I have finally seen the light and now realize that increment is vastly superior to delay so I am switching from G/45;d15 to G/45;inc15 for the monthly quad tournament I run. I have found a document online that shows how to set many popular digital clocks for G/90;inc30, statesvillechess.com/so2013/increment.html. I have several questions:
I’m assuming these instructions will work for setting the clocks to G/45;inc15 by just changing the base time to 45 and the increment time to 15. Is this correct?
The two documents give different ways on setting the Saitek Competition Pro. Is there a reason to prefer one over the other?
The two documents give different ways on setting the Excalibur, one using a preset and the other using the user setting. Does the Excalibur give the increment time for move 1? If not, using the user setting would be the better way to set it so you can manually add the increment time to the seconds so you get the increment time for move one.
The documents are several years old so they don’t include instructions for the newer clocks. I have the VTEK300 so I’ve written instructions for that clock myself. Does anybody have instructions for setting the other newer clocks, such as the DGT3000, Zmart, and Omcar?
The Excalibur does not add the increment time before move one. It handles it the same way the Chronos II does: both sides simply start with 45 minutes with the first 15-second increment added after move one. If you want to make conditions precisely equal you have to manually add 15 seconds to the Excalibur and Chronos II, or else deduct 15 seconds from the DGT NA (and I assume all DGT clocks).
The V-Tek can be set both ways, I have heard. Not sure about the Saitek Pro. That is the one clock from the generation of a few years ago that I had trouble setting in general; never tried to set one for increment.
Unless you plan to set all clocks yourself it might be best to let things be as they are. For a 40-move game the difference between G/55 and G/54 minutes, 45 seconds might not be worth the hassles of ‘fixing’ as long as both sides in any given game have precisely the same amount of thinking time.
We covered some of this ground in your thread on increment in the US Open. Good luck.
The instructions for the Saitek Pro are really the same in both documents. The point is that you simply start with a preset that reasonably matches the time control you really want and adjust it to match.
Hoo boy. I think the answers to all your questions will vary greatly from one clock brand to another. If you want to become one of those “super TDs” who can set any brand of clock to any time control in 10 seconds flat, good luck, and I would certainly admire you for it, but it would be beyond the call of duty. Memory overload (of the TD’s brain, not the clock’s electronics) is a serious possibility.
Not always. With the Chronos, I’m pretty sure that’s true. With the DGT North American, it’s definitely not true. I don’t have a DGT, but I do have the manual (downloaded from the DGT website), and it shows that, for the most part, the odd-numbered options are hard presets, while the corresponding even numbers are the adjustable versions. For example, option 13 is G/3 inc/2 (the international standard for blitz), while option 14 is G/h:mm:ss inc/ss, where you can choose the h:mm:ss and ss. So use option 14 for any single control with increment.
I think the Excalibur also has some hard presets and some soft ones, but I’m not sure.
Any clock that does not give the increment time for move 1 (e.g. Excalibur and Chronos) can, of course, be set just by adding the increment time (15 seconds in your example) to the main time – if the clock allows you to do this. It’s possible, however, that some clocks may not be settable initially for fractions of a minute, such as G/45:15 inc/15. In this case you’d have to settle for G/45 inc/15, cheating each player (equally) out of 15 seconds. Or I suppose you could use G/46 inc/15, and then run each side for 45 seconds before the game starts. (Yechh.)
In any case, add-before is the international standard, so I applaud your efforts in attempting to set all the clocks this way whenever possible.
Seriously? Who would knowingly use a clock like that? Imagine Black has 2:32 on his clock and White makes an illegal move. I’m assuming if it is trivial to add or subtract time, Mr. Smythe would have suggested setting the time for 45:00 and then adding 15 seconds. How do you handle it? Set Black’s clock for five minutes and White likewise gets rounded up to the next minute? Plenty of room for gamesmanship here. This is as bad as the DGT 1001. (I’d prefer a BHB.)
Don’t confuse “setting the initial time control” with “assessing a penalty.” The Excalibur Game Timer II does not allow the user to specify seconds when setting the time control before the start of the game. However, the clock does allow the TD to add time for a penalty. (I don’t have the clock in front of me, and I don’t remember if the TD can adjust the seconds as well as the minutes of the remaining time.)
Both of the documents suggest setting the DGT NA using option 14 so I’m assuming you could use the instructions given in the documents except substituting 1:30:00 for 0:45:00 and 0.30 to 0.15.
You can specify seconds when setting the Excalibur if you use the custom controls rather than a preset
Those are the U# settings below 01 or above 99. I didn’t bother learning about them until finally having a tournament that didn’t match a preset (such as 40/1:50, SD/60;d10), so Micah probably ran across these before me.
Isn’t there something in the AUG forbidding admitting you were wrong? I certainly haven’t seen very many posts doing so, so I assumed they must get pulled whenever it happens.
