On the shorter Chronos clock, you can use one of the four “F” settings or use setting “TN-1” to set the clock for G/90;inc30. Two advantages of using one of the four “F” settings are: 1) they allow you to set seconds on the base time when setting the clock so you can manually add the increment time to the base time when setting the clock in order to get the increment time for move one since the clock doesn’t automatically give the increment for move one and, 2) they allow tenths of a second to be seen when you are low on time. However, if you use one of the four “F” settings the time won’t increment above 99:59. Do you think it’s OK to set the clock for G/90;inc30 using one of the four “F” settings or would you avoid it due to the possibility of the clock not incrementing above 99:59?
Hmm, I often play my opening moves quickly. At G/90 inc/30, if I played each of my first 25 moves in 2 seconds or less, my time would want to increment past 99:59. Oops.
What does the clock do if this happens? Does it just stick at 99:59? Or does it wrap around to 0:00, and later “decrement” to 99:59 when it drops below 1:00:00?
Bill Smythe
With a thirty second increment, if the time is at say 99:50 and you press the clock, the clock will show 99:59. On your next turn the clock will immediately start counting down from 99:59. This means that the clock isn’t incrementing past 99:59 and just not showing it on the screen.
I just tried something similar on my very old Chronos (circa 1996). That clock has only one increment mode, and it’s just for a single control.
I set it for 9:59:00 inc/30, and started it. After a few quick moves, it froze both sides at 00:00. Not what I expected – especially since this old model doesn’t have a halt-at-end option!
Bill Smythe
Hmmm… My old Chronos clock (I don’t remember when I got it, but I believe it’s one of the original models) doesn’t have an increment mode at all, and that’s what made me buy a ZMart II and then a DGT North American when increment time controls started becoming popular. But then I found out that there is a non-intuitive way to set the Chronos for increment time controls. I forget which exact mode it is or what they call it, but it allows an initial time control of x moves in y minutes, followed by endless repeating secondary controls. So if you want, for example, G/90 inc 30, you would set the initial TC for 1 move in 90 minutes, and the endlessly repeating TC for 1 move in 30 seconds. The only functional difference between this and a standard increment TC is that you don’t get the initial increment (“before move 1”). But that is easily remedied by simply adjusting the initial time to 90:30 before starting. I don’t know what happens in this mode if the “increment” makes the total time greater than 99:59, but I suspect it would just switch to an hours:minutes display (the Chronos is certainly capable of such a display). I’m too busy and/or lazy (take your pick) at the moment to get out my clock and try it.
ETA: Actually, I think this mode probably starts out with an hours:minutes display, so it would initially read 1:30 rather than 90:00. In this case, there’s no need to worry about the 99:59 problem. Instead, you have the problem of not always seeing the increments displayed right away, because there are no seconds in the display. But if you’re playing quickly in the opening, you will see your minutes increase every few moves. The clock is adding the 30 seconds each move, but rounding the display to minutes.
An update on my previous post: I did get out my clock and try this mode, and it’s better than I thought. The initial display shows hours, minutes, and seconds (1:30:00), so you do see each increment as it is added. The display doesn’t have a problem until the time gets above 9:59:59, and that would require blitzing for over 1000 moves – so, not a problem at all. You can set this up with “Chess Progressive Mode I” (CH-P1). The default settings are 40 moves in 2 hours, followed by 20 moves in 1 hour repeating indefinitely, but after selecting this TC, just edit the number of moves to 1 for each TC and adjust the times accordingly. Then save the altered setting. This setting is what automatically comes up on my clock every time I turn it on.
I think your old Chronos model might be the same as mine, but I’m not sure. If you have CH-P1, you probably also have CH-P3, which is essentially increment with one time control. The default setting for CH-P3 is a ridiculous G/20 inc/6, but you can easily change it to anything sensible like G/90 inc/30.
You should use CH-P3 rather than CH-P1 for increment. Using CH-P1 with 1/mm 1/ss to simulate increment has two serious shortcomings. First, the main time mm cannot exceed 9:59. Second, if either player’s time expires, that player can “unflag” just by pressing his button as though nothing had happened.
This CH-P1 behavior is so different from what you describe that now I’m thinking our two models may not be the same after all. Either that, or you’re thinking of CH-1 rather than CH-P1. My CH-1 behaves identically to the way you describe CH-P1.
While we’re throwing monkey wrenches around, you might want to try DL-CU on your (my) old Chronos. That means “delay, move count, unlimited”. It is intended for something like 40/120 20/60; d/5 (40 moves in 120 minutes, then 20 moves every 60 minutes indefinitely, all with a 5-second delay). But you could set it instead for 1/60 1/0:30; d/5, thus giving (essentially) G/60 inc/30 d/5 – game in 60 minutes with a 30-second increment and a 5-second delay. How sweet is that? The only problem is that, as in another mode above, a player can unflag just by pressing his button. Oh well.
Bill Smythe
We must have different models, and the naming of the various modes must differ between models. My clock has no CH-1 or DL-CU mode. The CH-Px modes are the ones that can be used to simulate increment. The modes where the maximum main time is 9:59 are CH-P3 and CH-P4, so these are basically useful only for blitz (the manual explicitly says they are designed for “casual blitz”).
Much of my information comes from an online document written by our own Ken Ballou. This can be found at scribd.com/document/4460998 … onos-Clock. You need to become a Scribd member to read the full document (or you can click on an internal link to get a PDF of the full document), but the important information about setup is visible on page one whether or not you become a member. He says that you can use either CH-P1 or CH-P5, but that there is a difference in end-of-TC behavior:
[b][i]With CH-P5, the opponent’s clock will count down to 0:00:00 and then stop.
With CH-P1, when the opponent’s clock counts down to 0:00:00, there are also three bars to the left of the
opponent’s.[/i][/b]
This says nothing about being able to “unflag” by pressing a button. I would have to determine that experimentally, but don’t have time at the moment (I have to leave for work soon).
As for modes with both delay and increment, that’s just silly, and there are no such modes listed in my manual.
If yours even has a CH-P4, then we definitely have different models, and yours is newer. Mine was the last model that still had an on-off switch on the bottom. I presume that on yours, you turn it off by holding down the center button while pressing a side button five times.
With the newer models, tournament directors in our area have been known to recommend CH-P5 for increment with one time control, and CH-P6 for two. (Or something like that.)
If your clock has a mode intended for delay (not increment) and two time controls, with the second control repeating indefinitely (no sudden death), then you should be able to simulate having both increment and delay with a single control! (Just for fun, of course.) Instead of setting it for 40/120 20/60; d/5 (40 moves in 120 minutes, then 20 moves every 60 minutes indefinitely, with a 5-second delay throughout), try 1/60 1/0:30; d/5 to simulate G/60 inc/30 d/5. (That mode may have some unflagging pitfalls, however.)
Bill Smythe
Does this mean you would recommend against using one of the four “F” settings to set the clock for G/90;inc30?
Not sure. It depends how bad the consequences are. If the clock simply sits at 99:59, then starts downward at the appropriate time, that’s less serious than if it switches to 00:00 and then freezes.
The possibility of hitting 99:59 in a G/90 inc/30 situation isn’t all that tiny. It could happen if, for example, a player knows the opening 25 moves deep and flicks out each move in a couple of seconds. 
Or, I suppose, if a player completes 6 illegal moves and his opponent is awarded 2 extra minutes each time.
Bill Smythe
I would recommend not obsessing over 30 seconds at the start of a 3 hour time control.
In this case, we weren’t obsessing over 30 seconds. Much more obsessible is the not-at-all-far-fetched possibility, with G/90 being so close to the clock’s 99:59 upper limit, that the clock might hit its limit early in the game due to all the 30-second increments being added, and that the clock may then stop working altogether as a result.
Bill Smythe
Read the original post.
I did. And so should you. If you carefully read Micah’s original post at the top of this thread, you will quickly discover that its main point is contained in its last two sentences:
It is clear (at least to me) that Micah’s main concern here is that, with 90 minutes being so close to the clock’s ceiling of 99:59, there is a danger that, with several quick moves at the start of the game, a player’s main time could increment past the ceiling.
Whether this is a disaster or not depends on what the clock would do in this situation. I tried something roughly similar on my older Chronos, and found that the player’s clock went to 00:00 and both sides then froze. That would not be good.
Bill Smythe
No, you actually didn’t. The “advantage” of the F setting (see his point 1) is that you can set in the extra 30 seconds. The disadvantage is that it’s ill-behaved at 99 minutes.
With a 30 second increment, if the time is at say, 99:40 and you press the clock, the clock will only increment up to 99:59. On the players next turn, the clock will immediately start counting down from 99:59.
Another advantage (at least to some people) of the F setting is that you have the option to start seeing tenths of a second once the time goes below 100 seconds. Would you recommend using the F setting so you can add manually add the 30 second increment for move and see tenths once the time goes below 100 seconds or would you avoid it due to the clock not incrementing above 99:59?
By the way, I’m putting together a detailed document on how to set all the popular digital clocks for G/90;inc30. I hope it will be a valuable resource for TD’s and players.