BTW, I like speed chess and even quick chess. If used correctly, it can help you to groove in kinowledge of openings and tactics. And its fun. But I would not rate it. Too much clock bashing and scattering of pieces.
I think the problem with this is that you could potentially have a very long time at the end of the game without a break. With a secondary time control, players can take a short break after a predefined number of moves. Plus, if you have a five second delay, you’ll likely get down to “clock bashing and pieces scattered everywhere” anyway.
Alex Relyea
I thought 5 second delay reduced the clock bashing, since you always have 5 free seconds on every move. At the very least, there’s no longer a need for both players to be touching pieces at the same moment.
I agree that the biggest problem with 30 second increment is the amount of time spent in full concentration without a break (and no bathroom break). I remember a game between GM Vinay Bhat and a 2250 where both players got under 2 minutes after about 25 moves, in complex middlegame. I went to lunch and came back 45 minutes later to see almost the exact same position (two pawns had moved in about 50 moves). The game ended drawn in about 120 moves total, but it turns out that each player had missed a tricky win over the course of the 90+ move slow-motion time scramble.
Michael Aigner
Perhaps one bathroom break an hour? (Signal TD, who stops clock & starts egg-timer: opponent gets to think for free.)
Michael, that is a perfect description of the increment time control, “slow motion time scramble.” 
Speed chess has been around for a very long time. At one time, a bunch of players would get together to play 10 second/move chess.
A caller would mark each 10 second interval for the entire room. If you didn’t move by the end of the 10 seconds, you lost.
Other trick was to use an hourglasses to mark time. We have the ability to use a digital clock for hourglass chess, but at one time, people would actually use an hourglass to play chess.
Don’t know if there was a stand time for hourglass chess. Might have just depended on what was available, like a 3 min egg timer.
In the 1985 US Open, in Hollywood, Florida, the last game to finish featured a computer losing on time to NTD and southern California master Ben Nethercot.
The time control was 50/2.5, then 20/1, back then, and Ben survived time scrambles in both the first and second TCs. In the third time control, Ben had R+B+P vs R, and as the end approached for the program, it really did allow its clock to run out. I was rooming with Ben, so I had to stay the entire 8 hours, as he eventually became, literally, the last person left playing in the event.
BTW, Ben played so many really long games, that he may have single-handedly caused the change to sudden death TCs. In one US Amateur Team West that I ran in the 80s, he played the longest game of at least three of the six rounds. 
1985? Give me a break, that was about 10 computer generations ago! (I worked the demo boards at one of the early ACM computer chess championships in around 1970, that was really the stone age of chess computers, when they still made occasional illegal moves.)
Besides, it’s possible that the reason the computer lost on time had to do with operator delay.
A flaw in the time handling, apparently, and not operator error.
As to it being many generations ago, well, you asked “Have you ever…”, and I had.
Even into the 90s, interesting programming flaws still surfaced now and then at the ACM tournament.
So, had I asked the question as “When was the last time you heard about a chess program losing on time” your answer would have been “1985”. Nuff said!
I saw (pre Cray-) Blitz come close to losing on time when it played in a human tournament around 1980 in Jackson. It takes a few seconds for the operator to enter the opponent’s move on the terminal or to play the computer’s move OTB after reading it. IIRC it made time control with < 1 min left and finished 2-2. Click here for more.
Yep, that’s what I was referring to as ‘operator delay’. If you’re playing a chess computer/program that also keeps the game clock, it’s very unlikely it will ever lose on time unless there are some settings that would contribute to that.
This gives me nostalgia. In Ben’s first tournament, when he was a freshman at Northwestern, he lost every game and started his tournament life as a 700 player. He quickly improved, and became a master a few years later after moving to California.
A few years before that, in one programmer’s first attempt at writing a chess program, the first move was Qd1xd8+. Oops.
Bill Smythe
Blitz would occasionally ask about the time on the clocks.