Minimum base time

Running Chess Tournaments
1

On the most recent “The TD Show”, “Understanding Ratable Time Controls”, it was stated that they could not find a minimum base time requirement for regular or dual time controls in the rulebook but in rule 5C it states “For Regular, Dual and Quick the primary time (mm in minutes) must be at least 5 minutes.”

Also, for online quick events, it was stated in the show that the minimum base time has to be at least 10 minutes. Where is this rule stated and why is this different from OTB quick events where the minimum base time only has to be at least 5 minutes?

2

Thank you Micah, I missed that sentence considering it is buried with the Quick Only section. Who knew that topic would also contain information on the primary time for both regular and dual rated games also?

The online time control information was taken directly from the announcement on the US Chess website at new.uschess.org/news/online-rat … ss-events/

3

IMHO it got this way, several years ago, through various oversights, misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and possibly even a few dirty tricks here and there.

Not so long ago, a regular-rated tournament was required to have a minimum playing time of at least 30 minutes. Then, when increment and delay came along, and it became legal (temporarily) to cut 5 minutes off the announced main time when a 5-second delay was in effect, the question became, did G/25 d/5 qualify for regular rating? The Delegates eventually said yes, and everybody was under the impression that the main time still had to be at least 25 minutes, and that it could fall short of 30 minutes only by (at most) the number of seconds of delay time.

Unfortunately, rule 5C ended up being stated in such a way that it had the following effect (mm is main time in minutes, ss is increment or delay time in seconds):

  • Regular: mm+ss must be at least 30, and mm by itself must be at least 5.
  • Quick: mm+ss must be at least 11 and at most 29, and mm by itself must be at least 5.
  • Blitz: mm+ss must be at least 5 and at most 10, and mm by itself must be at least 3.

(For simplicity I am combining Dual with Regular, since dual-rated tournaments are just regular-rated tournaments with some additional restrictions.)

Unfortunately, this meant (inadvertently, I hope) that G/20 d/10, or G/15 d/15, or G/10 d/20, or even G/5 d/25, would be classified and rated as Regular (specifically, Dual).

To me, this is ridiculous. The Delegates probably had in mind that a delay (ss) of no more than 5 seconds (regular), 3 seconds (quick) or 2 seconds (blitz) could be counted toward the minimum mm+ss requirement.

Has anybody ever actually run a G/5 d/25 event and submitted it as Regular (Dual)?

Bill Smythe

4

I assume that where the announcement says the online quick rating system goes from “G/10;+1 up to G/29;d/0”, they were just trying to convey that the quick rating system is more than 10 and less than 30 minutes of “total playing time”, not that the minimum base time has to be at least 10 minutes.

5

Can anyone shed some light on if time controls in the online quick rating system must have a minimum base time of 5 or 10 minutes?

6

It seems that nobody wants to answer this, because everybody is red-faced about the way these rules ended up being passed by the Delegates, and nobody is really sure what they mean.

IMHO, the rule OUGHT TO specify, for each type of time control, a minimum and maximum for mm+ss, AND a minimum and maximum for mm by itself, AND a recommended value for ss by itself. Something like this:

  • Regular: mm+ss must be at least 30, and mm by itself must be at least 25. Recommended ss is 5 to 30 seconds.
  • Quick: mm+ss must be at least 11 and at most 29, and mm by itself must be at least 8. Recommended ss is 3 seconds.
  • Blitz: mm+ss must be at least 5 and at most 10, and mm by itself must be at least 3. Recommended ss is 2 seconds.

(Note: mm is main time in minutes, ss is increment or delay time in seconds.)

Something like the above would be both clear and reasonable. No more “regular” at G/5 d/25, and no more “quick” at G/5 d/6.

Bill Smythe

7

I don’t mind something like G/20;d10 (or even something like G/15;d15 at a stretch) being regular (dual) rated so how about making the minimum required base time for regular and dual events 15? It looks like there have been some events that have used a G/15;d15 time control. uschess.org/datapage/event-s … &mode=Find, but I agree that should not be allowed.

Also, your proposal would make time controls like G/6;inc5 not ratable and I’m not sure if time controls like that should be banned. What is your reasoning behind making 8 the minimum required base time for quick-only?

8

Before the concept of delay was introduced, the minimum mm was 30 minutes regular and 10 minutes quick. Later, when blitz ratings were added, the quick minimum was changed from 10 to 11 and the blitz minimum was set at 5.

Later, when delay was introduced, the recommended (or “standard”) delay was 5 seconds regular, 3 seconds quick, and 2 seconds blitz. And it was permitted to reduce mm, even without advance notice in pre-event publicity, by up to the “standard” delay in seconds, in games in which a delay-capable clock was in use. This permitted reduction in mm meant that G/25 was now the “real” minimum for regular as long as a 5-second delay was in effect, and that G/8 was now the “real” minimum for quick as long as a 3-second delay was in effect.

Nowadays, the increment or delay time, even if zero, must be specified in all pre-event publicity, and the concept of mm+ss was invented. The minima I suggested (reproduced below) preserve the idea that the reduction in the minimum mm (brought about by the introduction of delay) is the same as the minimum recommended delay for each rating type (regular, quick, blitz).

  • Regular: mm+ss must be at least 30, and mm by itself must be at least 25. Recommended ss is 5 to 30 seconds.
  • Quick: mm+ss must be at least 11 and at most 29, and mm by itself must be at least 8. Recommended ss is 3 seconds.
  • Blitz: mm+ss must be at least 5 and at most 10, and mm by itself must be at least 3. Recommended ss is 2 seconds.

Bill Smythe

9

At G/5;d25 the maximum duration of a 30-move game would be 35 minutes. Scorekeeping would not be required. People would not always use the entire delay so most games would finish even quicker. It makes it difficult to reconcile that with having a game affect the regular rating.

On the other hand, a game with a close endgame would have a good chance of taking longer.

10

I understand all of this but I still don’t mind a time control like G/20;d10 or G/15;d15 being allowed in the regular (dual) rating system and a time control like G/5;d6 being allowed in the quick rating system, despite the fact that for most games played at G/20;d10 and G/15;d15, the total amount of time each player ends up getting for the game will be less than 30 minutes and for most games played at G/5;d6, the total amount of time each player ends up getting for the game won’t be more than 10 minutes. I think the minimum base time requirement for regular and dual should be raised to 15, the minimum base time requirement for quick should stay at 5, and the minimum base time requirement for blitz should stay at 3.

Yes, this is why we should raise the minimum required base time for regular and dual rated time controls to 15. Scorekeeping not being required once a player goes under five minutes is another interesting point with a time control such as G/5;d25.

11

This topic is a spin-off from The TD Show.

12

IMHO, short time controls combined with long increments are a grotesque distortion of the original concept that regular should be at least 30 (approximately) and quick should be at least 10 (approximately). Thus, I dislike ideas like G/15 inc/15 for regular, and G/6 d/5 for quick.

Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I’ll stick with my preferences as stated in my posts. G/5 d/25 should never have been permitted in the first place. Organizers running such events should be forced to end this practice, beginning on January 1 of the year after adoptions of clarifications by the Delegates in August.

Bill Smythe

13

Contacting the organizer I learned that his motto is to either make it popular or get it banned.
In the private e-mail response he gave a number of pros and cons.

14

Rather than a minimum base time which applies to a potentially board range of session lengths (and thus permits some rather weird ideas like G/5,d/25) is to require that in single session T/C’s the base time in minutes be at least equal to the delay/increment time in seconds.

15

So, would you allow G/15;d15 to be dual rated?

In answer to the question, yes, there have been events rated at G/5;d25, it appears that 4 different CA affiliates have used it, dating back to 2013. The affiliates that have used it are Chess Palace, Academic Chess, Whittier Chess Club and Whittier High School CC. 75 of 81 sections have had the same chief TD.

A few years back I suggested minimum times for blitz, quick, dual and regular events, but nobody picked up on the idea. I think part of the concern was that they didn’t want to create time controls that would be unratable under any system. As it stands, I think that anything that has a minimum total time (MM+SS) of 5 minutes or more is ratable under some system.

Even G/5;D61 would be ratable, as regular-only.

I wonder if the online task force could be tasked to make some recommendations for both online and OTB time controls that might not be mandatory but would provide organizers with some guidance? Addressing the issue of when notation is required might be helpful, too. (That’s probably an OTB-only issue, because as far as I know all the online platforms do notation on games.)

16

Yes. I wouldn’t be a fan of that type of T/C, but it at least feels like a 30 minute time control as it gives enough base time to deal somewhat reasonably with a complicated late opening/early middle game (unlike 5 and 25). More to the point, I don’t see any other way to create minimum rateable conditions that wouldn’t exclude what are widely considered to be perfectly good T/C’s. If 15 and 15 isn’t permitted, what is? 20 and 10? So 2/1 ratio? But then 3+2 or 3+3 blitz wouldn’t be permitted. mm>=ss is a straightforward rule; it covers common choices for alternatives to G/5;d0 for blitz and excludes some of the more bizarre controls for longer sessions.

17

I received that same PM. He actually seemed to carry that “motto” a bit further, saying that if an idea is bad, the best way to expose how bad it is, is to actually use it.

Apparently he has a lot of students who want to play games for their regular (slow) rating, but do not want to keep score. He achieves this with G/5 d/25, by instructing the player with the white pieces to start the game by letting his clock run for 26 seconds before he plays his first move. That way one side of the clock now reads 4:59, which means that BOTH players are excused from scorekeeping for the rest of the game, i.e. for the entire game. Yet, with a 25-second delay, the game is still more or less leisurely.

I think they should have.

Under my proposal, the MSA algorithm to determine the event type (regular, quick, blitz) could remain exactly as it is: mm+ss of 30 or more would still be regular, 11 through 29 would still be quick, 5 through 10 would still be blitz. It’s just that certain weird subsets of these controls would no longer be legal at all.

Bill Smythe

18

I have yet to see any really sound arguments for why those time controls should not be ratable.

And would those arguments change for incremental time controls versus delay time controls?

Some time controls are already unratable, anything faster than 5 minutes base time (quick/regular) or 3 minutes (blitz). There are those who have called for a 4th ratings system time horizon (bullet) to cover at least some of those faster time controls.

For the sake of the next generation of US Chess programmers, I hope we don’t complicate the rules so much that it becomes difficult to parse a time control and decide if it is ratable. (An even worse problem would be to introduce ambiguities. Right now time controls are deterministic, they unambiguously determine what ratings system(s) apply.)

19

That would rule out G/5;d6 or G/15;+20 or G/25 ;+45. I’m okay with ruling them out and it makes for a simple rule.

An alternative would be to list the minimum mm for each time control (3 for blitz, 5 for quick, 15 for regular) but then G/10;+60 would be unratable in any system. I’m okay with that and it would be more free than mm being at least as big as ss.

20

I think I’m in the minority. If someone wants to run a G/5 d/25 tournament and call it regular rated, as long as it meets the “mm+ss” metric, let them do so. Players like the high school players that don’t want to keep score can figure out whether it’s a good idea or not when they lose on time in a winning position.

Let the market sort itself out. Right now, the situation seems to be one random affiliate running these events. I don’t see that changing. Remember, non-scholastic affiliates have issues such as expenses of running a tournament (including renting a site) that should keep them from purposely running money-losing propositions.