing his first move, and adjusts the clock to compensate for his late arrival.
Regardless of whether a different base is disallowed completely, or merely must be announced in pre-event publicity, I hope most organizers will opt for the former, and not allow a difference.
I’m not quite as fond of that part. I would have preferred that the number of minutes in the main control be required to count for at least 25 (or perhaps 20) of the minimum 30 units required for regular (dual) rating.
Still in all, great job, rules committee and delegates. Congrats!
Bill Smythe
Well, I believe that sort of passed; i.e., it will become minor variation (so no need to announce it in advanced publicity) of 42 D.
Greatest!! Looks as though the delegates are now passing some truly sensible legislation in the area of rules – with bigtime help, presumably, from the rules committee.
Bill Smythe
You can thank the maker of that motion, Steve Immitt.
I might have known. Thank you, Steve!
Bill Smythe
Bill,
Over in the Issues Forum I posted a portion of the unofficial summary of the Delegates Meeting that pertains to rules issues. You can find the complete summary report here: is.gd/5i8Cj9
For some reason, folks there would rather obsess on Sam Sloan and the usual nonsense, rather than what really matters: getting time control and time delay/clock rules and boundaries exactly right. How silly of them.
Yes, you got what you wanted—and what I did not think the Delegates would pass. G/25 played with an analog clock will be Dual-rated. I suspect that had the delegates voted on a one-issue motion focused on just that it might not have passed. With that included—by default—in a sweeping motion about allowable time controls it sort of slipped through.
I am not thrilled with lowering the boundary for Regular to G/25.0, under any circumstances, but it’s not the End of Chess, either. My concerns are purely practical: Players who do not savor the nuances of this stuff as much as we do still scratch their heads; now it has changed again.
How many players will get the memo about the abolition of the 5Fa time deduction for delay by the start of next year? I bet we will see players set clocks with five minutes deducted from the announced time control, out of habit, for years and not months to come after the rules change in January. (More so some places than others, as discussed.)
Also, if I see a TLA for a tournament at G/25, can I safely assume that will be Dual rather than Quick-only? That’s another one that might confuse players or even organizers of such events, at first.
Of course we assume Mr. Nolan and friends will tweak the software appropriately for online submission of tournament reports.
This could go to Issues, I reckon, once they get done chewing over how Sam Sloan wound up in New Jersey…
It passed despite bigtime opposition from the Rules Committee.
Thanks for the link. I’ll look at it later.
Well, you were there and I wasn’t, so I suppose your hunch might be better than mine. But it still “feels” to me, from the other posts here, as though it didn’t merely slip through. It looks like a complete, thorough, logical package which the delegates passed enthusiastically.
Probably true. Players, and even TDs, invariably take a long time to “get the memo”. But it does happen, eventually. Good ideas (like this one) almost always win out in the long run.
Back in January 1996, when delay clocks (and a 5-second delay) became standard, I myself did not get the memo right away – even though I was one of the earliest proponents of the concept. 
Only when another player at my club pointed it out to me did I bother to put the rulebook on one knee and the rules updates (from the rating supplements) on the other, and put two and two together to figure out how sweeping this change really was.
I don’t look at it as a lowering from G/30 to G/25. I see it as a reversal of the original raising (back in 1996) from d/0 to d/5.
That’s an excellent point. Organizers of G/25 through G/29 need to get into the habit of explicitly announcing the delay, whether d/5 or d/3 (or, heaven forbid, d/0). Either that, or explicitly announce “dual-rated” or “quick-rated”. And the Chess Life editor, along with those who proofread the TLAs for this website, need to ride herd heavily on this point to make sure the new standards are followed.
Nah, let’s keep it here, where everybody can see it, free of the political muck-raking.
Bill Smythe
For the record I did not attend the Delegates Meeting this year.
My next rant on Issues will be how oblivious some folks are to the economic status of the vast majority of players who might like to attend a US Open—until they crunch the cost-numbers.
That is the biggest reason for dwindling attendance, as seems self-evident to me…what do I know?
I have played in one US Open (Cherry Hill 2002) and visited another (Philadelphia 1993). Both were within a two-hour drive/100-mile radius of my home. (As the road runs it might be a hair more than 100 miles to Cherry Hill, but don’t tell that to the crows.)
I paid for five nights hotel at Cherry Hill, which was not cheap but do-able. Had I been required to add airfare—or 900 miles worth of road-trip gas expense at today’s prices—to the overall cost I could not have played there…at least, not without contortions and unwise trade-offs in my ‘real-life’ budget and finances.
And I am—very relatively speaking—better off than some patzers I know…
It was dicussed at length in workshop and on the floor. I do not think this “slipped through” at all.