Well, okay, many of my games are a long drawn out and agonizing death for the King, but I’m asking about controls. Rereading the rulebook made me curious:
Are there any other time controls currently in use and/or popular that don’t use a final or only sudden death control?
At first I was wondering if it were even possible to define that. Then I realized as I was framing my question that one could (I suppose) have a control of infinitely repeating 40/2 or something similar, adjourning as necessary. I also suppose one could actually hold a theoretical tournament or match with no time control at all? Come to that, are hourglass-form tournaments legal to rate?
But are any such controls actually ever used in tournament play?
Thanks for perusing (and hopefully scratching my curiosity itch!)
Yes. In New Jersey the Hamilton Chess Club runs quads where the time limit is 40/80 15/30 15/30 etc. Their tournament tends to drag out a long time.
Back before SD time controls tended to be 40/2 25/1 25/1 etc. There would be adjournments after 6 hours. As much as I hate sudeen death at times, it beats 7 - 8 hour games!
Until the sudden-death infection began in the mid-80s, standard time controls were 40 (sometimes 45 or 50) in 2, then 20 (sometimes 16 [the FIDE standard] or 25) in 1, repeated. There are probably still a few tournaments that use these. But SD is a bit like heroin – the first taste doesn’t do much ahrm, but it creates an addiction that’s hard to shake. In my opinion, SD was a solution looking for a problem. It eliminated the extremely rare “marathon” game, at the cost of debasing play in many, many games. It also created the “insufficient losing chances” problem we’re still wrestling with.
Those were the days! I once had a game that was adjourned three times before ending in a draw after about 90 moves. On another occasion, I had two games, back to back on the same day, that extended over 16 hours.
CICL (Chicago Industrial Chess League) still uses 45/90, 30/60 (indefinitely repeats) for regular match games. The players have a right to adjurn after the second time control.
They only used sudden death for the play-off tournament games.
My understanding is that the SD time control came into favor for two reasons: avoiding adjournments at any cost, and avoiding pairing delays in Swiss events.
I’ve played in many events where rounds were delayed by a single game, usually in the next to last round, the outcome of which would affect the top pairings for the final round. In these cases, even adjournment is impossible.
The secondary (or, rarely, tertiary) SD time control puts a finite length on the game. I understand the need for that in Swiss events. My objection is this: if we have a finite ending time which allows for timely pairings and therefore does not inconvenience the TDs or other players in any way, WHY have a first control at all?
Instead of 35/90, SD/1, why not just G/150? If I want to use two hours on my first 30 moves, why shouldn’t I be able to? I still must meet the final SD control.
I take personal credit for getting NTD Jerry Weikel to give up adjournments after my game ended after 3:30am, on the Saturday night before a 9:30am Sunday morning round. I wasn’t the only person with a game that went late, but I think mine was the last one at the two big Reno tournaments. My two games that day took a total of over 14 hours, the adjourned one going about 140 moves.
It’s been tried. There wasn’t any groundswell of support for it. One practical objection is that it would tend to make more games last the full 5 or six hours, instead of many ending at the first time control.
If the total time is 2 hours or less, I agree. But over 2 hours, it becomes excruciatingly boring when a dead-lost opponent refuses to resign and refuses to move quickly.
Instead of G/150, make it 40/90 and SD/1. The secondary control should always be 1 hour, to avoid problems resetting clocks after the first control.
Hmm, there’s another advantage to that, as well. White must make one more move than black (at every other control), thus partially nullifying white’s move advantage at the start of the game.
I’ve played in a few non-sudden death tournaments, mostly in Southern Illinois. Had a few adjourned games, even. I find the NSD games just as enjoyable as the SD games. But still, it is nice to know that in most tournaments, there is a time by which all the games must be done, and this goes double as an organizer/director.
