UK Start Time of the World Championship Games

[Jonathan Bryant]

Would be 9:30am? The UK being 5 and a half hours behind India and the games start at 3pm local time.


Do I have this right?


J

[Chris Rice]

That's right Jonathan, Chennai is 5 and a half hours ahead of UK.

[Graham Borrowdale]

You would think they could have played at midnight, to allow the Western Europe market to watch in the evenings, or maybe at 6am for the benefit of US viewers?

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Would be 9:30am? The UK being 5 and a half hours behind India and the games start at 3pm local time.

Hmm. The time control is given here:

http://chennai2013.fide.com/wp-content/ ... M20131.pdf

"The time control for each game shall be: 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, 60 minutes
for the next 20 moves and then 15 minutes for the rest of the game with an increment of 30
seconds per move starting after move 61 has been made."

So move 1 at 9:30am. First time control at around 13:30. The second time control at around 15:30, and then a finish using increments. Is this the first time increments have been used in a WCC match? Bizarrely, the regulations document I linked to above includes 'Article 10: Quickplay Finish' and the 10.2 regulation. Not quite sure why. Increments are only mentioned in the time control bit and the bit about tie-breaks. Hopefully there will be no dispute if a position arises that requires a large number of moves.

http://chennai2013.fide.com/schedule/

Saturday
Sunday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Friday
Saturday
Monday
Tuesday
Thursday
Friday
Sunday
Tuesday

Four games at the weekend.

[Alex Holowczak]

You would think they could have played at midnight, to allow the Western Europe market to watch in the evenings, or maybe at 6am for the benefit of US viewers?

I get very frustrated by things like this. The world shouldn't revolve around the US or the European markets.

I remember the 2009 Malaysian Grand Prix, held at Sepang near Kuala Lumpur. They started the race at 5pm local time (two hours later than previous years), which was about 9am in the UK, to allow the European audience to watch it. There was one minor detail - there's a storm shortly before sunset, at about 6pm, every day in that part of the world. Sure enough, the race had to be abandoned due to the storm, and then couldn't be restarted because they ran out of daylight. So instead of having a Grand Prix that Europeans found difficult to watch but people in Asia could, they ended up with half a Grand Prix that no one at all could watch.

The start time is convenient for Asia, and there are 2.5bn people in India and China.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

You would think they could have played at midnight, to allow the Western Europe market to watch in the evenings, or maybe at 6am for the benefit of US viewers?

I get very frustrated by things like this. The world shouldn't revolve around the US or the European markets.

I remember the 2009 Malaysian Grand Prix, held at Sepang near Kuala Lumpur. They started the race at 5pm local time (two hours later than previous years), which was about 9am in the UK, to allow the European audience to watch it. There was one minor detail - there's a storm shortly before sunset, at about 6pm, every day in that part of the world. Sure enough, the race had to be abandoned due to the storm, and then couldn't be restarted because they ran out of daylight. So instead of having a Grand Prix that Europeans found difficult to watch but people in Asia could, they ended up with half a Grand Prix that no one at all could watch.

The start time is convenient for Asia, and there are 2.5bn people in India and China.

I agree, and hope Graham was joking there.

[Roger de Coverly]

"The time control for each game shall be: 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, 60 minutes
for the next 20 moves and then 15 minutes for the rest of the game with an increment of 30
seconds per move starting after move 61 has been made."

That move rate was used for the first time in the 2000 Kasparov v Kramnik match. It's a good compromise between retaining the drama of time scrambles and not expecting an arbiter to make a 10.2 decision. In the 2000 match, if any games had reached move 60, they would have changed the clocks as the old 1990s version of DGT didn't have a deferred option for increment.

[Andrew Camp]

I sense Graham had tongue in cheek there.

[Graham Borrowdale]

Of course I was joking - should I really need to explain that!!
One of the downsides of a forum I suppose. Anyone who knows me would know I had my tongue very firmly in cheek.

[Andrew Stone]

If work gets in the way you can probably watch the chess "as live" depending on how the site you watch it is structured i.e. can you navigate to the archived commentary without seeing the result? Probably best to get someone else to get the commentary up for you. One thing that is hard to avoid seeing is how long the commentary lasts- this normally gives clues to how long the game lasts (not always as they may have other stuff afterwards like interviews). Julie from accounts is hardly likely to give the game away in your office either by announcing that "Carslen has just won 15 moves after saccing the exchange on f3 in a French Tarrasch". Watching football "as live" is much more hazardous! I watched much of Anand-Gelfand "as live" and indeed didn't know the result for at least a couple of weeks after the match had actually finished.

[Alex Holowczak]

I sensed Graham's joke, but that didn't effect my subsequent point about how undesirable it is in other walks of life.

[Nick Burrows]

I sensed Graham's joke, but that didn't effect my subsequent point about how undesirable it is in other walks of life.

Are you a Jedi Alex?

[Graham Borrowdale]

If work gets in the way you can probably watch the chess "as live" depending on how the site you watch it is structured i.e. can you navigate to the archived commentary without seeing the result? Probably best to get someone else to get the commentary up for you. One thing that is hard to avoid seeing is how long the commentary lasts- this normally gives clues to how long the game lasts (not always as they may have other stuff afterwards like interviews). Julie from accounts is hardly likely to give the game away in your office either by announcing that "Carslen has just won 15 moves after saccing the exchange on f3 in a French Tarrasch". Watching football "as live" is much more hazardous! I watched much of Anand-Gelfand "as live" and indeed didn't know the result for at least a couple of weeks after the match had actually finished.

Some good ideas there Andrew.
Personally I am not sure I could watch a whole game, commentary and all, "as live". We could be talking about 6 hours or so. I can not manage a football match without fast forwarding through the sideways passing and injury breaks.
It would be good to at least be able to play over the moves without knowing the result. Any game you play through from a database or on a site's reader always has the result in the header. Any tips on how to do that?
By the way, if Carlssen won by saccing a rook on f3 in a French Defence I would be more than happy if it made the office grapevine! It could even make the French fashionable again.

[Andrew Stone]

Yes I also fast forward through a lot of the dead time in football matches Graham. Means you can watch a whole match in about 20 mins. The same can be done to an extent with chess commentary- either jumping ahead when the position is boring or when one of the players is having a long think and the commentators are out of useful stuff to say. Also some commentaries have their own breaks etc.
Rather the French didn't become fashionable again (has it really gone than much out of fashion ever though?) as it is more likely to be loooked at by my opponents!