English Chess Forum

Played in the Hastings Congress and had five minutes plus 2 seconds increment for all his games, (no additional time for him at move 40, although opponents get extra time)

how do you think he'd get on?

Eleven world champions already played at Hastings without the need for any gimmicks.

He would win a prize, but not 1st.

Daniel Gormally wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 10, 2020 8:55 pm

Played in the Hastings Congress and had five minutes plus 2 seconds increment for all his games, (no additional time for him at move 40, although opponents get extra time)

how do you think he'd get on?

A couple of clubs around here ran time handicaps, and actually it seems that time may not make much difference.

I remember one club's experiment. It was a pivot on 10 minutes each, and depending on the grade difference, you either gained or lost a minute, which in practice was limited to something versus 15 v 5 given the grades of the players who entered, with the lower-graded player getting 15. The final rankings were still more or less in grade order.

I suspect the biggest problem with your idea in practice would be that he would be playing the whole game on increment; presumably he'd want to store up his 5 minutes for a comfort break every so often! But if you modified it such that he could maybe take a Toilet Timeout every hour...

We do that at Barnstaple, except our limit was 18 v 2. I've played a few tournaments there where I had less time for the whole seven-round tournament than any of my opponents did for the game against me.

And how did you generally fare Jack?

Alex Holowczak wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 10, 2020 10:05 pm

A couple of clubs around here ran time handicaps, and actually it seems that time may not make much difference.

It's a little easier for the higher rated player than one might think. The point being that even 18 minutes v 2 minutes is still 20 minutes in total. So the higher rated player uses the opponent's time for thinking. Perhaps it's a bit like a simul, there's an obvious move that takes seconds to spot and it's OK provided there's no deep hidden problem.

You would hope or expect that GM standard opposition should be able to set tricks against a world champion with considerably more time.

Remember Kasparov beat 4 2600+ Israeli GM's 7-1 in a clock simul. I presume he had 1/4 of their time.

Nick Burrows wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 10, 2020 10:23 pm

And how did you generally fare Jack?

Usually scored 7 out of 7. Although one year I was giving Theo Slade an 18-2 handicap. That didn't go so well.