After a LONG three round day at a recent tournament, a friend who is returning to chess after several years getting his education made the comment that there used to be a rule limiting the number of hours of play per day.
A. Was this a rule at one time?
B. Is it still a rule?
B2. What is the limit per day?
There is no US Chess rule limiting the number of rounds or hours per day. I have never known of such a rule going back to when I started directing in the late 1970s.
There is a FIDE rule that limits play to twelve hours per day (based on games lasting 60 moves). For tournaments in which players can earn title norms, there is also a limit of two rounds per day.
Well there is such a rule in FIDE. There are also some rules related to start times and round length governing US Chess national scholastic events, but those only apply to those events.
To avoid this problem, many people take a bye in one of the rounds. The New Hampshire Open used to have three rounds on the Saturday, but about half of the players were taking a third round bye at one point.
Alex Relyea
There have been US Chess rated insanity events–so called because they feature insane numbers of games in a 24 hour period–since at least the 1980s. So no such domestic rule. FIDE is another matter. Neither approach is necessarily wrong.
Even a FIDE limit of 12 hours for three 60-move games (G/90;inc30) could end up with 15 hours of play if they each go 120 moves. The scholastic nationals with their twelve hours of play on Saturday have to have time between rounds scheduled in and thus a player could start at 9 AM, finish after 11 PM and still only play 12 of those 14 hours.
I looked back through all of the Rulebooks and even the Harkness Blue Book. There have never been limits on the number of hours of play, at least in US events. Back before Allegro/Sudden Death time controls, a common format was three rounds on a Saturday, two rounds on a Sunday tournaments. The time control was 50/120, 25/60, 25/60, etc. with no final time session. Players could start playing chess at 10 am in the morning and be playing a third round way into the wee hours of the morning. I recall playing one game past 2:00 am. If you also had an adjourned game from a previous round, then you had to play it off early on Sunday morning before the 4th round began. Many players had nightmarish stories of having to play chess for 16 hours on Saturday and 10 or more hours on Sunday. Funny, though, they told those stories to the young whippersnappers as much as a badge of honor for what they had to do to play chess.
I remember when the SOUTHERN CONGRESS (Atlanta, 1970s) was three rounds on Saturday and three rounds on Sunday … … … and most of us still survived!
But not many showed up for work Monday a.m.