I recently played in a G60 tournament in IL. The time control was Game 55 with a 5 second delay. Everything was running smoothly in the tournament and we were all watching the final game in a round. Anyhow as the players played with like white having 1 minute left and black 3 minutes I noticed that the clock had suddenly added an hour on to each sides time.
I notified the TD of this and he noticed what had happend also. We looked in the USCF handbook and couldn’t find any rule that covered such an appearance.
The two players were not keeping score since they were low on time and we found out after the game that the clock had the wrong setting it was set to add an hour after a certain amount of moves.
I want to know what the TD is supposed to do when a game is still in progress and the clock has clearly been set wrong since it adds an hour on to both sides.
Does the side who set the clock get disqualified for not knowing how to set his clock right ?
Does the TD stop the game and speculate how much time was left and reset the clocks ?
Does the TD stop the game and adjudicate it ?. If so what if the TD is not as strong as the players playing the game in dispute ?
I have seen this more and more at tournaments and Id like to know the USCF stand on this issue since it is very annoying when a game is about to end and suddenly the clock adds an hour on because the player set it wrong in the first place…
This is covered under 16P, Erroneously set clocks. “An erroneously set clock should be handled in the same fashion as a defective clock. (‘A clock with an obvious defect should be replaced, and and the time used by each player up to that time should be indicated on the new clock as accurately as possible.’) As in 16O, the director should use judgment in deciding whether to make time adjustments.” There’s more, but that’s the gist of it.
Of your options, 3 is a non-starter, and I would consider 1 only if I believed the player had acted in bad faith.
Since the clock is only off 60 minutes, the director only has to remove 60 minutes. In fact, the director does not need to re-set the clock. The director tells the players, when the clock is under 60 minutes … the flag is down. The director does not need the clocks to show 0:00 as the mode for a flag. In this case, the flag fall would be at 60:00 or less.
This sort of problem isn’t unique to digital clocks. This isn’t that different to setting an analog clock to 4:00 instead of 5:00 at the start of the game. The solution is similar, consider the flag to have fallen at 5:00 on an analog clock or when remaining time falls below one hour on a digital clock.
The big benefit to this is that the director doesn’t have to change the clock (or even know how to set the digital clock).
If a digital clock is set wrong, I’m not sure I’d trust it to come up with a reasonable indication that the time control has expired just by ignoring the extra hour.
If possible, I would want to get the clock set properly once an improper setting was noted. However, if there was only a few minutes to the time control it might interfere with the game too much to try to fix the clock, especially if it was one I was not familiar with setting.
With analog clocks it is fairly easy to both detect and correct an incorrect setting. With digital clocks it may not be all that easy to determine that the clock is improperly set or to correct it.
IMHO, one of the flaws with most digital clocks is that they do not indicate the full and exact setting of the clock while the game is in progress. Perhaps the next generation of digital clocks will have large displays enabling them to have more information about how it is set.
I wonder if the MonRoi people could extend their concept to clocks, including transmitting both the current time and the clock settings to an arbiter’s console so that all clocks can be checked to make sure they are set exactly the same and all time controls monitored from one location?
Thats true Mike. If the clock had a great deal of time, would fix the clock. In this case, player A has three plus minutes, player B has one plus minutes. When the director stops the clock during time trouble on both sides. There is a greater change the players will settle for a draw, before the director can fix the problem. The longer it takes the director to fix the problem, the better change the game will end in a draw.
I thought the only people allowed to point out anything to do with the clock are the players in the game. If both players were aware of the problem, and they continued to use their extra 60 minutes, I’d think it would be propper to cite both for blatant rule violations. I’d consider it the same situation as if the players decided to play “looser’s chess” or tic-tac-toe rather than the standard game of chess.
If the players were unaware of the situation, it would be very impractical to allow the players to continue. So it should be fine for the TD to point out the “defect” and adjust the clock to show the best estimate of time remaining.
I don’t think this is a reasonable interpretation of the rule, since it could lead to absurd consequences. E.g., a third party points out to the TD that a clock is improperly set, or is not running. By your interpretation, the TD would have to ignore the situation until it was pointed out by one of the players. (Or until it’s time to start the next round.) I would construe 16O (“A clock with an obvious defect should be replaced”) to mean just what it says.
Agreed.
True as far as it goes, but the TD should have dealt with the matter when it first came to his attention.