I must be missing something. See below. … or the wording somewhere should be more explicate as to what constitutes a player’s clock to have run out of time. My Excalibur clock beeps and flashes but will still keep showing time no matter how often I use up all the time on both sides.
These new rules for time controls with incremental mode now seem to allow games to go on forever even with no time left on the clocks
[size=150][b]14G Both flags down in sudden death. …
TD tip: An increment time control of 30 seconds or more is not considered sudden death, therefore 14G does not apply.
16T Both players exceed time control
TD Tip: An increment time control of 30 seconds or more is not considered sudden death, therefore if both players should exceed time control, the clocks should be reset [to] the “next” time control of the time increment (e.g. 30 seconds) per move. [/b][/size]
Because of the wording of these two rules, a player can not make a claim that his opponent’s clock in incremental mode has run out of time, as it will always show some time on it, no matter how long the opponent had taken to make his previous move.
This is incorrect. The preferred behavior of a clock in increment mode is to stop adding the increment time once the player’s clock reaches zero in the last (or only) time control. The opponent’s clock should continue running normally.
Should both players run out of time in the last time control, then both clocks will have reached zero, and both clocks will have stopped adding the increment time. In that case, if the increment time is thirty seconds or greater, the director should set both clocks for thirty seconds, and the game should continue.
Yes … but the wording seems to say that the TD will always give him another 30 seconds and consider it the next time control. If a player then takes a few minutes to move, he’d then still get another 30 seconds. It might take a TD standing there to determine if he “actually” ran out of time.
I only said that the wording should be more explicit.
Again, note that the preferred behavior is for a clock to stop adding increment time once a player’s clock reaches zero in the last time control.
I do not understand your assertion that “[i]t might take a TD standing there to determine if he ‘actually’ ran out of time.” Once the clock shows zero, the player is out of time.
I guess I’m reading the rule too literally by suggesting that it says that if a TD sees the clock is out of time, he’d always put the clock into the next time control and with 30 seconds. This should only be done if BOTH clocks show no time.
But the DGT clocks follow FIDE rules that in increment mode, once a player runs out of time in the last time control, both clocks freeze, and the opponent’s clock stops running. So it looks like, at least with DGT clocks, both clocks can never run out of time.
Yes. This is an unfortunate situation when using a DGT clock (the DGT North American, for instance) in a USCF tournament with increment time control. Under USCF rules, clock should not “freeze” (“halt on end” in Chronos terminology, “claim on” in Excalibur terminology) when one player runs out of time. This discrepancy between FIDE rules and USCF rules is cough unfortunate.
While I haven’t carefully studied the revised rules text for increment time controls, I have a sinking feeling that there may be irregularities hiding there. The whole notion of a series of “one move in thirty seconds” time controls seems disconcerting.
An example: A game with no sudden death time control is regular rated only. However, a game with a reported time control of “SD/30 inc/30” would be dual rated. If one really believes there is no sudden death time control with an increment of thirty seconds or longer, then a time control of “SD/30 inc/30” really becomes “1 move in 30 minutes, followed by 1 move in 30 seconds repeated indefinitely.”
And then there is Bill Smythe’s concern about “absurd discontinuities” (I hope I have both the attribution and the term right). Why would “SD/30 inc/29” be so different from “SD/30 inc/30”? For that matter, why would “SD/30 inc 29” be so different from “SD/29 inc/30”, since both time controls give exactly the same amount of time for sixty moves?
I feel this is a bogus concept. When one player exceeds time control, the game should be utterly over.
In this electronic age, I was shocked to find myself in the minority for my view that — the half clock that oversteps the allotted time should (a) become decorated with an indicative flag, (b) cause the entire clock to freeze, and (c) demurely flash & beep a couple times.
I found the majority of T.D.'s want the clock to burden players with the task of monitoring its minutiae.
Of course this leads to problems, confusion, to forum threads like this, and to boring editions of Geurt Gijssen’s column on ChessCafe.com.
The clock should move the game forward, but otherwise should burden the players a little as possible, or so is my view.
Perhaps the prevailing majority attitude is a hold-over from the days of mechanical analog clocks, which could have no practical freeze mechanism or beeps. Maybe E.Winter of Chess Notes could research that.
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I subscribe to the view that a clock should be just that—a clock—be it analog or digital. The precision and more so the delay/increment functionality makes digital clocks preferable to analogs for games that end in SD. Flashing flags, freezes, move counters and especially beeps are bad.
It should be up to the players to call flag fall. For FIDE events, add “arbiter.” Keep it limited to human beings, or as close as you get at a chess tournament.
With the DGT NA, in increment modes the clock will freeze once the first player’s time runs out even in the primary control, if the move count is set.
Set it to 40/90, SD/30, Inc-30, then edit the remaining time so that one player flags before move 40. At that point, the flag flashes and both sides of the clock freeze. Suppose the move count/clock press count is off, and they really did reach move 40? One more reason not to set the move counter. (Still another reason on the NA is that the counter is not visible on the main display; you must press a button to see it.)
In practice, there will be next to no potential double forfeits with a 30-second increment in effect. The big issue will be 3.2 blitz, if that becomes USCF-rated. USCF Blitz rules state:
Standard timer for blitz chess:
2a) Whatever timer is used (analog or digital), a standard timer must continue to run for both sides even if one side’s time has expired.
That can’t be done with the NA in increment mode. The designers of the clock clearly thought of FIDE rules for increment and USCF rules for delay modes. Makes sense—but they could have included options for users to set whether clocks freeze at end, beep, etc.
That’s one more reason Chronos still sits at the top of my clock pecking order: You can configure those options however you (or the TD) choose on a Chronos.