When to use double rounds?

Running Chess Tournaments
1

I’m working on putting together plans for a Rapid/Blitz tournament and am wondering about the use of double rounds. I have done small Blitz events in the past where for a time control of 5|0 or 3|2 I’ve used double rounds. For the upcoming tournament some folks are asking for a 10|0 time control and I’m not sure if I would use double rounds with that control or not. Anything slower than that I wouldn’t.

Anyone have any experiences to share about time controls and double rounds?

Thank you for your time.

Matt Markland

2

Not sure what you mean by ‘double rounds’ Are you looking for a double RR event or are you looking to pair players in two games, one with each color, in each round? The latter has the advantage of eliminating color issues.

Either way comes down to making sure you’ve got enough time to run all the planned rounds if most of them go the maximum.

I would personally recommend against 5/0 or 10/0, because not having any increment or delay can complicate rulings, and modern clocks handle increment/delay settings well. (Those with a box full of old BHB-style analog clocks might prefer no increment/delay, I guess.)

3

My plan is two games per round; if there is a better way to describe that please let me know.

I guess I’m wondering if there are any standards out there for these sorts of time controls? I know that 3|2 and 5|0 are popular in blitz and I see 10|5 and 5|2 as available online. Would these be good starting points for OTB time controls? Is there a way to query and see what time controls are being used on USCF rated blitz events?

Thanks!

Matt

4

You can query by time control on the current MSA page.

But here’s a breakdown of blitz events since 1/1/2023 with all instances of time controls that were used 10 or more times. This should give you an idea of what is popular, you still need to figure out what works for you, taking into account both site time constraints and player preferences.

sec_time_ctl count
------------ -----
G/5;d0        2067
G/3;+2        1899
G/10;d0        871
G/3;d2         668
G/5;+2         340
G/5;d2         246
G/5;+3         142
G/5;+0         132
G/5;d3         109
G/5;d5         102
G/5;d1          47
G/5;+5          44
G/5;+1          34
G/8;+2          30
G/7;d0          19
G/10;+0         14
G/7;d3          12
G/3;+5          11
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5

Is there a difference between G/5;d0 and G/5;+0?

6

Yeah, I noticed that, too. I don’t plan to change the current parsing code to address that, I’ll mention it to Leago. Not sure if it makes more sense to standardize it at d0 or +0, opinions?

7

Rule 5b1c points to d/0, which I guess is d0 in your options:

5B1c. If no delay or increment is to be used then d/0 indicates no delay or increment time.

1 Like
8

An A player who was also a good once commented to me that 5/0 is superior to any delay/increment. So I asked him if he got satisfaction with winning a dead drawn position because he could physically move the pieces and hit the clock faster than his opponent and he replied they are his second favorite wins with his favorite ones being dead lost and clocking his opponent who is mopping up.

9

remember to add the 0 seconds to the base time if the clock doesn’t do it automatically :wink:

10

Wanting to win this badly was one reason why I stopped playing in chess tournaments.

1 Like
11

I once thought about optional double games for evening less formal club games.
If both players agree after their first game is over to play another (could even be a reduced time control if necessary 1@G/30+10 - 2@G/20+10 for 5 weeks) then they do that otherwise record as .5 bye.
I’d probably pair 1v2 after 1st week and assign pairing byes for missed rounds based on rating

12

This is great, can you pull all quick and dual time controls? Or show me how myself? We run a lot of g/15;d0 and g/40;d5, curious how popular those are.