I am thinking of starting an annual rapid championship at my club. My club currently doesn’t do any quick-only tournaments. There seems to me to be two basic types of quick-only time controls. One with time controls close to G/30 and the other with shorter time controls like G/15. I was thinking of having two rapid tournaments in one day, one with a longer time control and one with a shorter time control. What time controls would you recommend? Also, I want to have one of the rapid tournaments be one section and the other be two sections. Which one do you think would be better to split up into two sections?
How about G/26 inc/3 and G/10 inc/3?
I’m guessing the first would attract more players, but maybe still not enough to warrant splitting it into two sections, at least on its debut attempt.
Bill Smythe
My club (A6002200) has an annual quad night of G/25;d3 and two other nights with G/10;d3 and G/15;d3. The Excalibur/GameTimer clocks we own have a G/25 pre-set but not a G/26 pre-set.
If you are bent on splitting into two sections on one but not the other, I’d split the one with the fewest rounds unless you expect a lot more players in the other. It’s not the time control or the number of rounds, it’s the players/per round that should drive the decision.
I’m not an organizer or a TD, but I would be inclined to advertise that you reserve the option to split into two sections if the player/round ratio exceeds “x” (I leave it to the better informed to compute what that sweet spot would be).
The obvious advantage of a G/15 tournament is that you can run almost double the number of rounds in a given amount of time relative to the G/29. If you have enough players to support two sections, then the obvious one to have two sections is the G/29. The only (likely) way to make a G/15 work with multiple sections is to run 6 or 8 player RR’s—a 7 round SS is going to turn into a pairing mess towards the end unless you have a lot of players, which you clearly won’t have if you split the sections (and may not have even if you don’t).
I’m currently leaning towards having a G/24;d5 with 4 rounds and two sections (Open and U1600) and a G/10;d3 with 6 rounds in one section. Thoughts?
You did say both tournaments in 1 day. In which case the G/24 will be a 4 hour or more event. The G/10 event will be more than a 2 hour event. You will need time for meals during or between events. Also, you may want extra time between events. As a result you might want to consider making the G/10 event only 5 rounds. It depends on the time framed you want to work with, and also which tournament you want to run first.
Larry S. Cohen
d3 seems more common for quick than d5. Splitting the difference with G/25;d4 would also cater to clocks that have a G/25 preset but not a G/24 preset.
Yes but d3 seems a bit too fast to me for a longer quick-rated time control. FIDE uses 10 second increment for Rapid. Also, having d5 for the slower time control tournament and d3 for the faster time control tournament helps differentiate the two tournaments more.
But they call it . . . quick.
Edit: The default delays are defaults for a reason. That reason is because they used to be national standards. And they were national standards for a reason.
Yes, they call it quick, not blitz.
Five second delay is the “default” delay but CCA now uses ten second delay
What does CCA use for its quick tournaments?
Alex Relyea
CCA uses 2 second delay for its G/7 and G/10 events. (Yes, technically G/7 d2 is blitz, not quick.) It recently ran a few G/25 d5 dual rated side events.
As much respect as I have for Bill Goichberg’s business success and longstanding support for American chess, CCA is not always right. This is an instance where they are wrong.
How about backing up a bold statement such as “This is an instance where they are wrong.”
I’m confused of the intent of the original poster.
He asks for ideas about what time controls/formats to use for his rapid championships and then when people suggested to him, the OP already got one decided and doesn’t like our ideas…
So… Yea. 
~Acerook
P.S. Is this also to help solve your “quick-rating” problem?
The purpose of delay is to provide a period for an immediate reaction to an opponent’s move without charging time to the player.
The period within which a reaction can reasonably be considered immediate can vary as a function of overall game length, but in no case can that period reach a leisurely ten seconds.
If the intent is to mimic increment, then use increment. Long delays defeat the purpose of having a delay.
This is very similar to what I posted when someone first posited 10 second delay. Needless to say, I strongly agree with Mr. Price.
Alex Relyea
One purpose of delay is for a short reaction time but there is nothing wrong with a longer delay. Sure, you can use increment but there are arguments for using a longer delay over a longer increment. For example, with increment players can gain additional time just by repeating moves, there is more of a chance the start time of the next round can be disrupted with increment, and the popular blue Saitek clock doesn’t do increment.
The problem—if that’s the word—is that as soon as digital clocks became widely available, USCF settled on 5-second delay, while FIDE chose 30-second increment.
There are reasons both happened, but that led to the unfortunate situation in which many players and TDs assume that “delay” means short reaction time, while “increment” means longer reflection time…just because that’s what they got used to.
I used to subscribe to the view Alex and Brennan espouse: Delay should be just enough for reaction time, to hold a clearly non-losing position and keep things close to sane near the end of SD controls.
Then I played rated games with 10-second delay and also games with 10- and 15-second increment, both online and rated OTB. I saw the light.
It is good to have time to think. The more time to think the better, for anything slower than Blitz or G/(insert your personal number here). Lopping a few minutes off base time to allow a few more seconds each move is a good thing. At some point that might go too far, i.e. if the delay/increment is half or more of the base time value, (and even there I enjoy G/15, Inc-10 online)…but up to a point it is good.
G/45+10 glows with more goodness than does G/50+5. (where “+” could be either delay or increment) I have played both and know this to be true.
Theoretical arguments that delay “by definition” should be 5 seconds or less—simply a reaction time sanity check—are plausible. Try longer delay in rated play at any control slower than G/45 or so and you will see the light, as I did. It’s not definition, it’s just tradition.
Just because USCF went with fast delay and FIDE went with relatively long increment does not mean those standards are sacred. At the risk of confusing players who have dealt with enough confusion since SD and digital clocks came along, the upside to trying different values for delay and increment outweighs the downside. Here in the USA we did not see much increment for a long time; the rest of the world saw very little or no delay/Bronstein, it seems.
If anyone tries a 30-second delay event, as was threatened here not long ago, please let us know how it goes.