Maybe try setting the move counter to 00 for both the primary and secondary controls. How do players in your events react to a clock not adding the secondary time after the primary control is reached?
Setting the move counter in the primary time control to 00 won’t work. That’s what puts the clock in “go” mode. I do not play “go”, so I’m not entirely familiar with how timing works. However, my understanding is that there is a main time control (similar in chess to G/x), but there is also overtime, or “byo-yomi” time. For instance, the primary time control might be 45 minutes, and then there might be five byo-yomi periods of one minute each. Once you use up your main time, you start consuming byo-yomi periods. As long as you move within the byo-yomi period, you get the full minute back. Once you use up the minute, it is permanently gone. (I think that is “Japanese byo-yomi”. There is also a variant that I believe is called “Canadian byo-yomi”, where one must place a certain number of stones within the overtime period, and then one gets a fresh overtime period.)
But how programmable is the DGT North American? Suppose I wanted to set the time control at 30/80, SD/1 with a five second delay? Can this be done on this clock? How?
This isn’t a hypothetical question. I own one, and I’ve found it to be worthless for tournaments with more than one time control–unless the time controls correspond to one of the presets. Maybe it’s the skimpy manual or maybe it’s just me. (Or maybe I have a defective clock).
In any case, I would advise tournaments players to be wary of this one. It’s fine for blitz or G/60.
Ben
Isn’t the DGT NA just a limited version of the DGT 2010?
I’ll take a look at this this weekend and post back.
The DGT NA removed the non-chess time controls in there like Go, Byomi, etc. The casing is the same and they’ve improved the plunger technology.
Turn the clock on and go to setting 23. Press the rightmost button (the “check mark/stopwatch” button). Set the time for the first time control to 1:20:00 on both sides (using the check mark button to move to the next digit and the +/- buttons to change each digit). Then, you will see “1” on the left side and the delay on the right side (minutes before the dot, seconds after, and “min/sec” in the upper right corner. Set that to “0.05”. Next, you will see “2” on the left side and the time for the second control on the right. Set that for 1:00:00 (again, being careful to note the “hrs/min” vs. “sec” in the upper right corner). Then, you will see “2” on the left and the delay for the second time control on the right. Again, set that to “0.05”. For the third (and final) time control of this setting, leave everything at zero, since you’re only using two controls.
The clock will save your settings, so you only have to do this once. Thereafter, when you turn the clock on and go to setting 23, after pressing the “check mark” button, just press the “pause/run” button in the middle to skip setup.
Note that in setting the clock, you never specified that there are 30 moves in the first time control. Instead of adding one hour after 30 moves, the clock will just count down the 80 minutes for each player. When one player uses up all of the first control’s time, the clock will then add the time for the second control to each side. A “flag” indicator will show on the side that ran out. It will go away after five minutes. The players need to complete 30 moves before the “flag” appears.
This is a bit of fun – GM Adams played a consultation game with a Saitek Pro in the recent Chessbase report Kasparov beats Short in London fund-raiser. See the final picture near the bottom of the report.
Just a conjecture…top players don’t care what clock they use. The only “preference” I’ve witnessed is Yermo carrying his own DGT 2010 at the U.S. Open. The titled players at the Dallas Chess Club show no annoyance at starting a G/30 contest on a beat up old BHB.
Chuck Norris needs no clock.
Inspired by this thread and a great sale at American Chess Equipment, I bought a blue Saitek Competition clock for less than $30, with shipping. It arrived today. Here are first impressions, after playing with it for an hour.
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It’s not THAT hard to set. The more digital clocks I play with the more I am convinced that none of them is as hard to figure out as some say they are. I agree the button set-up on the front of the clock is not intuitive, (except to anjiaoshi), but it works if you follow the user’s guide.
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The clock does not support increment, as I suspected from reading its description online.
That’s OK, especially considering the price, but anyone shopping for a clock that can handle increment and delay should know this ain’t it. On the plus side, the delay can be set to 30 seconds, or more, so you could use it as an emergency back-up for an increment control. -
The “andante-style” delay countdown is annoying and I could see where it could confuse players in bad time pressure. The Chronos and the Excalibur Game Time II both have this feature in some modes, but in those cases the countdown for delay is a separate display; you can also see how much main clock time you have left.
This is a Bad Thing, as Polly Wright and others point out; I wonder if a TD could declare this clock “less preferred” than other delay-digital clocks for that reason. Precedent would be the TDs who declared Bronstein mode to be less preferred than straight delay a few years ago.
- The plungers make a bit of noise, but then again so do the plungers on the Game Time II and other clocks. The display itself is fine; you can see it clearly from a fair distance. A nice feature is that when you turn the clock off, it remembers the exact settings on the clock and “resumes” the game when you turn the clock on again.
Overall, a decent option for those on very tight budgets who don’t want or need increment. You get what you pay for…The Excalibur Game Time II, while not perfect, is clearly better than the Saitek Competition, since it supports increment and does not have the confusing delay countdown…and can be had for less than $10 more.
Just don’t buy into the line from Saitek owners that their clocks are too hard to set. If I can do it…
Are you kidding? The blue Saitek doesn’t have increment? If that’s true, that clock is pretty much out of the question as far as I’m concerned. Increment is becoming popular so fast that, within a few years, a clock without it is likely not to be considered legal at all.
Bill Smythe
Would I kid you, Bill? As far as I can see there is no increment mode or function on this clock—and I looked pretty hard. Anyone who knows otherwise please correct me.
Not only that, but delay is referred to as “time added” when you go through the settings drill. That wording makes me think either Fischer or Bronstein mode, more than delay. As I noted, one good feature of this clock is that delay can be set to 30 or more seconds; as increment continues to catch on, we will likely see games played with delay-30 instead of increment-30—either with clocks that don’t support increment, like this Saitek, or because players thought they set increment but really set delay instead.
Fun times are coming.
It’s true. The blue Saitek is pretty much aimed at the scholastic market. (The one user configurable setting [4A] is called “coach’s favorite”, for instance.)
The more expensive Saitek Pro is increment-capable.
I recently purchased the DGT North American.
I find it easy to set, with enough printed instructions on the bottom of the clock. I too would prefer that it shows the seconds for the entire time, not just the last 20 minutes, but this is not a show stopper. I do like that I can see the rocker position from across the room so I know when my opponent has moved.
My biggest complaint is that it is not big enough to hide my opponent’s pieces after I capture them.
Someone I knew a few decades ago told me an extra pawn came with his set. When playing a tournament game with the other color he would sometimes sneak the extra pawn into the group of captured pieces. 
That’s why I tell my students to count what’s on the board, not what’s sitting off the board.
Unless you are playing Bughouse. 