Survey - rate of play

[Championnat de Montréal]

What is your preferred rate of play (with 30 sec. increment) for the next Montreal Championship ?

[Aris Marghetis]

Re: Survey - rate of play

What is your preferred rate of play (with 30 sec. increment) for the next Montreal Championship ?

If I may suggest for your consideration, an easier (for the arbiters et al) alternative to the 3rd poll choice, would be simply 120 minutes per game (plus 30 second increment).

Just my 2c worth, best regards.

[Championnat de Montréal]

Re : Survey - rate of play

Aris,

Interesting comment.

Yet several active players to whom we hava talked recently seem to value a lot two time controls... they like the first break because it gives them a chance to re-assess where the game is going and maybe look for a drastic change.

One of them even said to us that a single control will actually complicate the arbiter job, because all time pressures will come around at the same time !
You are an arbiter...is that argu,ent valid ?

[Alan Baljeu]

Re: Survey - rate of play

Logically it's not so. Time pressure will happen first for the slowest-played game (fewer moves covered), and last for the faster-played game.

[Aris Marghetis]

Re: Re : Survey - rate of play

Aris,

Interesting comment.

Yet several active players to whom we hava talked recently seem to value a lot two time controls... they like the first break because it gives them a chance to re-assess where the game is going and maybe look for a drastic change.

One of them even said to us that a single control will actually complicate the arbiter job, because all time pressures will come around at the same time !
You are an arbiter...is that argu,ent valid ?

In my experience, the single time control (WITH INCREMENTS) is much easier to arbiter than the dual time control. First of all, with one time control, games do not tend to finish at the same time, as each game has a different character to it, for example, how soon it gets to an endgame, if at all, the type of endgame, like a potentially slower B+N vs. 2N, rather than a more straightforward R+Ps vs. R+Ps, and so on. On the other hand, with a dual time control, a LOT of the games hit 40 moves at about the same time, as many players have been squeezed into getting their 40 moves in, and many games seem to reach 40 moves. For example, at the WYCC this year, for many of the rounds in the Open-18 section, very many of the games finished within a 30-45 minute window around the 40-move first time control. Either players made mistakes in the time rush, and/or players gave up after 40 moves in waiting for the winning opponent to slip.

The bigger issue though is simply the counting of moves. With a single time control, it is not the end of the world if the players accidentally double-press their clocks, or both forget to press their clocks, etc. as their mentality is different when budgeting time for THE REST OF THE GAME. However, in checking a specific move-count like 40, both players, and the arbiters, expect the clocks to have perfectly recorded the numbers of moves up to that point, matching both scoresheets. ALMOST EVERY SINGLE INCIDENT that I had to "arbiter" at the WYCC this year in the Open-18 section, INVOLVED ISSUES WITH THE CLOCK'S 40-MOVE COUNT, vs. the scoresheets, etc. Therefore, from an arbiter viewpoint, my strong (LOL) opinion is that a single time control is easier to TD.