Chess clock

All Things Chess
41

To be clear - there were technical problems, but I don’t thing there were any non-TD players who really noticed. I had a great time at the Hawaii event, as did the three young men I brought with me. There’s a difference between pointing our areas that can be improved and dismissing the entire event as “total crap”.

And, yes, I have heard mumblings about financial difficulties. But, I have no personal knowledge about that.

Finally, the Blitz problem referred to above was NOT in Hawaii.

We’ve been to many places and not (yet) returned. I would go back to Hawaii in a flash (with a different organizer…)
In fact, I was just there. I understand that the property is now a major chain hotel, and only marginally affected by the volcano.

42

The Hawaii event was an organizational fiasco, it was one of the main reasons US Chess went to running the US Open in-house.

I don’t know that it would be possible to run a US Open in Hawaii now that we have the 4 invitational events (Denker, Barber, Girls and Senior), but otherwise I think one could be run, it would probably still lose money, but I don’t think it would be catastrophic.

43

Just to be clear, the clock furnished in Hawaii was not the DGT NA, was it? I don’t think that model even existed at the time. Or, if it did exist, it was capable of being set for 2 time controls right from the start, so it would not have been necessary for the organizers to figure out a way to add time manually after move 40.

I’m still curious – what was the clock brand used in Hawaii?

Bill Smythe

44

The Micromate 180.

45

It was a Saitek Game Clock. If there’s a model number on it, I’m not spotting it. I appear to have been wrong about whether or not it supports an increment mode, it looks like it does.

46

Hmm, conflicting recollections. I’ve never heard of the Micromate, either that or I’ve forgotten about it since.

If it was a Saitek, it must have been the old discontinued model with a dark gray case and hard-to-press buttons.

Bill Smythe

47

I don’t think Kevin was at the US Open in Hawaii, I was, and I bought one of the clocks after the last round.

Yes, it has a dark grey case.

48

I was being mirthful.

I believe the MicroMate 180 was the first commercially available digital chess clock (upgraded from the prototype MicroMate 80 of which only 1 was ever built.) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Chess_clock.

It was used at Lone Pine in 1979.

I couldn’t find a picture and don’t have Chess Life pdf’s from the late 1970s.

Here is the patent:

pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?PageNum=0& … %2F4247925

maskeret.com/cgi-bin/wiwp.cgi?ti … 10&nume=13

49

Just curious, but does anybody know why the Chronos regular clocks are so hard to get? I mean, they’ve been popular for so many years, why don’t they just manufacture more of them.

50

There are now a lot of almost-as-good-but-much-cheaper brands available, such as most of the DGT line, as well as VTEK, and others.

Bill Smythe