Objection to Digital clocks

[Ian Thompson]

I was recently shown the defect in a DGT 2010 in Durban. He set the clock with 5 seconds delay. Set the player's time at 3 seconds and now pressed the clock.

Given the description of how the European models of DGT operate, it would be impossible in normal use for the clock to read 3 seconds. It would have got there by adding 5 seconds to minus 2, so presumably would have stopped to indicate flag fall before it reached minus 2.

That's half correct. It would be impossible for the reason you state without intervention from the arbiter. The arbiter can stop the clock at any point in the game, and with any amount of time remaining, and then adjust the remaining time to anything he likes, including setting it to less than the delay time. (Whether that would ever be appropriate is a different matter.)

David's comment above "Suppose that the delay is 5 seconds and you adjust the clock leaving one player with 3 seconds, as an arbiter might do if imposing a time penalty. The DGT2010 then counts down from 3 seconds. If the player doesn't move in that time, game over. If a move is made, the clock goes back to 3 seconds. So the player is left with 3 seconds per move rather than 5." is a clear fault with the clock, although it shouldn't show 5 seconds, it should show the time remaining when the clock was stopped + 5 seconds.

Stewart's defect is a different situation and I'm inclined to think the fault lies with the arbiter, not the clock.

David hasn't said whether his DGT 2010 is the original one or the revised one. I shall try what he did on my revised one at the weekend and see if I get the same result.

If there was another time period, that presumably would have been added on, so showing, say, fifteen minutes and three seconds is plausible.

Yes, it is, with the additional observation that the flag fall indicator must also be showing. The sequence would be that your clock reaches 0 (so you've lost on time), the clock then adds on the 15 minutes for the second time control, you move after 2 further seconds, the clock then adds on the delay of 5 seconds for the next move, leaving the remaining time as 15 minutes 3 seconds with the flag fall indicator displayed.

[David Sedgwick]

David hasn't said whether his DGT 2010 is the original one or the revised one. I shall try what he did on my revised one at the weekend and see if I get the same result.

I did indeed neglect to say.

Mine is the original version (without the blue band). I shall be interested to learn whether you get the same result with the newer version.

David's comment above "Suppose that the delay is 5 seconds and you adjust the clock leaving one player with 3 seconds, as an arbiter might do if imposing a time penalty. The DGT2010 then counts down from 3 seconds. If the player doesn't move in that time, game over. If a move is made, the clock goes back to 3 seconds. So the player is left with 3 seconds per move rather than 5." is a clear fault with the clock, although it shouldn't show 5 seconds, it should show the time remaining when the clock was stopped + 5 seconds.

That is of course correct. I should have said "So the player is left with exactly 3 seconds per move rather than with a minimum of 5."

The arbiter can stop the clock at any point in the game, and with any amount of time remaining, and then adjust the remaining time to anything he likes, including setting it to less than the delay time. (Whether that would ever be appropriate is a different matter.)

In my previous post I opined that this would not be appropriate.

With the DGT North American, you would need to alter the delay setting to achieve the same effect.

[Ian Thompson]

David hasn't said whether his DGT 2010 is the original one or the revised one. I shall try what he did on my revised one at the weekend and see if I get the same result.

I did indeed neglect to say.

Mine is the original version (without the blue band). I shall be interested to learn whether you get the same result with the newer version.

I did get exactly the same result.

[David Blower]

Another incident in the Wolverhampton Chess League, invloving Mercia again, but this time against Telford.

The final of the Pittaway Cup was between Telford and Mercia. It is an 8 board match with it currently 3½-3½. There is currently a dispute on board 1 with it being refereed to a rules committee meeting of the league.

The time control was the first 30 moves in 65 minutes, with 15 minutes added on after that. (Total time per side, 80 minutes.) There is NO increment added on at all.

However for some reason the digital clock was adding on 15 seconds per move.

These are the (relevant) rules of the Pittaway Cup from the league's own wikipedia page:



The time limit shall be 30 moves in 65 minutes, and after Black has completed his move number 30 both clocks will be set back 15 minutes. All remaining moves must be played in the time remaining.

A clock, once started, shall not be stopped or put back except in compliance with the Laws of Chess.

All games shall be played in accordance with the FIDE Laws of Chess and the ECF Tournament Rules, unless provided by the rules above. Any matter affecting the conduct of a match shall be referred to the Tournament Secretary in the first instance.



The relevant rule of the FIDE laws of chess is this:





If during a game it is found that the setting of either or both clocks is incorrect, either player or the arbiter shall stop the chessclock immediately. The arbiter shall install the correct setting and adjust the times and move-counter, if necessary. He shall use his best judgement when determining the clock settings.



A statement from Mercia's website:



The Telford player noticed that their clock was adding 15 seconds onto each move and had been doing so for many moves! Andrew M immediately claimed the game on the grounds that without the adjustment Telford would have already lost! Chaos ensued and the match ended with a call for a full rules committee meeting to decide who wins the Cup! Telford’s clock, Telford’s responsibility and being digit Mercia had no way of checking this before the match started. This will rumble on for a long, long time and has sadly soured what would have been a dramatic Mercian Cup victory! Let’s hope that justice is done and the Cup correctly given to Mercia!



And a statement from the league:



The Pittaway Cup final between Telford and Mercia ended last night at 3½-3½ with board 1 being the subject of a dispute regarding an incorrect setting of the digital clock being used. The outcome of this will be published when the issue is resolved.



I' myself have no idea of how many moves had being made in the match. But 15 seconds per move is the same as 15 minutes added after 60 moves. I have no idea if the clock was set to 30 in 65 + 15 + 15 seconds per moves, or if it was set to 30 in 65 + 15 seconds per move.

I don't believe that there was an arbiter at the match.

[NickFaulks]

It is hard to believe that this one could not have been settled amicably if both sides had wanted that.

[Paul McKeown]

Having just read my way through this entire thread, I wonder whether it would make sense to design a digital clock, which adds time after a button has been pressed to indicate that move 40 has been reached. This would avoid problems of move counters not registering the correct number of moves played and could also avoid ridiculous problems of ridiculous arbiters ridiculously objecting to the move counter being displayed. The players simply agree that 40 moves have been played, and press a button to signify this.

[Roger de Coverly]

I have no idea if the clock was set to 30 in 65 + 15 + 15 seconds per moves, or if it was set to 30 in 65 + 15 seconds per move.

The press counter is not normally switched on, so at a guess, the intention was to set the clock to a first time control of 65 minutes with 15 minutes added on. Instead of which, they set it to 65 minutes with 15 seconds added at each move.

I'll leave it to your committee to resolve the dispute, but as a suggestion, suppose you had treated the game as being G/80. That way you remove the false increment and restart the clocks, presumably at a move count of under 30 and with one player having under 15 minutes for the rest of the game. Players do rely on clocks to tell them how much time remains, despite the false readings shown by digital clocks during part of the game with a + b time settings. I don't then think it reasonable to claim the game based on adjusting a "faulty" clock.

It's likely to be have been a dispute waiting to happen because with the seconds not displayed, you don't really know whether an increment is being correctly added, or not, until the last twenty minutes is reached. The latest "red" DGTs have finally rectified this design flaw after over 20 years. Now all they need is an option to show what they think is the number of times they have been restarted, or move count if correct.

[Ian Thompson]

A statement from Mercia's website:
The Telford player noticed that their clock was adding 15 seconds onto each move and had been doing so for many moves! ... being digit Mercia had no way of checking this before the match started.

That's not correct. Some, maybe all, digital clocks have a visible indication of the mode they're in when they're running. Failing that, you can always go into the settings and see what time control the clock is set to as if you were going to change the settings.

[Roger de Coverly]

Some, maybe all, digital clocks have a visible indication of the mode they're in when they're running. Failing that, you can always go into the settings and see what time control the clock is set to as if you were going to change the settings.

You would need a manual at hand to check what the settings mean. You can certainly check them, but players will assume they are correctly set. In the first round of a recent tournament, my opponent's clock stopped and displayed a flag after 90 minutes and increments. The move rate was supposed to be 40 in 90 then an extra 30 with 30 second increments. Presumably the clock had been set to 90 30. You can check that it says 90 minutes at the start and by observing the additional time added during the opening you can deduce that there's an increment. But how would you tell that the extra 30 minutes wasn't going to be added until the time actually expired?

[Ian Thompson]

Some, maybe all, digital clocks have a visible indication of the mode they're in when they're running. Failing that, you can always go into the settings and see what time control the clock is set to as if you were going to change the settings.

You would need a manual at hand to check what the settings mean. You can certainly check them, but players will assume they are correctly set. In the first round of a recent tournament, my opponent's clock stopped and displayed a flag after 90 minutes and increments. The move rate was supposed to be 40 in 90 then an extra 30 with 30 second increments. Presumably the clock had been set to 90 30. You can check that it says 90 minutes at the start and by observing the additional time added during the opening you can deduce that there's an increment. But how would you tell that the extra 30 minutes wasn't going to be added until the time actually expired?

I think it's pretty obvious that the only way of checking that a clock is correctly set in all respects is to go into the time control settings and see what they are. That's different from the erroneous claim made on the Mercia website that being a digit clock it was impossible to know it was going to add increments before the game started. Some clocks, e.g. DGTs, have a continuously visible display of the mode they are in (e.g. increment, delay, or neither) and all clocks have the option of going into the settings.

[Roger de Coverly]

Some clocks, e.g. DGTs, have a continuously visible display of the mode they are in (e.g. increment, delay, or neither)

I must take a look next time. I've probably played several hundred games with digital clocks and their mode is not something that's visible in plain sight. For example if a 30 second increment is in use, you might expect to see the words "30 second increment" somewhere on the display even if abbreviated.

[Alex Holowczak]

Here's the version of events that I know at the moment. I'm nothing to do with the Wolverhampton League, but that doesn't seemingly stop me getting roped into their affairs - you'll recall I drafted a rulechange proposal for them last year which they then paraphrased when putting it into their rules, and got it wrong. This caused Mercia's first digital clock complaint of the season.

I was enjoying a quiet evening, when I received a phone call from a player at Wolverhampton Chess Club; the neutral venue used for the match. He had no official standing in the match, other than it was happening at his club venue. The game was apparently happening in the next room.

He asked me what should happen. I gave an analogous example of what happened at the Shropshire Congress, where a clock started adding an increment in the second time period. We simply substituted it for a correctly set clock, but of course re-setting the original clock without the increment was fine as an alternative if there is only one digital clock available.

The relevant Law:
6.10(b) If during a game it is found that the setting of either or both clocks is incorrect, either player or the arbiter shall stop the chessclock immediately. The arbiter shall install the correct setting and adjust the times and move-counter, if necessary. He shall use his best judgement when determining the clock settings.

It isn't perfectly analogous because the arbiter didn't set a clock; I gather the Telford player set the clock. Indeed, he supplied the clock, and presumably only used it by agreement with the Mercia player in the first place. However, he also pointed out the problem first when it arose, so if he was trying to cheat by deliberately setting the clock to the wrong time, why would he then point it out?

There are things I don't know:
(1) Was the clock only adding increments for one of the two players? (I.e. what was the make of the clock.)
(2) For how long had these increments been added? E.g. was it move 31, and this only happened once, or was it much later?

I was told that the Mercia player wanted to take it to the Rules Committee, and I advised the caller to advise him to play on under protest, because the only option the Committee could really take if it rejected the appeal was to declare the game lost for Mercia.

Therein ended the call, but apparently nothing I suggested in that call actually happened.

It is hard to believe that this one could not have been settled amicably if both sides had wanted that.

The caller revealed that the position on the board at the time of discovery is losing/lost for the Mercia player, so I guess he felt he was more likely to win by Rules Committee than over the board.

[Brian Towers]

For example if a 30 second increment is in use, you might expect to see the words "30 second increment" somewhere on the display even if abbreviated.

I think currently it is abbreviated to "Fischer" although I don't have a clock in front of me. I agree a bit more info would be useful.