When I used to play in tournaments, almost all of us had analog chess clocks with red flags that fell when you went over the time limit. This was achieved by the minute hand “lifting” the flag until it fell. A (very) few people had clunky digital clocks, but they were nothing fancy. Just enter the time limit, and go.
It allows me to set up time and moves the way I want to, but the “Delay Time” feature left me completely befuddled. I started Googling, and found that not only is there delay time used in games, but there are several different kinds. The “Fischer” kind adds seconds or something and so on, and I don’t get it.
What the hell happened to “you have 1-1/2 hours to make 40 moves, and then 30 minutes to finish the game”, and when you pressed your button, the other guy’s clock started. And nobody got any sort of “delay time” or added seconds or anything like that.
I set my clock that I bought to 30 moves in one hour, followed by 30 minutes to finish the game. And I set “Delay Time” to 0.
My question (aside from the first one): Will what I did more or less reproduce what I’m used to? Just press the button and the other guy’s time starts (without any added time to either of us)? Am I going against the grain by doing this? Do other players uses these settings that actually add time to your clock?
Do they do this shit in tournaments? Do they actually use the Fischer delays or the Bronstein delays or any of the other strange new added time features? God, I’m old.
But… but… but, scrambling at the last minute is punishment for futsing around the rest of the time. It’s only right that a slow player should have to scramble at the end when both players have the same amount of time to begin with. You say it’s optional? Do many USCF tournaments use it now? Does the US Championship? Do the FIDE qualifying matches and world championship use it?
In terms of FIDE, I couldn’t find the world championship rules, but here (in PDF) are the rules for the Candidates Matches to determine the challenger.
So there’s some sort of time delay included in each.
I agree with Liberal.
Never having playe a time chess match in my life I still think that time delays are like Mulligans. Time control is an essential part of tournament level chess.
What’s next? Undo?
Adding a little time back to the clock after each move provides a system of dynamic adjustment to account for varying game length. Both players still have the same amount of time to complete their moves (with Fischer delays at least) and you still lose if you run out of time. You just get a little extra time if the game runs unexpectedly long.
Time delays are better than absolute time limits because games of chess can vary widely in length (in terms of number of moves). You don’t know at the outset how many moves a game of Chess is going to last. This means the players can’t really know how much time is best invested in their moves in the earlier phases of the game. This in turn means if the game turns out to be a long one, the players are going to be reduced to scrambling toward the end. This will result in poor Chess. And it is better for a Chess game to be well played than poorly played.
Time delays allow the length of the game in terms of minutes to adjust itself according to the length in terms of number of moves, avoiding the possible last minute scramble, and leading to overall better games of Chess.
Meanwhile, here’s the reason I like time delays myself. I’m a slow thinker. When playing with time delays, I at least feel like I’m playing Chess by the end of the game. Without time delays, by the end of the game, I am no longer playing Chess but am instead blindly, hopefully, helplessly shuffling pieces around at random. But that’s just me, it’s no argument for time delays in general.
Put it this way. The time limit is extrinsic to the game of Chess. It’s made necessary by physical constraints–if there were no time limit, the game might never end since a player could physically sit there forever and never make a move–but the imposition of a time limit is not part of the game, but is rather an imposition against the player’s ability to play the game. It’s a necessary imposition, but an imposition nonetheless.
An absolute time limit presents a serious imposition in some cases. The “time delay” method presents a less serious imposition in most cases, yet still fulfills the function of a time limit–making it impossible for a game to go on forever (or past some convenient amount of time).
Since we’re trying to play chess, we’d like impositions against the playing of chess to be as light as possible. So the “time delay” method is better than an absolute time limit.
All of that assumes that the time limit isn’t really part of the game, but is rather an obstacle to one’s ability to play the game. People often hesitate at this. But if you don’t agree, then tell me this: What is the correct time limit to play with when playing a game of Chess?
There isn’t one. A game of Chess can be played with any time limit the players agree to. But that suggests that the time limit isn’t really part of the game. It’s an accidental, external feature of the act of playing the game, but it isn’t part of what goes into the game itself. Similarly, the players can use any pieces they agree to use–but the choice of board and pieces isn’t part of the game of chess. It’s an accidental, external feature of the act of playing the game, but not part of what goes into the game itself.
Being good at Chess–having Chess playing skill–consists, roughly, in being good at thinking about Chess positions.
A game played with an absolute time limit will tend to reward a player who is good at thinking about Chess positions and will tend to reward a player who thinks quickly, rewarding the latter by a factor we’ll call F.
A game played on a “time delay” control scheme will tend to reward a player who is good at thinking about chess positions and will tend to reward a player who thinks quickly, rewarding the latter by a factor that is less than F.
If we are trying to measure X, and have to choose between instruments A and B to use in order to measure X, and both A and B’s measurements of X admit some interference from Y, but A admits more interference from Y than B, then B is a better instrument for our purpose of measuring X.
A game of Chess is meant to measure Chess playing skill.
So a game with time delays is better than a tournament game with an absolute time limit.
But again, this all assumes that “Chess playing skill” involves just the ability to think about Chess positions.
But it still eventually runs out. Why not just add another 30 minutes to the time? Instead of 40 moves in 2 hours or whatever, just make it 40 moves in 2-1/2 hours. The time delays just seem like one more thing to have to keep up with. Or rather, TWO more things, considering that the USCF uses one sort of delay and FIDE uses another.
Because you don’t know in advance whether the game will be long or short. It’s a way of dynamically updating the time pressure to respond to the varying length of the game.
[…sigh…] I suppose you’re right. I’m just going to miss the frantic banging of the clocks that signaled a game approaching the 40th move. But I’m just nostalgic, I guess.
Was there any controversy at all when it was introduced?
What controversy existed was mainly over the fact that different games in the same event were effectively played under different time controls, depending on who owned what clock (the days of tournament directors supplying clocks for all games in an open event are long gone). Some people who never get into time trouble dislike the new feature, period, but they are a small minority.
In the old days, a player with, say, rook and knight pawn versus a rook AND with more time, might be a nice guy and offer a draw. Or he might be a reasonable guy and advance the pawn quickly to the sixth and see if the defender knew what he was doing. Or he might be an @$$hole and make forty-nine irrelevant rook moves then advance his pawn one square forward, lather, rinse, repeat and hope the defender ran out of time. Or he might follow A or B above if he could see the shoe being on the other foot next time, and C if he couldn’t.
And so what does he do now under the new time rules? (Sorry to be obtuse. I just still don’t really understand the necessity for the system. Maybe answering this question will help me understand.)
If I understand your question, I think the answer is just that under the new rules, the guy can’t play tricks like this anymore. His opponent has time to think. So the guy has to actually play the position instead of trying to rush his opponent and forcing a win on time.
Right. But think about what? If he doesn’t know how to draw against a Rook and g-pawn, how will extra time help? And how much time? How much is enough? If five seconds is added for each move, maybe he needed five more. I think I get the concept that it gives players more time, but I don’t get the arbitrary nature of X seconds and the different implementations under the Fischer clock and the Bronstein clock. It just seems pointless to me. I do get that some games are longer than others, but that has always been the case. So, why five seconds? Why not six? It kind of reminds me of that scene from There’s Something About Mary, where he picks up the crazy hitchhiker guy who has the idea to do a Six Minute Abs video to compete with the Seven Minute Abs one. And Stiller’s character says, “How about a Five Minue Abs video?” And the crazy guy just loses it, screaming, “You can’t do abs in five minutes! It takes six!”