Improving some TD Tips in the US Chess rulebook

[wintdoan]

@relyea

I understand everything in Mr. Smythe and Mr. Doan’s posts immediately above. Neither of them address the issue of why we should consider the first time control “Time’ up” as opposed to a later time control, or none at all if we have no sudden death control. My point is that Mr. Doan’s suggestion that 12 O’Clock signifies “Time’s up” suggests a meaning not usually associated with having to make one finite number of moves in a game as opposed to another. I’d have more sympathy for his idea if he were to set clocks so that the last time control were to expire at 12 O’Clock, but of course for the vast majority of the time that analog clocks were a thing, no one knew what time that would be.

Alex Relyea

But you need to standardize on something, don’t you? (Could you imagine if White wanted the first TC to expire at one time and Black wanted it to expire at another?) The only thing we know is that all games have to be in the first time control.

I’m suggesting (which I don’t believe is controversial) that 12:00 is the standard (non-chess) “time’s up” indicator.