The April Chess Life features a letter to the editor from Neal Bellon, a Local TD from Long Island. Mr. Bellon makes the case for not deducting time from digital clocks in Sudden Death. I agree with him, though as he notes this can be a polarizing issue.
What strikes me as strange is the lack of an editor’s note mentioning the rule change that disallows deducting time to compensate for delay, as of next year. Mr. Bellon also did not mention that in his letter.
Whatever happens this summer, if the option to deduct time is abolished it will take a long time to sink in with some players. This seems to be more true in some parts of the country than others, but I can see some fun moments at next year’s USATE, for example, if the rule change takes effect in 2012.
Gotta get the word out somehow, for the folks who do not read this Forum. They don’t know what they are missing, of course.
Except in the case of G/30 being changed to G/25+5sec, any organizer can get around the time control question by advertising G/115 and have the identical control as G/2 with the 5 minutes deducted on all clocks which have the time delay feature in use.
I think the plan is to make G/30 an exception to still having the tournament regular rated. Interestingly G/31, G/32, G/33, and G/34 and deducting 5 minutes will not be exceptions even though they are slower than G/30.
Stupid Discontinuities and Stupid Lack of Monotonicities are usually the work of committees. This is an example of the latter.
A much better idea would be to define G/25 or slower as regular-rated if there is a delay or increment of 5 seconds or more, and G/30 or slower as regular-rated, period.
Furthermore, the 5 seconds should apply to the tournament as a whole, not to any individual games played with analog clocks. The TD should not be required to add 5 minutes to the clocks of players who furnish obsolete equipment.