This thread reminds one more of a bagel.
On the other hand, US Chess has had a history of saying “good enough - ship it” before it’s ready, such as endorsing the Tap N Set chess clock when it was defective.
I googled Berliner. Tom Doan is correct.
Bill Smythe
One of the things I’ve learned from studying French for the last several years is that Google doesn’t always get language issues right. (Google Translate is notoriously bad at it.)
However, as I understand it, in both French and German when a person’s title, place of residence or profession is being stated as the object of the sentence, the article is generally not used. (French has many exceptions to nearly every rule, I think German is a bit more orderly in that regard.)
I hate to wake up a moribund thread, but 3a is almost the textbook example of what Jeff Wiewel is talking about regarding larding up the rulebook with all types of special cases. There are many reasons people set up clocks wrong, and I’m not sure that this is even in the top five. Most common are almost certainly—it’s set for the last tournament played in, or it’s set for a different section in the same tournament. And, of course, even if the clock owner sets the clock wrong, the only way it has any effect is if (a) the opponent doesn’t notice, (b) a TD taking a quick look around prior to the start of the round doesn’t notice and (c) none of the players at adjacent boards notice. A good TD does a walkaround early in the round to see if there are any obvious problems with the clocks. It doesn’t really matter why clocks are wrong, just that they get fixed ASAP.
The scholastic Nationals I’ve worked had the floor TDs looking at clocks prior to the start of the round and then again after the round starts. Back with 5 minutes were deducted for the delay I was used to walking down the aisle pointing at an Excalibur and asking them to reset the clock from 155 minutes to 115 minutes and then pointing at a Chronos asking them to change it from 1:15 to 1:55.
I’ve had the same experience
We never had that problem with the BHB.
The problem there is setting the clock to expire at 12:00 rather than 6:00. (Did the rulebook ever explain why you were supposed to do that?)
I don’t recall that it was ever explained in the rulebook. It was my understanding that with just the minute hand on or near the 12 (12:00) it was easier to see how much time was left before the flag fell. With both the hour hand on 12:00 and minute hand nearing the 12 it was much more difficult to tell how much time was left before the flag fall–or so I heard.
That’s the way I remember it. When I first joined U.S. Chess the standard was to set the clock so that the first time control would expire at the 12:00 mark. For example with a 40/120 control you would set it initially at 10:00.
Only about a year later the standard was changed from 12:00 to 6:00. For 40/120 you would start it at the 4:00 mark. That way, at or near the time control, the hour hand would be pointing at 6:00, well out of the way of the minute hand and the flag.
Bill Smythe
Yes, but it was definitely one of those ---- do something that seems counterintuitive because the rule book says to.
Which one seems counterintuitive to you, 12:00 or 6:00?
12:00 may seem natural, because it’s the “zero hour”. Or 6:00 may seem natural, because the hour hand is out of the way.
Bill Smythe
By definition, in any endeavor the counterintuitive one is the one I did not choose.
I think most people would assume that “time’s up” would be shown as midnight.
When analog clocks were a thing, it was very rare to have sudden death time controls. How do you determine what “Time’s up” means in a 40/150, 25/60 time control?
Alex Relyea
Analog clocks survived well into the sudden death era. First control would expire at 6:00, second at 7:00.
For 40/150, 25/60 you would set the clock initially at 3:30, play your 40th move before 6:00, and your 65th before 7:00. I think all movie depictions of Fischer-Spassky showed the clocks set to 3:30 at the start.
Bill Smythe
Cinderella’s time as a princess ran out at midnight. The “Doomsday” clock is based upon midnight being nuclear holocaust. Most general purpose countdown analog timers ran out when all hands were at the top. That’s why the “intuition” would be that you would set the clock that way. Now for chess, when a TD may be trying to see what’s happening with a relatively small clock from some distance, using 6:00 as the standard does make sense, but that’s from the TD’s standpoint, not the player’s. For the player (who can fairly easily tell) 12:00 would be more natural.
I understand everything in Mr. Smythe and Mr. Doan’s posts immediately above. Neither of them address the issue of why we should consider the first time control “Time’ up” as opposed to a later time control, or none at all if we have no sudden death control. My point is that Mr. Doan’s suggestion that 12 O’Clock signifies “Time’s up” suggests a meaning not usually associated with having to make one finite number of moves in a game as opposed to another. I’d have more sympathy for his idea if he were to set clocks so that the last time control were to expire at 12 O’Clock, but of course for the vast majority of the time that analog clocks were a thing, no one knew what time that would be.
Alex Relyea
With a multiple control, most games will pass the first control at some point, a few will pass the second, and a smaller few will pass the third. With 40/120 20/60 SD/60, if the first control expires at 6:00, the hour hand will have traveled from the 4:00 mark to the 8:00 mark by the time the game ends, all the while staying at least 120 degrees away from straight up.
So I suppose this could be a good reason to use 6:00 as the expiration of the first control.
Bill Smythe