The DGT North American is no less stylish than the average USCF member. OK, so the design is ugly, but it’s an excellent tournament clock. As I said above, I wouldn’t want to use it for blitz (agree on mass & rocker switch). I do think it hits the functionality / price sweet spot.
Agree on the Saitek’s functionality. I had one for 10+ years before it died: it’s still the only clock I can set that quickly.
You can turn off the move counter on the Game Time II. While going through the setting drill, just turn the setting to “off” for “Counter.” Then the move counter will not show during play.
If you turn off the move counter on the Game Time II, and there are two (or three) time controls, is the (now invisible) move count still used to add time at the end of the first control, or is time added to each side when that side uses up all its first-control time?
Bill Smythe
Oh, burn.
I am amazed at how many players come to me and ask me to set their clock. When I ask where their booklet is, the player’s answer is either “I lost it” or “I left it at home”. Without the booklet, the Chronos can be difficult to set because some of the abbreviations don’t make sense. With multiple Chronos models available, a setting on one is not an option on another.
As previously stated, on the Excalibur, the move counter can be turned off. When this happens, the second time control does not get added until the primary time is consumed. This leads to a problem for directors. Players will complain that the clock didn’t give them their extra hour. I tell the players to play down to zero and if it isn’t added then, to come and get me. They only time they get me is when the clock was not properly set with more than one time control. One other issue with the Excalibur is that some players don’t turn off the “claim” feature. This leads to a flashing red light and a blinking “flag” even though the players are in the next time control and the time remaining is displayed.
wilecoyote wrote:
I agree. I have, on occasion, waited until after their game is done and asked why they do it. I’m still waiting for the first good answer. I point out to the “serial button pressers” that the only things accomplished after the first press are making unnecessary noise and doing it while your opponent’s clock is running. This can also be extremely annoying and even illegal during a blitz game. Player A makes his move and presses his side multiple times. Player B quickly responds and presses his clock and because A is still serial pressing, restarts B’s clock without having played a move. It’s happened to me and others.
On the Saitek clock, I have a player who objects to using one because the delay is the only time displayed until it is consumed. There is little I can do short of banning the clock as it is considered preferable to a clock with no delay and considered equal to the other delay clocks, and black has choice of equipment. Players should not have to wait to see how much time they have left. I also agree with Bob Messenger that they can be difficult to change the settings.
Have you attempted to play blitz on it? Players last week in the Chicago Blaze fundraiser didn’t seem to have any issue with it and the clock wasn’t getting tossed around or problems with the rocker not be depressed.
The design is quite patriotic actually - red, white, and blue…
If I need a rat killed I’ll bring out a Saitek. The manual is worthless. The fact of it needs 2 C batteries which aren’t included with the initial purchase continues the bad joke that is Saitek.
I’m not going to spend a weekend or ‘less than a month’ to figure out how to set a clock quickly. Better uses of time.
I took is as he is able to set up any custom configuration rather quickly, and it was easy to learn.
The plunger discussion is…interesting. I’d think that a smaller rocker or button is good for blitz. If you’re into the plunger feel then the Chronos Touch must be terrible. When I think of “real plunger feel” I think of the old school Garde clocks (the gigantor ones). My Saitek Pro is incredibly durable – it survived a stress/taste test by my 80lb yellow lab, is a decent stand in for a Russian kettlebell workout, and is quite useful as a steak timer. It’s kept in the back room because it scares the guests.
Although I don’t understand why the DGT NA is half the price of the DGT 2010, I’m glad there’s another option out there.
The invisible move counter is still used to determine when to add time to each side. It is not possible to disable the move counter, only to hide it.
Interestingly, I had to make a ruling involving this very clock last night. Black had determined the move of the primary time control (40/90 SD/30) but apparently failed to press the clock in time. It was very close; the clock beeped, but then Black’s side showed 30 minutes. There was no “flag” indicator or flashing red LED. Both players and an independent witness all agreed that the clock had beeped. I examined the settings and saw “sound” was “on” with “00” as the warning time. My ruling was that the beep indicated that Black had just run out of time before pressing the clock.
The DGT NA had a large number of non-chess related time controls for other games removed so it became somewhat simpler.
Such as the Go and Byo-something controls. When I had a Chronos those got in the way. I noticed the NA is not in the “Official Clock of FIDE” family either, so the endorsement kickbacks probably have something to do with the lower price as well. Makes me wonder what the production cost of the clocks really are…
For this reason I prefer to turn off all sounds, flashing lights and whatever else at the end of a time control, on any digital clock—in contradiction to the suggestion in the Rulebook. Too much potential for trouble.
The one setting that makes sense to me is the “freeze” time of a player who does not make time control. Even there you could have an issue with a player who forgets to hit his clock, so the move counter (hidden or displayed) reads 39 when it should be 40.
This could stand to be streamlined as clock technology develops and players unanimously flock to digital delay and increment clocks as the only good solution to Regular-rated Sudden Death chess. Any day now…
You don’t need an independent witness to make this ruling. The clock can serve as a witness. The clock doesn’t move after it’s stopped. If the clock showed 30 minutes and no seconds and the player did not stop the clock after his 40th move that is the same as 0:00. The only exceptions to winning on time are if the last move was checkmate or stalemate or the player didn’t call the flag.
Man, I just can’t accept any excuse for this. Even if they received the clock by mail order the day before but didn’t get home until just before bedtime and then overslept and had to grab it and run straight to the tournament – in that case, it should still be in the box, and the box should contain the instructions. When you get it, you take it out of the box, put the batteries in, open the instruction booklet and teach yourself to do everything you’re likely to do with it. Not knowing how to set someone else’s clock is one thing; not knowing how to set your own is just intentional helplessness.
It did take some getting used to, yeah.
Agreed, but I didn’t mind having several points I could cite for justification. (Also, I don’t remember now whether the setting to always display seconds [instead of just display seconds when time displayed is less than ten minutes] was on. However, I would have seen the seconds remaining when I reviewed the clock’s settings.)
As an aside, I’ll grumble again (as a TD) about clocks that do not show the full time but just hours and minutes until the available time drops below a certain amount. That really is something I appreciate about a “properly set” Chronos. Oh well …
Saitek! That is exactly why I don’t like playing with those clocks, and I don’t like watching them when players are in time trouble.
Uh-oh. We have a divergence of opinion (or of observation) here. Who is right? Or are both settings possible? Or are there differences among different models?
In my opinion, it would be an extremely bad idea for a clock to hide the move counter, yet still use it to add time for the next control. Move counters can be inaccurate (somebody forgets to press the clock, or an illegal move is corrected after the clock is pressed, etc), and the players would never know, until all hall breaks loose at the control.
Bill Smythe
I just wanted to thank everyone for their excellent advice and input. This discussion thread has been extremely helpful.
As an FYI, after reading everyone’s reviews, and having the opportunity to use a Saitek first hand, I decided to go with the DGT North American. It technically does everything I need, seems to be a good mid-priced alternative, and looks to be extremely easy to use, which is important to me. Granted, it is not as nice looking as the Chronos, but it is less than half its price and easier to use. Also, I decided to buy it from one of the many people who posted responses in this thread–Sevan. He sells the unit for an excellent price, and I wanted to support one of the many helpful people I see posting regularly on these USCF discussion forums.
Again, a huge thank you to everyone who submitted their thoughts!
Harold S. is right. I just tried this on a Game Time II set for 40/90, SD/60, with a 5-second delay. (That’s a User-mode setting on my clock; it’s also pre-set 52.)
I set “Counter” to Off, then put the clock in play mode. I pressed each plunger fairly quickly about 60 times; the clock still read 90 minutes for each side. I then paused the clock, went back into settings and turned Counter to On. At that point the move counter showed when the clock was re-started, but the time still read 90 minutes each.
One bonus of disabling the move counter is that it eliminates the annoying “First” indicator on move one. This must be changed if the opponent insists on switching sides, or else the move counter—displayed or hidden—will be off by a half-move. I never understood why the First indicator is needed.
As a TD I like the hidden move counter and not automatically adding time at the control. As a player that might make me scratch my head; other players might get all aglow, shall we say. Digital clocks that show the move counter during non-SD controls are standard if not ubiquitous from what I’ve seen. I don’t think I have seen a rated game where a digital clock was used and the move counter was not displayed during the non-SD portion of the time control. (I have seen the ‘opposite,’ where the move counter was displayed during the SD control, or during the entire game in a G/40 event.)
For that reason I do not plan to use my late-'90s Chronos for increment games with more than one control. Unlike the newer Chronos models, it does not have an increment mode with a move counter. To play 40/90, SD/30, Inc-30 all you need do is manually add 30 minutes to each side after Black’s 40th move, but increment on its own is hard enough to ‘sell’ for now without clock contortions…
Cool! Good luck with it, and glad the forums could help! 
Now sit back, and enjoy watching the thread go on for several pages more. 
Well, I think this is a good news/bad news scenario. The good news is that I was completely wrong about how the hidden move counter works. But the bad news is that the clock does not behave like a Chronos under these circumstances. In fact, I think the “hidden move counter” mode with more than one time control is almost useless.
As an experiment, I configured one of the user-defined settings to have a primary time control of one minute, a primary move count of 10, no secondary time control (zero seconds, zero minutes, and zero moves), and a sudden death time control of two minutes. (Of course, these aren’t realistic time controls, but they are good for an experiment.) I also turned “claim” off and set the delay to zero seconds (again, an experiment).
I too was able to rapidly press the plungers on both sides far more than ten times within the one minute allowed, and the clock did not add time. So far, so good. But then, I allowed one side to run out of time in the primary control. The clock then started that side’s count of the two minute sudden death time control. However, the clock also flashed the flag indicator and the red LED on that player’s side, whether or not that player’s clock was running. That continued until the opponent’s side also used up its primary time control and started on the sudden death time control. Then, the flag and the flashing LED went away.
Based on this, I had had great hope to be able to set an Excalibur not to use the move counter, but I believe those hopes are dashed, or I made some hideous mistake in this experiment. 