I think you’ve hit the nail on the head.
Mos of the tournaments way back when were two-or-three-day weekend affairs. Virtually by definition you had to be a serious, committed (and perhaps eventually committed) chessplayer to be in a tournament. Now that’s just not the case. I would guess that one-day tournaments outnumber the multiday ones by a huge margin.
Thank you for explaining the history of time controls and tournament structure since the early 70’s. I appreciate it.
This also shows where your comments in an earlier post regarding time management and discipline come from.
I do understand that the original tournament was a 2 day affair. This allowed for a calmer experience both during and between the games.
It is interesting that the tornadoes were not originally rated. Today the tornado is standard fare for most of us.
I remember hearing that the tornado was originally a G/60 affair. It does seem to be cramming a lot in when they scheduled 4 rounds of 40/80, 15/30, 15/30 in one day.
It must be an off night. A part of the “herd” is interested in technical issues. The rest are on USCF Issues trying to rouse Bill Goichberg to comment.
As I recall, most of the tornadoes were of the 40/1 variety to begin with. People were still locked into the mind set of have two or more time controls. When 40/1 became unwieldy, tournaments shifted to one time contol of Game 60 or Game 75. This gave enough time to the players. It also gave the TD, who at that time did not have a computer program or even a computer to do pairings. Doing pairings and writing them out on a pairing sheet for a 40+ player tournament took time, as did filling out the crosstables. A half hour barely was enough time for the TD to do that. Once we had computers and pairing program, tournament administration during the rounds was easier and faster. No TD complained of the 5 sec delay as it put an end to some disputes and rules problems. He had time to do his job. Only the players have had their time to rest and nourish themselves cut back. Some of the stress of tournaments has been transferred from the TD/organizer to the players.
I often hear complaints from mothers at scholastic events who want their children to have more time between rounds so that they can get them something to eat or let them have more time to play blitz with their friends. You can’t please everybody.
Most one-day scholastics around here use an ASAP schedule for each section.
In most venues that gives at least 15 minutes between rounds (the time needed to print and post pairings, have them read, and then have the players get back to their boards). If the site has the TD room, tournament room, skittles area and posting area all close to each other then that reduces the time needed for movement. If the final games are easily predictable then there have been times when the already printed pairings for the next round have been posted as the last players in the section are exiting the tournament room for the previous round. In such cases I will generally allow 15 minutes to the last players if requested.
There have been some parents and coaches that would like the schedule slowed down during the rounds that their kids’ games are running long, while all of the parents and coaches are fine with a faster schedule when their kids are not the last ones finishing (9 AM starting time tournaments that used to finish their awards ceremony at 8 PM shifted to finishing by 5:30 PM with the 5-round G/30 K-3 players finishing their awards by 2 PM or even 1 PM). Sometimes it has been the organizer that has asked for things to be slowed down, either because the local dignitary that will be doing the awards will not be there until a certain time, or because a faster schedule will not allow enough time for all of the food to be sold. When it is the organizer requesting a slow-down I have sometimes announced a specific start time for a round to build in a previously unscheduled lunch break. One small non-rated G/30 tournament I do has a start time of 9 AM, an ASAP schedule, a half-hour lunch break, a 2 PM end time, and we just see how many rounds we can get in - generally nine.
You guys obviously have a more recent “to begin with” than I do. (That shows my age.)
The first time I heard of a “tornado”, it was in Bloomington, IL (Garrett Scott) with 4 rounds in 1 day, 30/60, 30/60 etc indefinitely (the fastest allowable at the time), and fully rated.
Later, when the fastest allowable control changed to 40/60, the tornados changed with it – and it kept going from there.
As for having enough time between rounds to guarantee that all players would have time for lunch, that would leave too much time for the majority of players. Better to deprive a couple of players of a lunch break than make everybody else wait around for a long time.
Bill Smythe
The tornado tournaments I played in back in 72, 73 were 40/60. I don’t recall the 2nd time control. Most of them finished in a reasonable amount of time. I remember when 30/30 became rated. Sometimes I feel like sudden death was invented for players like me. Goichberg ran these 30/30 tournaments at the Bar Point in NYC on Tuesday nights. 3 rounds. There was one night I had a game that went over 90 moves. I kept using up almost every bit of time I had on each control. I think it was draw. My opponent and I kept taking turns giving away pieces. That was a long night of chess!
As much as I like slow chess I don’t miss 40/2 20/1 20/1 etc. Yes there have been a few games where I wish I had more then 3 hours for my moves, but they’re far and few between.
Have Chronos. Will travel. If I’m White and my opponent has already set out a digital clock that’s not a Chronos I ak him if he would mind using my Chronos. I don’t think I’ve ever had an opponent with Black insist that we use his non-Chronos digital clock.
As I recall, the Cleveland game was in the penultimate round: K+R vs. K+N.
Note that back in the day, games in the penultimate round were not adjourned. How long do you think that game would have delayed the last round back in 1985, before SD controls and delay-digital clocks?
Or do you support Sudden Death, to provide “a finite, predictable time for the end of the game,” but prefer to play Regular-rated, Master-level tournament chess with an analog clock, even with a SD control? That one I do not understand, though I know several players who feel that way. (Note I say “feel” rather than “think.”)
I play at a club which was one of the very last places in the country to hold non-SD events each week. We did not change to SD/60 for the final time control until last year. For non-SD rated games, the sentimentalist in me kind of enjoyed using an analog clock—even if today’s digital clocks are more accurate, even with the delay turned off.
Note that, sentiment aside, digital clocks are better than analogs, for those who want to know ‘exactly’ how much time is left for either side. One reason some players resist digitals to this day is the horrific, unusable digital clock model from the early '80s; Kaissa, maybe?
Even for the CCA/USATE control of 40/2, SD/1, I can live with using an analog. But for G/90 or faster—especially G/60 or faster—rated chess, I will never again use a clock without delay or increment if I can help it. The horror-show time scrambles of the late '80s/early-mid '90s…made worse by widespread misunderstanding of the inherently imperfect ILC rule…left a permanent scar on my tournament chess psyche.
What about that madness do you regard as a good thing?
BTW, Tom, do you have the score of the game in which you thumped me at Cherry Hill 2002? Can’t recall if we used my Chronos that time or not…
Eric, I would prefer to have more time between rounds, something the delay clocks take away. Since we are using time clocks, is it not a little odd that you can play a game that never ends? In US football games, when the clock runs out the the game is over. Stoppage time in soccer always seems bizarrely administrated. In chess, if you don’t manage your time well, why should you get an extra chance?
That being said, I have benefited on a number of occasions from having the delay and being able to blitz out 20 or more moves when I have less than 30 seconds on my clock. I have saved a few draws, but more importantly won a bunch of games where I have stood equal or worse and watched my opponents use up 30+ minutes of time while I spent only 5 to 10 seconds of my own time. Once I saw that delay and later increment could help the aging player to score in temporally hopeless positions, I made sure to buy a digital clock. My latest in the line of digitals is the DGT North American. So, even though I think the game should have a finish, I will ignore principles and take advantage of the technology. The kids cannot out blitz me on a digital as they can with the analog. I’ve got experience, baby, and that marries very well with 5 sec delay or 30i. The kids are quite put out that they cannot run gray haired dinosaurs out of time.
Eric, I am going to hunt around through the boxes to look for that game score. As I recall from that 2002 US Open, the game was played in the fast schedule with Game 60 as the time control. I had forgotten my clock at home and was forced to play with whatever clock was available. One of the games I had awoken late and made it to the board to play a Russian guy with only 5 of my 60 minutes left. Fortunately, a digital clock was on the board silently eating up my time. I wrote only a few moves down, banged out moves on instinct, and won on time! I had 2.5 minutes left. In a later game I had to play with an analog clock against Alex Onischuk. I lost on time in a won position. The equalizing injustice of chess.
My memory is a little hazy about specific moves, but I think you played a Budapest Defense against me. But do not hold me to that. When you have played 3000+ tournament games, more than half before 1991, they all sort of merge into a gelatinous mass of chess goo.
“I would prefer to have more time between rounds, something the delay clocks take away.”
The time between rounds does not really depend on whether or not a clock has delay. The available time is controlled by the schedule of the rounds. If the organizer has used the wrong assumption of the amount of time a game will take, then rounds could have less time between them. For example, if they are assuming that a G/60 round will have all the games over in 2 hours, they’ll be off by 10 minutes for a sixty move game if the clocks use d/5.
We’ve gained more than we’ve lost by having digital clocks. We just have to adapt to there being some uncertainty about when the last game in a round will finish and scheduling the rounds with that in mind.
I’m moving all of my tournaments to 30i from now on. It is harder on the organizer but I think the quality of the chess is improved.
Mike
For the last couple of years I’ve run the New Hampshire Quick Chess Championship at 8SS G/25 (now I’ll have to say GAME/25, d/3). I schedule the rounds at 10-11-1-2-3-4-5:30-6:30. The first year I scheduled the last two rounds at 6 and 7, but found that that left too much time between rounds 6 and 7. This gives players a chance for lunch, and a chance for the tournament to get back on schedule if it gets off in one of the first two or next four rounds. It’s all a matter of organizer planning to have enough time between rounds. With modern computers (and sudden death time controls) adjournment is rarely a good option.
Alex Relyea
First, I agree on the scheduling. Typically, I try to plan for a break somewhere in the middle of the tournament schedule. I also try very hard to start round 1 on time. The few laggards who show up at 2 minutes before the first round is scheduled to start have to take half-point byes. I find that the players who are there on time appreciate the effort to get a tournament off as scheduled. This usually avoids 98% of the issues with subsequent rounds running late, even with delay clocks.
Second…you actually have official adjournment envelopes, still? 
(There was still the occasional adjourned game, when I started playing. But I haven’t actually seen an adjournment envelope in about 20 years.)
BTW, I wonder if anyone does still adjourn games. With computers, I can’t imagine that adjournments aren’t just reduced to a byte-crunching contest.
The Chicago Industrial Chess League still has 45/90, 30/60, no SD time controls and has occasional adjournments.
I’m not sure I agree with this.
I remember the days of adjournments. Assuming there was time available (which was not a given), Experts and Masters who had adjournments would get together with their friends of similar strength and analyze the position. They would usually come to the board well prepared. I don’t think that would be any different now that computers exist. For lower rated players though, I question whether computers would help as much as everyone thinks.
First of all, it’s not good enough just to have an engine, you have to know how to use it properly. That means not just blindly accepting the top three move choices of the engine but selecting moves most likely to be played by a human of a given strength. Then you have to guide the engine down the move trees in order to discover both the best moves and the most likely alternatives, something that requires more chess skill than many of these players possess. Then you have to understand everything you see and finally (and most importantly) you have to be able to remember all of it when you sit down to play. I just don’t think most players rated below about 1900 are able to do this. I think they’ll remember about as much as they would have going over the position for a few minutes with their similarly rated friends - they won’t understand the position fully and will soon be on their own in any case.
Some day I’m thinking I’ll run a tournament under the old rules, with no S/D and adjournments, just to see what would happen. Until then all of this will be just speculation.
– Hal Terrie
Probably not. But I don’t think that’s nearly as big an issue.
I don’t think most players under 2000 would actually run into adjournments. True, I’m basing this on observing these players with SD time controls and no adjournments - but the vast majority of the time, players under 2000 just don’t seem to have the longest-running games. Typically, those games tend to “resolve themselves”, so to speak. In all the multi-section, multiple-control tournaments I’ve done, almost all of the games that go well into the secondary time control involve players over 2000 - who would, I think, benefit greatly from computer-aided analysis in an adjournment.
I would be curious to know the results of this one. If you do it, please write it up for CL/CLO.
Meanwhile, Jeff Wiewel has noted that the CICL still uses non-SD time controls. I imagine he probably has seen more of these games recently than most TDs. I wonder if he might have an observation on the point you made.
First of all, this is not what I remember from the 1970s. It is true that the lowest players (below 1400 say) almost never had adjournments but from 1500 on up, my experience was that higher rated players did not have disproportionately more adjournments.
Secondly, a question: given the limited time usually available for analysis, would the players over 2000 have a significantly greater advantage using a computer over analyzing with a few other Experts and Masters? I don’t think so. For them, I think it would be about the same as it was in the old days.
– Hal Terrie
Adjournment analysis is at the heart of the Dvoretsky methodology for training players. Deep analytical work trains the player for competition. When he first wrote his books, the use of computers for analytical work was in its infancy. Since that time the creation of table bases for endgames and the publication of a number of engame books give the modern player the opportunity to discover exact, specific positions which have been solved. I am not talking about simple one piece ending positons, such as B v. N, or various Rook endings. Many multiple piece endgames have also been explored by authors and the silicon monsters and been published. In the old days, you just had Basic Chess Endings to help you. Today there are an array of tools available that can be accessed. When adjournments became a mere memory contest, or Rybka v. Rybka, the aids took the endgame skill out of the contest. It wasn’t too surprising when the push to end adjournments occurred. We gained something and also lost something important when computers started to become more influential in chess.
On occasion I had to do adjournments and found the process fascinating. I played one game to the end of a second session, which was adjourned at move 60. I spent most of the night analyzing before discovering a deep solution in a Rook + Knight vs. Rook + Knight endgame. I could not find a specific position in any of my many endgame books and had to puzzle it out on my own. Though it was a commonn practice to do “team” analysis endings the way the Russians did, I remember the comment by Emanuel Lasker that it was “unthinkable that anyone other than the player himself should analyze an adjourned game.” I may not have the quote exact, but the sentiment is clear. I worked on it myself until I broke the position down into key parts and analyzed each one as deeply as I could until I was satisfied that “technique” would do the rest. The next day I played out my moves against my higher rated opponent and never had to swerve from my analysis in winning. He told me he had not examined the endgame that deeply and expected to draw with little effort. It was a good lesson in discipline and will power to do the work.
Wow, that’s a bit forward of you, methinks. I, too, am a Chronos fan from way back. Still, if I’m paired against you in a tournament where the organizer has furnished a DGT North American for each board (and there are lot of tournaments like that in the Chicago area lately), and you asked to use your Chronos, I don’t think I’d dare agree, lest it offend the organizer.
The DGT North American, by the way, is a very nice clock.
That’s for sure. The Kaissa was the first digital chess clock I remember, but it was really bad. I’ve never been sure whether Kaissa helped the digital movement by being the first, or if it hindered it by being so bad.
Yikes – and you get the rounds started on time? Congratulations – you must be an even better TD than I thought you were.
Hmm. Maybe you should use a time control of 40/120, 20/60, with rounds every half hour. That way, every game would be adjourned, and every player would learn what adjournments are like.
Bill Smythe
No, actually I’m enough of a newbie that all the tournaments I’ve directed have had sudden death time controls. I played in a tournament, maybe six years ago, that actually had an adjournment. I think the B player was able to draw the expert, though I don’t remember much other than that. I bet Frank Berry has the game somewhere, though.
Alex Relyea
If the organizer provides clocks, I’ll play with what is provided. I have played in the Grand Pacific Open in Victoria, BC the last two years. The first year I brought my Chronos not realizing that clocks and sets were provided. I used the DGT clocks that were provided. Time control was g/90 inc 30. The following year I left set and clock at home. 2 less things to pack.
I prefer my Chronos because I like seeing minutes and seconds the entire time, not just when the clock gets under 20 minutes. I even prefer my Chronos over opponent’s Chronos because I like my settings. However I would not ask Black to use mine instead. I just ask him how he has it set. I had several experiences where opponent had not used delay and I didn’t notice until later in game. When delay counts down with flashing : instead 5,4, 3… It’s easy to miss the lack of delay when the clock is set like that.