Friday, April 9, 2010

Ashalnd Quick XVII and other notes

Eighteen players compete in Ashland Quick XVII with Philipp Lamby(2111) claiming first and James MacDougall(1946) taking second in the Championship Quad. Ron Tims(1369) took first with a perfect score and Bob Halliday(1475) took a break from directing to claim second in the Candidates Quad. In the Amateur Quad, Richard Watts(1114) and Ralph Buske(1063) finished in first and second place respectively. The final section was a six player swiss with Craig Patton(882) and Cody Kyzer(805) splitting first place with Mike Meekins(844) and Christian Dunlap(686) sharing the third place prize.

The final crosstable is HERE.

The Saturday Knights tournament has been canceled.

April 15th is Casual Night, with presentations of Fritz and Chessbase Light planned. Who knows, a blitz tournament may break out afterward?


Did you know? Time Controls

There are five main types of Time Controls: (1) Fischer (invented by Bobby Fischer, (2) Bronstein (invented by David Bronstein), (3) Simple Delay, (4) Game Word and (5) Hour Glass. The first three time controls implement some sort of delay clock, a small amount of time that is added for each move. The reason is that with a sudden-death time limit, all moves must be completed in the specified time, or the player loses. With a small delay added at each move, the player always has at least that much time to make a move. The two types of delay clocks differ in how the delay is implemented. The last two time controls are somewhat different, as they do not rely on time delay, and will be explained below.

Fischer—before a player has made his move, a specified time increment is added to his clock. Time can be accumulated, so if the player moves within the delay period, his remaining time actually increases. For example, if the delay time is five seconds, and a player has four seconds left on his clock, as soon as his opponent moves, he will receive the increment and have nine seconds to make a move. If he takes two seconds to move, then on the start of his next move he will have seven seconds. There is also a variant of this time control which the delay is added after a player has made his move (Fischer after), so that the delay is added to the player's remaining time, and will be available for his next move. If however time runs out during his move, the game ends without the delay time being added. This variant prevents the player who is in time-trouble to take advantage of the extra-time.

Simple delay—when it becomes a player's turn to move, the clock waits for the delay period before starting to subtract from the player's remaining time. For example, if the delay is five seconds, the clock waits for five seconds before counting down. The time is not accumulated. If the player moves within the delay period, no time is subtracted from his remaining time. This time control is similar to a Bronstein with time added before the move.

Bronstein delay—with the Bronstein timing method, the increment is always added after the move. But unlike Fischer, not always the maximum increment is added. If a player expends more than the specified increment, then the entire increment is added to the player's clock. But if a player has moved faster than the time increment, only the exact amount of time expended by the player is added. For example, if the delay is five seconds, the player has ten seconds left in his clock before his turn and during his turn he spends three seconds, after he presses the clock button to indicate the end of his turn, his clock will increase by only three seconds (not five).

Word—it is a sudden death time control, without any increment nor delay. The difference here is that when the time expires by dropping to zero, a flag is set, and the clock immediately starts counting up without limit. This time control applies to games where the amount of time used after the allowed time can be subtracted from the player's score as a penalty.

Hour Glass—a player loses in this time control when he allows the difference between both clocks to reach the specified total amount. For example, if the total is defined as one minute, both players start their clocks at thirty seconds. Every second the first player uses to think in his moves is subtracted from his clock and added to his opponent's clock. If he uses thirty seconds to move, the difference between the clocks will reach one minute, and the time flag fall to indicate that he loses by time. If he has used twenty nine seconds and then pushes the clock's button, he will have one second left on his clock, and his opponent will have fifty-nine seconds.
Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_clock

At the Columbia Chess Club we use the simple delay or Bronstein Delay,which the USCF deems as equivalent, in our long or quick games and sudden-death(no delay) in our blitz games. In FIDE games the Fischer Delay is commonly used.


“Many have become Chess Masters, no one has become the Master of Chess”
(Siegbert Tarrasch)

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