Time Increments

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: Time Increments

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I don't understand why, but it seems some chess players are addicted to time trouble.

Time trouble addiction is commonly explained by the ever elusive search for perfection. Or failing to choose in good time between two (or more) apparently equally attractive alternatives, as was the case for the fabled @ss and the two equally attractive and equally distant piles of hay. :D

On the other hand, I don't understand why I, for example, chose to start moving quickly last night in the middle of a slow TC game, with plenty of time on my clock. Probably it was due to being shocked by an unexpected turn of events.

[Mathieu Cloutier]

Re: Time Increments

Time trouble addiction is commonly explained by the ever elusive search for perfection. Or failing to choose in good time between two (or more) apparently equally attractive alternatives, as was the case for the fabled @ss and the two equally attractive and equally distant piles of hay. :D

On the other hand, I don't understand why I, for example, chose to start moving quickly last night in the middle of a slow TC game, with plenty of time on my clock. Probably it was due to being shocked by an unexpected turn of events.

I see what you mean about looking for perfection in a limited time. Even then, increment is still better than delay because it potentially gives you more time. ;)

I just don't get why somebody would prefer delays. Even in blitz, I'm now enjoying my games much more with increments. It's actually fun to get into an endgame with a piece more and 5 seconds lefts on the clock, knowing perfectly well that you can crank that up to 30 or 40sec.

I once finished a slow game with more time than I started with and it was very... satisfying.

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: Time Increments

For those who haven't heard of it, here is a link explaining the supposed paradox of 'Buridan's @ss' , a hypothetical situation in which such a logical creature as the @ss in question would starve to death (Buridan was a philosopher). [edit: apparently I slightly modified the tale in my partial telling of it, although my version is a common variant.]:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan's_ass

[Gordon Ritchie]

Re: Time Increments

When I first took up chess, back in the 1960s, our tournaments typically involved 6 rounds: 1 Friday evening, 3 on Saturday, 2 on Sunday. The time control was 40 moves in 2 hours to adjournment (with a sealed move) resuming with 20 moves every hour. If you managed to get to the first time control, you faced an adjournment session on top of everything else. By Saturday afternoon, I could not remember my own name, let alone my opponent's. It was a struggle to survive.
When I came back to the game after an absence of some 40 years (!) it was in part because of the new time controls with increments. But then, I was never more than a club player.
I actually score better under the longer controls: my FIDE rating was mainly earned under longer controls and is, unusually, still well above my CFC rating which has been largely at 90/30.
I know the big boys generally prefer the longer controls and it does produce higher quality chess.
But I definitely favour the quicker controls with increments for club play.

[Garland Best]

Re: Time Increments

Kevin, If this is an issue, we can use the Saitek III instead of the DCG American game clocks. On the Saiteks, a 5 second counter is shown before the main counter is shown.

Technically speaking, Bonstein is not just a simple delay. As per wikipedia, "This time method results in the same usage of time as the simple delay. The only difference is that during the turn, the player can see how much time they are using because the clock starts counting down immediately. Once the turn is over, if they have used less than the duration of the delay period, the time is returned as if no time had been used. If the time used exceeds the delay period, the length of the delay period is added to the player's time."

I'll have to explore to see if the DCG North Americans actually have this mode. The Saitek IIIs do.

[John Brown]

Re: Time Increments

The question is not how an increment or delay is. The question is do increments cause games to go forever or do delays end a game sooner than later?

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: Time Increments

The question is not how an increment or delay is. The question is do increments cause games to go forever or do delays end a game sooner than later?

The answer to that particular question of yours is that either an increment or a delay can allow a game to go on indefinitely, as Lee H. said as much earlier. However IMO the likelihood of a player badly blundering is higher with a delay rather than an increment, given a fairly complex position on the board, as increments can allow one to bank up more time if one plays quickly, as everyone knows.

[Mathieu Cloutier]

Re: Time Increments

The question is not how an increment or delay is. The question is do increments cause games to go forever or do delays end a game sooner than later?

Not particularily no. 30 sec. is really not a lot of time. Blunders are bound to happen. You have that very rare 100 moves game that can end later than usual, but that's it.

Increments don't change the game much, beside removing all the uncivilized behaviour associated with time scrambles.

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: Time Increments

Not particularily no. 30 sec. is really not a lot of time. Blunders are bound to happen. You have that very rare 100 moves game that can end later than usual, but that's it.

Increments don't change the game much, beside removing all the uncivilized behaviour associated with time scrambles.

If the average game goes about 42 moves (which an old study by de Groot suggested it does) then each player gains about 21 minutes in increment time, if 30 second increments are being used, assuming most games in a given weekend swiss round are of average length (yet, there's often one or more games that go longer than average, which may hold up the next round...). With 30 second delays being used instead of increments, the players would rarely not exceed the delay portion on every move of the whole game. Thus the average game with 30 second delays could easily take up to 42 minutes less to play in real time than playing with 30 second increments. However, once again I would note that there's often one or more games in a round that would still go beyond the average 42 moves to finish playing, regardless. In these games, often endgames, possible added chronic time pressure created by using delays rather than increments could make fatal blunders more likely, IMO.

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Time Increments

...In these games, often endgames, possible added chronic time pressure created by using delays rather than increments could make fatal blunders more likely, IMO.

This seems to argue in favor of delays, from the standpoint that there is nothing in chess more exciting chess than a fatal blunder. And this must be the case, because everyone follows blundering human WC Candidates, but almost no one follows non-blundering engine vs. engine matches.

So delays = more blunders = more exciting chess.

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: Time Increments

This seems to argue in favor of delays, from the standpoint that there is nothing in chess more exciting chess than a fatal blunder. And this must be the case, because everyone follows blundering human WC Candidates, but almost no one follows non-blundering engine vs. engine matches.

So delays = more blunders = more exciting chess.

By that reasoning, competitive speed chess should have been doing very well long ago [edit: even organized Active chess isn't doing nearly as well as organized chess revolving around events with slower TCs]. Clearly people hope for some quality, besides errors.

Walter Browne tried pushing for organized speed chess back in the 1980s, but the project eventually fizzled out. [edit: his now defunct organization was called the world blitz chess federation.]

[Mathieu Cloutier]

Re: Time Increments

This seems to argue in favor of delays, from the standpoint that there is nothing in chess more exciting chess than a fatal blunder. And this must be the case, because everyone follows blundering human WC Candidates, but almost no one follows non-blundering engine vs. engine matches.

So delays = more blunders = more exciting chess.

It's been some time since I've read such a ridiculous statement.

Want to know the reason? You haven't been posting for a few days.

Cheers,

Mathieu

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Time Increments

I see what you mean about looking for perfection in a limited time. Even then, increment is still better than delay because it potentially gives you more time. ;)

I just don't get why somebody would prefer delays. Even in blitz, I'm now enjoying my games much more with increments. It's actually fun to get into an endgame with a piece more and 5 seconds lefts on the clock, knowing perfectly well that you can crank that up to 30 or 40sec.

I once finished a slow game with more time than I started with and it was very... satisfying.

Actually, Mathieu, what you did was you played "FTL Chess" (Faster Than Light Chess). Which of course means you went backward in time. You finished the game before you started it. But that means you didn't actually use any increments, which means your clock was running down and you were about to lose on time... which is when you played FTL and went back to before the start of the game... which is when your use of increments went to zero and you were about to lose on time... which is when you played FTL and went back to before the start of the game... which is when your use of increments went to zero and you were about to lose on time... which is when you played FTL and went back to before the start of the game...

In doing all this you inadvertantly created a wormhole to The Land Before Time

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Land_Before_Time

where you taught the cartoon dinosaurs to play chess, and in fact this act is what started all of civilization (this was edited out of 2001: A Space Odyssey and replaced with the infamous scene of an ape killing another ape using a wooden club).

Unfortunately, you taught the dinosaurs to play FTL chess, which propelled them back in time and reduced their brains to almost pea size which is why modern science thinks of them as dumb beasts, when actually they had music (they had T-Rex before we did) and art (Picassosaurus) and cell phone technology. In fact, there was a twerking dinosaur named Bindi-Rex who was a hit on YouTooth.

Oh, and of course, your brain was reduced to pea size also, which explains a lot, and it all ended when you lost on the very first move where you were trying to claim zugzwang, stalemate and 3-time repetition because your King could be en passant captured halfway through castling, and your time actually did run out, proving that Zeno's paradox is a logical fallacy. When the TD looked at your scoresheet, you had recorded 50 moves for each player in which there were no pawn moves and no captures, and you had written "draw by perpetual check".

By doing all this, you put the rating software into an infinite loop, constantly recalculating your pre-game rating as it updated your post-game rating. There was a chain reaction of rating calculations reaching into the entire population of players who had ever played rated chess in Canada, including a few dinosaurs, resulting in cyclic occurences of rating inflation and deflation throughout Canadian rated chess history, ALL CAUSED BY INCREMENTS.

Oh, and the climate changed too! Learning to play FTL chess caused the dinosaurs to eat a lot more fast food, resulting in much higher levels of dino farts, and the female dinosaurs (unlike humans) had more baby dinos due to being better educated.

[Mathieu Cloutier]

Re: Time Increments

I don't know what kind of medication you're on, but I'd definitely give it a try myself. Seems fun!

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: Time Increments

Kevin, If this is an issue, we can use the Saitek III instead of the DCG American game clocks. On the Saiteks, a 5 second counter is shown before the main counter is shown.

Technically speaking, Bonstein is not just a simple delay. As per wikipedia, "This time method results in the same usage of time as the simple delay. The only difference is that during the turn, the player can see how much time they are using because the clock starts counting down immediately. Once the turn is over, if they have used less than the duration of the delay period, the time is returned as if no time had been used. If the time used exceeds the delay period, the length of the delay period is added to the player's time."

I'll have to explore to see if the DCG North Americans actually have this mode. The Saitek IIIs do.

I was unaware/unsure different clocks had different capabilities as far as (not) displaying the delay portion. I thought this could be a global issue as far as the desirability of using delays is concerned, rather than thinking of it as only particular to our club's Active event(s).