Move Rates for Television
Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 3:47 pm
The latest blog http://stevegiddinschessblog.blogspot.c ... mania.html makes some interesting points about chess on TV, notably that occupying a wodge of TV time doesn't have to be a problem on a minority channel. He cites fishing as an example, but equally it applies to cricket.
Something that is a problem for long games is where a player goes into thought for an extended period. Even the most well briefed commentator will run out of things to say eventually. Game 5 of the Kasparov - Short match was a case in point.
So perhaps for televised games, you need to mess around with the move rate, not to make it faster in aggregate but to make sure something was always happening, or about to happen.
So start with an initial 10 minutes and award 2 and half minutes each move to 40. This sets the default time at 10 minutes and allocates 110 minutes to reach move 40. That's the same as FIDE's 40/90 with 30 second increments. At move 40, add an extra 10 minutes and reduce the increment to a minute and a half. So by move 60, you can use 110 + 10 + 20*1.5 = 150 minutes, again the same as the FIDE rate. Beyond move 60, the increment drops to 30 seconds, so the same as now.
The difference is that if you want a big think just out of the opening, you've only got around 30 minutes maximum assuming you've blitzed for the first dozen or so.
Something that is a problem for long games is where a player goes into thought for an extended period. Even the most well briefed commentator will run out of things to say eventually. Game 5 of the Kasparov - Short match was a case in point.
So perhaps for televised games, you need to mess around with the move rate, not to make it faster in aggregate but to make sure something was always happening, or about to happen.
So start with an initial 10 minutes and award 2 and half minutes each move to 40. This sets the default time at 10 minutes and allocates 110 minutes to reach move 40. That's the same as FIDE's 40/90 with 30 second increments. At move 40, add an extra 10 minutes and reduce the increment to a minute and a half. So by move 60, you can use 110 + 10 + 20*1.5 = 150 minutes, again the same as the FIDE rate. Beyond move 60, the increment drops to 30 seconds, so the same as now.
The difference is that if you want a big think just out of the opening, you've only got around 30 minutes maximum assuming you've blitzed for the first dozen or so.