All this talk about time controls makes me wonder how many games are actually lost on time?
What’s been your experience?
What’s more of a factor, age/strength of players or the total time allowed?
Do you mean lost because we run out of time or lost because we’re running out of time?
These days, most of the games I lose seem to be in the second category — I don’t get to play using my favorite, slower time controls. But I’ll add that I have a player in my tournaments who loses about half of his games and 90% are because he runs out of time.
I mean games that were won because someone’s flag fell and any claim made about it was upheld, not games that were lost because a player made a mistake in tine trouble. (I’ve had my share of those.)
I suspect most flag falls don’t result in a TD being summoned, or at least not in games I’ve played or events I directed.
It isn’t something we can track in the ratings system (and I don’t see a lot of value in trying to track it, either), I’m just curious.
Years ago there was a player in Nebraska who would write 1FF on the results sheet when his opponent’s flag fell, that got recorded as a forfeit at least once.
That’s what I figured you meant & I was just being a stinker.
But I’m serious that I have a player who routinely loses on time and often in even or winning positions. I’ve got another interesting player who takes his time down to 1 second in more than half of his games and then plays 30 moves with one second and still wins most of his games. He says he plays lots of bullet chess online. I’ve seen him lose on time maybe twice when a move surprised him that he was unprepared for.
There was a player like that in Nebraska, a master and former state champion, who would use half or more of his time BEFORE his first move and play half of the game with little time left on his clock, didn’t seem to cause him problems.
As a player, in my nearly 30 years playing, I only recall losing on time twice in standard play; in both cases, I think I would have resigned anyway, but it technically was a time loss. I may have won once or twice by calling the flag. In neither case was a TD required, that I remember.
As a director, I think I was called a couple times to declare the game lost. In both cases, they were younger and lower strength kids in rapid games.
What do you think of a clock that rounds the seconds down on the screen, meaning when a player has nine-tenths of a second left it rounds down and shows zero (making it appear the player has run out of time) instead of rounding up and showing one second left?
Is this a hypothetical question or is there a clock this poorly designed?
This sounds like the opposite of the old USCF Quartz clock, which would round the clock back up to the next full second after each move. If you were REALLY fast you could play a lot of moves without having a single second tick off the clock.
I saw a player play at least a dozen moves to win a game with the flag hanging by a thread, and just one second ticked off afterwards before the flag fell.
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There is a clock that does this. The clock does have a way around the issue since you can choose if you want to see the tenths of a second shown on the screen. However, not everyone is going to know that you should choose to have the tenths shown or want to have the tenths shown.
A different clock, the DGT 1500, does it the correct way. If you choose not to have the tenths shown on the screen, it rounds the seconds up.
Is that the same clock that you can easily reset the game time by mistake – which is much worse design issue.
I think rounding is the least evil option for clocks in chess games but still with half the issue – showing the tenths flickering away is distracting to me – I am too slow now for it to matter.
This makes me wonder how clocks that are not displaying the minutes do it – basically the same display choice – but even less of a practical issue.
The Quartz clock was a real issue for 5/0 blitz where games were more like 6/0 
funny not being able to flag an opponent who only had a few seconds left.
They should do it the way they do the clocks in basketball, either only show tenths of a second in the last minute or in the last 10 seconds. Or perhaps only show tenths of a second when that side of the clock is not running.
There are some clocks that display the seconds with a smaller digits which is pretty good idea for most of the game when seconds don’t matter much then not good in time trouble when seconds matter.
I think most folks do not explain their clocks beyond an occasional how to pause the clock.
Of course, if you care you can ask else you might get surprised in thinking you have 12 seconds left when you only have 1.2
The Excalibur/GameTimer has the capability of showing the seconds in smaller font (not everybody knows about the option) while showing the minutes in large numbers in the main area of the display. When the clock goes under 10 minutes it switches to showing minutes and seconds in the main area.
The original DGT/NA does not show the seconds until under 20 minutes when the clock switches frim HH:MM to MM:SS. When you see 1:24 in hours and minutes that means the actual time ranges from 1:24:00 to 1:24:59.
I’m not sure if US Delay or Bronstein Delay are more likely to cause flagging. With Bronstein Delay you always know exactly how much time you have before flagging in this move but you may not be sure whether or not you are past your delay time and eating into your base time. With US Delay you always know whether or not you are still in the delay portion or are eating into your base time, but you have to mentally add the base time and the remaining delay time to see how much time you have this move before flagging. Increment is easier to make calculations for but can also extend a game more than the same amount of delay would.
The Game Timer 2 is a great full featured clock that should have just got a better plunger/switch.
Not good for blitz abuse – but for classical time controls it was a loud.
I still have a small herd of them just in case I am running something where no clocks are available.
I thought about breaking them out for an increment tournament tomorrow instead of the older DGT NA.
In time pressure the only time I get to peek at my clock is when my opponent’s clock is running (sometimes) and once I am under 10 seconds left I don’t even bother - I try to keep “just move” in mind – that seldom works and I wind up flagging (a lot and half the time it was worth playing on)
I would prefer using Bronstein Delay but that would confuse folks who are use to delay – even the first guy who did not like the Saitek not showing both the delay time & base time at same time did not like Bronstein
I won my game on time, flag fell of a 1580 opponent in East Tennessee on Aug 22nd.
G60/d5 was the time control.
Gary, check to see if your Game Timers can handle an increment or delay above 19 seconds.
Delay up to 19 seconds
Increment (Accum) up to 60 seconds default is 30
Less than 3%. Age/strength is a factor.
A non-Scholastic G/25;d5 might be 20% –
I once flagged trying to win an opposite color bishop +1 pawn ending where I started out with an extra 5 minutes and just forgot the clock trying to convert. My strategy was to press until I had about 5 seconds left then concede the draw.
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