Rate of Play

Venues, fixtures, teams and related matters.
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IM Jack Rudd
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Re: Rate of Play

Post by IM Jack Rudd » Mon Mar 28, 2011 11:32 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:
Maria Yurenok wrote:Can you remind me what 10.2 claim is please?
A claim that can be made in the last 2 minutes of your time that your opponent either isn't able or isn't trying to win by normal means. Under increments such a game is decided by agreed draw, resignation or later by 50 moves or repetition. Without increments the arbiter has to decide. :?

A topic which arises so regularly that it could have its own forum area.
It arises rather more frequently than actual 10.2 claims do; I can only recall two or three in nine years of arbiting Yeovil.

Michael Yeo
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Re: Rate of Play

Post by Michael Yeo » Tue Mar 29, 2011 12:09 am

Maria Yurenok wrote:I can see there is a good discussion going on about reverting 4NCL back to 11 rounds all-play-all in the new season. Well how about updating the time limit to something a bit more modern from the start of the new season?

I've played in a lot of international chess competitions in the past 1.5 years and I haven't come across 7 hour time limit in any of them, although Hastings is pretty close to that. I think that the time limit at the British Championship is the same as at Hastings although I haven't played there. However, that may be non-existent time limit outside England if my experiences are anything to go by, so are we going to keep up with the rest of the world or stay firmly entrenched in the tradition?

Is it viable to introduce incremented play, are there enough digital clocks available at least for the 1st division? I don't think I've played any non-incremented chess abroad in the past 1.5 years. My preferred time limit would be something very popular these days like 1:30hr for 40 moves plus 30mins to finish with 30 sec added after each move. Or could we at least cut last 30 mins from 4NCL to be 2hr for 40 moves plus 1hr to finish?
Like Maria, I have played in numerous tournaments abroad with incremental time controls. They are fine for individual tournaments, preferably with one round a day, where there are few problems caused by excessively long games. However, I would be most unhappy with the introduction of increments to the time control for the 4NCL mostly because of the difficulties this would cause with travel arrangements. While it is less common than when the venues were in town centres, we still have players who attempt to travel to events by public transport. It is very important to know that (fire alarms and power cuts permitting!) the Sunday games cannot last beyond 6 pm. I have in the past had a booking on a 6.03 train, in the full knowledge that I might have to use only 3 hours rather than 3½ hours. With increments, such tactics would not guarantee finishing in time. It is not just a matter of the delay - it is also a question of having a seat for the journey! Even Wessex 2 have had a player in each of the last 3 seasons who has had a plane to catch after the last round. How can he decide what time plane he can book if there is an incremental time control?
Teams with players travelling long distances are already severely handicapped relative to those living closer to the venues. They rarely have the luxury of being able to field players for just one game in a weekend. The introduction of increments would make matters worse.
My views are of course coloured by my infamous 125 move loss to Simon Williams at Liverpool in 2007 where I was playing on increments for over 3 hours before blundering. Fortunately this was an individual tournament and I didn't have a car load of passengers waiting hours for me to finish. Unfortunately it was a day when there was a double round.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Rate of Play

Post by Roger de Coverly » Tue Mar 29, 2011 8:48 am

IM Jack Rudd wrote: It arises rather more frequently than actual 10.2 claims do; I can only recall two or three in nine years of arbiting Yeovil.
10.2 requiring arbiter intervention yes, draw offers and acceptances because of 10.2 are, I suspect, rather more frequent.

It's like the statistics for adjudication based leagues (to mention another topic worth its own section). The number of adjudications referred to the organisation may be small, but the number of games brought to a premature conclusion, informally adjudicated by the players or a computer engine, is somewhat higher.

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Re: Rate of Play

Post by Alex Holowczak » Tue Mar 29, 2011 10:13 am

Michael Yeo wrote:Teams with players travelling long distances are already severely handicapped relative to those living closer to the venues. They rarely have the luxury of being able to field players for just one game in a weekend. The introduction of increments would make matters worse.
If you cut the expected game length to a 5-hour session though, but used increments, would that be as bad?

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Adam Raoof
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Re: Rate of Play

Post by Adam Raoof » Tue Mar 29, 2011 10:23 am

There is a good rule - if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

At the moment the 4NCL offers the luxury of a longer time limit, and it allows players to make firm travel arrangements.

If there are suggestions for improvements to be made at the 4NCL, I am sure they would be considered seriously. But this one doesn't appear to be a practical problem - otherwise teams wouldn't enter in the first place.
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Maria Yurenok
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Re: Rate of Play

Post by Maria Yurenok » Tue Mar 29, 2011 11:41 am

Adam Raoof wrote:There is a good rule - if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

At the moment the 4NCL offers the luxury of a longer time limit, and it allows players to make firm travel arrangements.

If there are suggestions for improvements to be made at the 4NCL, I am sure they would be considered seriously. But this one doesn't appear to be a practical problem - otherwise teams wouldn't enter in the first place.
Adam, I doubt you'd want to get to the stage when teams stop entering the 4ncl before fixing the problem! As yet no one has supplied any proof that players at the 4ncl want or don't want shorter time limit, so you don't really know if it's a problem. Ok, 4ncl is not a money-making company but I think it's still a good practice to find out the current needs of it's customers - the chessplayers. I suspect that a lot of players would prefer shorter time limit but they play the given 7 hour time limit because they haven't got a choice! If I didn't think that was the case I wouldn't have started this thread just purely for my own benefit. There is a practical problem with 7 hour time limit - people end up with two very long days over the weekend (or even longer than expected as we all know what public transport is like on Sunday in this country) and then they have to go to work the next day. So cutting time limit by an hour could make a positive difference for some or even many people. What do I have to do to get this change considered by the 4 ncl management board?

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Adam Raoof
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Re: Rate of Play

Post by Adam Raoof » Tue Mar 29, 2011 11:45 am

Maria Yurenok wrote:
Adam Raoof wrote:There is a good rule - if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

At the moment the 4NCL offers the luxury of a longer time limit, and it allows players to make firm travel arrangements.

If there are suggestions for improvements to be made at the 4NCL, I am sure they would be considered seriously. But this one doesn't appear to be a practical problem - otherwise teams wouldn't enter in the first place.
Adam, I doubt you'd want to get to the stage when teams stop entering the 4ncl before fixing the problem! As yet no one has supplied any proof that players at the 4ncl want or don't want shorter time limit, so you don't really know if it's a problem. Ok, 4ncl is not a money-making company but I think it's still a good practice to find out the current needs of it's customers - the chessplayers. I suspect that a lot of players would prefer shorter time limit but they play the given 7 hour time limit because they haven't got a choice! If I didn't think that was the case I wouldn't have started this thread just purely for my own benefit. There is a practical problem with 7 hour time limit - people end up with two very long days over the weekend (or even longer than expected as we all know what public transport is like on Sunday in this country) and then they have to go to work the next day. So cutting time limit by an hour could make a positive difference for some or even many people. What do I have to do to get this change considered by the 4 ncl management board?
Why don't you message Mike Truran, or contact any of the Directors via the excellent 4NCL website?

Edit: the 4NCL used to have Captain's meetings on Sunday mornings - do they still hold those?
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Gareth Harley-Yeo
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Re: Rate of Play

Post by Gareth Harley-Yeo » Tue Mar 29, 2011 11:59 am

Why don't you create a poll on the forum and see what the general opinion is?

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Re: Rate of Play

Post by Richard Thursby » Tue Mar 29, 2011 12:03 pm

Adam Raoof wrote: [The] 4NCL used to have Captain's meetings on Sunday mornings - do they still hold those?
According to the following, yes.
http://www.4ncl.co.uk/faq.htm

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Re: Rate of Play

Post by Mike Truran » Tue Mar 29, 2011 12:04 pm

I expect we will have a captains' meeting on the Sunday or Monday morning of the final weekend. That would be a good place to raise it in the first instance. By all means set up a poll on ecforum, but if the captains' meeting thinks it's worth taking further I think I would rather canvas the captains (who can canvas their players). After all, to use the analogy of a the bacon and egg in a full English breakfast, many ecforum members are (only) engaged, but the captains and players are committed.

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Re: Rate of Play

Post by Alex Holowczak » Tue Mar 29, 2011 1:41 pm

Mike Truran wrote:I expect we will have a captains' meeting on the Sunday or Monday morning of the final weekend.
Might I request Sunday? Given the chess starts at 1pm on Sunday, the meeting could be held as late as 12pm, whereas 10am on a Monday morning might be a bit less popular...

Sean Hewitt

Re: Rate of Play

Post by Sean Hewitt » Tue Mar 29, 2011 2:43 pm

Better to have the meeting on the Monday than Sunday. It doesn't cut across lunch, we're used to 10am captains meetings and, if we are going to discuss Northern league we can see how the northern teams have fared in two rounds.

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Re: Rate of Play

Post by Sean Hewitt » Tue Mar 29, 2011 2:49 pm

On the subject of time controls, the European Championships is using 40/90 + 30 with 30 second increments. Typical session is 5 hours and a bit, with the odd game going to 6 hours.

At e2e4 we used 4 hour session (G/90 + 30 secs) purely to get 2 games in per day.

We have not had anyone complaining that this wrecks travel plans, even though many of our players do travel together by car and a many also use public transport.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Rate of Play

Post by Roger de Coverly » Tue Mar 29, 2011 3:32 pm

Sean Hewitt wrote:We have not had anyone complaining that this wrecks travel plans, even though many of our players do travel together by car and a many also use public transport.
It's self selecting up to a point. The travel worry at e2e4 weekends would be for the Friday night round with potentially an 11 pm or later finish. Players for whom this was an issue would either decline to enter or take the round one bye.

LozCooper

Re: Rate of Play

Post by LozCooper » Tue Mar 29, 2011 4:10 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:
Sean Hewitt wrote:We have not had anyone complaining that this wrecks travel plans, even though many of our players do travel together by car and a many also use public transport.
It's self selecting up to a point. The travel worry at e2e4 weekends would be for the Friday night round with potentially an 11 pm or later finish. Players for whom this was an issue would either decline to enter or take the round one bye.
The Sunday pm rounds start at 15:00 though so whichever time limit was used would lead to a later finish than a 4ncl Sunday.

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