And it will be an issue not just with 5 second increments, but any increment other than an even multiple of 1 minute. In the tournament I was concerned about the increment was 30 seconds, which would have required setting the clock to 1:30:30 for an increment before every move. This was not possible with the clock I was testing.
Stewart Reuben made a believer out for me for the 60-sec increment in the Gibraltar tournament. Too big a part of 30-seconds is used for taking notation, so the quality of it is bound to suffer. At 60-second increment, it’s a lot less of an issue.
In the Austin Chess Club we run both 60-sec and 30-sec increment events.
It was the zmartfun clock. Nice bright lights for the display, but a big problem renders it useless: you can pause it, but unpausing it resets the clock.
Apparently some players’ fathers have done that as well (I won’t mention any names…)
And to make up for that, there are times when they don’t add a delay (at the Nationals, no less) (Luckily he checkmated his opponent with 30 seconds left on the clock. I would never have heard the end of that one).
