I will not be the one to complain about this. I’m a bit of a soft touch as a player/opponent—back when I played CCA money tournaments and had delusions I might learn to play chess someday that was slightly less true. I doubt I will ever set a move counter on a clock again, but I do not object if my opponent has set up proper equipment, including a clock with a move counter turned on. Even if I am Black and on time for the game, I usually let it go.
It seems to me there are two ways to look at a digital clock. Either it is just that—a clock—with the added feature of delay/increment that makes it preferred over an analog for SD games…or else the bells and whistles such as move counters, beeps and lights and freeze-at-end to note time control or end-of-game are regarded as a good thing, since a clock is objective and treats both players the same.
The latter POV was outlined clearly in the 4th Edition and less clearly in the 5th Edition. I subscribe to the former world-view. It might be well to clarify USCF’s position here. That should speak to those who want to align USCF procedures with FIDE’s. For example, I believe FIDE prohibits clocks from adding time after the specified number of moves in a time control is reached, and mandates that the time be added after all the time from the first control (for the first player to use up the time?) is exhausted.
It’s not the biggest issue in the chess world—but I scratch my head when I read NTD’s shrug off what happened at USATE last year as just one of those things.
The incident happened in, as far as I have heard, one game - in a tournament where over 3,000 games were played.
The only time I have had this happen in an event I directed was in the 2006 World Open.
In contrast, just at the 2011 North American Open, I dealt with four flag falls from improperly set clocks. I regularly had to adjust both analog and digital clocks at the start of the round (people insisted on adding a minute to the analogs, and deducting five minutes from the digital, no matter how many times we announced te correct settings).
So, I see the USATE incident as no more than a cautionary tale - the moral of which is, “Know thy rules.”
There also is the possibility of a player misinterpreting a move counter. I would never have had the excellent tiebreaks necessary to qualify for the 2007 US Championship if my round 2 opponent at 2006 US Open understood that the number 40 meant he better move ASAP. Instead, he calmly let the last 35 seconds on the clock expire, in a winning position.
The best is to allow the digital clock to go to zero and then automatically add another hour. The player can claim a win if the clock resets on or before move 40. In fact, this is exactly akin to a game with an analog clock when one player has lots of time left after time control. When he nears 6:00, you must remember that he gets another hour. Frankly, if players were more familiar with this setting on digital clocks, there would be less confusion and directors wouldn’t have to manually add the hour. I already recruited most of my students and friends to the no-move-counter crowd.
Amen. Several different manufacturers. A few different models. Dozens of different settings. There’s plenty of room for confusion trouble, both if the players are honest, and not!
Are you going to work at USATE this year? I suspect lots (and lots) of players will deduct the five minutes from long-established habit—no matter how many times Steve bellows otherwise.
At 40/120, SD/60 it’s not a huge deal, but at G/30 it sure is…
Really? I certainly do not expect that the majority of class level tournament players would know all the rules of play.
I feel confident that if this were put to a serious test, that large swaths of the current USCF rulebook and addendums would be at best partly understood by most tournament players.
My guess is that ‘eastside’ means that T.D.'s have the right to hold all players responsible for knowing every rule; the old “ignorance is no excuse” that self-serves some laws so well.
I wonder whether one organizational idea for a new written-from-scratch USCF rulebook (one that McKay would not control) would be to have a section more explicitly devoted to what each role needs to thoroughly know?
A section devoted to what a PLAYER needs to know (such as proper way to claim draw by 3rd occurrence of a position); another section devoted to what a TOURNAMENT DIRECTOR who walks the floor needs to know; another for TD who does the pairings; another section devoted to what the TOURNAMENT ORGANIZER needs to know in order for GM norms to be available; etc.
I dunno, just a thought.
2003 5th Edition of USCF rulebook, page 103:
This section of the rulebook ends on page 211.
There might be too much of a pattern in the rulebook, supported by statements like my quote of ‘eastside’, to make things harder or more intimidating for private chess players who might be considering joining the USCF and trying rated tournament chess.
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Indeed, the misinterpretation begins with the incorrect LABEL put on this part of the clock:
This part is not a “move counter”; rather it is more like a “button press counter”.
Once this counter more empirically labeled, most of the problems vanishes.
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There have been suggestions in the past that splitting the rulebook into multiple handbooks may be a valid way to avoid the current contract and allow those handbooks to be on-line (big note - I am not a lawyer and don’t really know anything about copyright law).
Seeing as a perfect score is vanishingly rare in the TD tests, and the club, local and senior tests can be answered with citations direct from the rulebook, I would not expect the average player to know EVERY rule. The holes in knowledge some players have has astonished me in the past, but I’ve reached the point where I am now only somewhat surprised. If GMs have (rarely) made the mistake of thinking that a rook cannot pass through check during queen-side castling, then class players can make other mistakes.
Your guess is incorrect. I meant precisely what I said. Read my .sig file.
Directors don’t have the right to hold players responsible for knowing the rules. Directors have the obligation to hold players responsible for following the rules. These are different concepts.
It makes absolutely no sense to not know the rules under which a competition is governed prior to entering. I’ve taken part in a lot of competitions, most of which aren’t chess. In all of them, the rules were publicized before the event. In all of them, competitors were expected to know the rules. This is hardly unique to chess.
The USCF rulebook can be bought from USCF Sales for $18, and from Amazon for as low as $10, I believe. It’s a wise investment, and one I urge players to make at every conceivable opportunity. Perhaps someday soon, we’ll get the USCF rules of play online, which would be even better.
(EDITS: fixed a misspelling…then misspelled something else in the first edit. Oy.)
I’ve never worked the USATE (well, I guess it’s “World Amateur Team” now?), and wouldn’t expect to in the near future. However, I believe your suspicion is well founded.
Also not quite true. If player A forgets to press the clock (or does so slowly) and player B doesn’t notice, then when player B moves, he will press his button but the counter will not change. Since I’m disabled, this happens to me sometimes when opponent is in severe zeitnot.
At least the popular name ‘move counter’ accurately describes the intended function.
Absolutely! Just because people like to use them and just because they have many legitimate uses, that’s no reason to allow something that MIGHT be misused! Alles ist in ordnung! If it’s not mandatory it must be forbidden!
Personally, I LIKE having a move counter displayed on my clock. It serves several useful purposes. For one thing, it’s an obvious reminder if I’ve missed recording a move. For another, I find it useful when considering a time claim. The only time I remember making such a claim in error, the display on the clock was right! (I had missed a move pair and made the claim thinking that the clock was wrong). Finally, just for convenience, when I glance at the clock to make a quick check at how much time I have left, it’s handy to see IN THE SAME GLANCE what move number we’re on. It saves that miniscule effort of also looking at my scoresheet. That’s no big deal, but WHY NOT SAVE THE EFFORT?
All this overblown hyperbole about the move counters is just silly! Aren’t there more important issues to discuss than coming up with some reason to tell other people how they have to set up their own clocks? If you don’t like move counters THEN DON’T USE THEM. I, however will continue to use that feature on my own clock.
Well, I didn’t get it quite right. You have to set the move count to something much higher than 1, or the secondary time is added back after every move, not what we want. So I set the move count in the byo-yomi time to 199, and other than showing count down from 99 with each move (could be distracting since it’s meaningless), it does work properly .
Using the move counter has another glitch. On the Chronos, the move counter starts at 0 and increments with each move. So if it says 40, that means 40 moves (or button presses) have been made. The Exacalibur starts at 1 before any moves have been made. Thus when it reads 40, only 39 button presses (or moves) have been made. So seeing 40 and thinking the time control has been reached could lead to time forfeiture.
Ding dong! I am 1-0 lifetime against experts who calmly let their clock expire thinking they had completed 40 moves, when in fact it was the 40th move.
Yes, we need more uniform standards on issues such as displaying the move counter and time delay. Every clock is different, and most have multiple modes to choose. I always set my move counter off, and if my opponent sets one, I never rely on it.
If the Excalibur starts at 01 instead of 00, that feature should be changed immediately in their next model. That’s at odds with what everybody else does (isn’t it)?
No, please don’t change this. The horse has already left the barn. Unless the next model is visually significantly different from the current model, can you imagine the confusion caused by having both one-based and zero-based clock press counters? There’s a TD nightmare waiting to happen: One of the players calls a TD over because something has happened to make the clock press counter incorrect (will wonders never cease!). The TD looks at the player’s scoresheet to see how many moves have been made and asks whether this is a new or old model Excalibur (so the TD knows how to adjust the clock press counter). The player gives the TD a blank look and says “huh?”
No, thanks. Basically, if the clock press counter on the Excalibur is correct, it tells the player which number line the player should be filling in on the scoresheet.
