Chess clock in tournament

Martin Mayers

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Oh and, just for the sake of interest, what will be the penalty applied to those playing in the tournament who do not use the clocks correctly (as directed in the instructions laid down above)? I'm expecting that there will actually be no penalty and the Earth will keep turning, but I'm willing to be surprised.
Death
 

Martin Mayers

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Worth putting clocks there just to time each player .. totalled and ranked at the end of a tournament. The one who can BLAZE thru with the closest to ZERO processing time wins a prize. The bottom 10% of that year's player ranking don't get to join next year. This way all the tournament players get faster and faster over time.

All the way til throwing dice start making significant dents on playing times. Then again some players might be SO fast that they know the dice roll before they throw their dice.
It's funny...but come back and tell me it's still funny when you're Tournament Directing and a former friend literally puffs his chest out and squares up to you when you ask him to call time on his 5 hour scenario after 10 hours. Not so funny then mate. And I'm six foot three and 27 stones in weight and can handle myself.
 

hongkongwargamer

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It's funny...but come back and tell me it's still funny when you're Tournament Directing and a former friend literally puffs his chest out and squares up to you when you ask him to call time on his 5 hour scenario after 10 hours. Not so funny then mate. And I'm six foot three and 27 stones in weight and can handle myself.
Exactly.

The few tourneys we ran in Asia preCovid - Hong Kong, Singapore, Manila and Siem Reap were joyous affairs back then (tons of sponsors - thx again). These tourneys nowadays doesn’t look that much fun to be at right now!

If this is what it comes to at tourneys these days, you gotta ask yourselves: Why do it? Why do it to yourself?
 
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hongkongwargamer

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Really harsh. Tournament Directors asking players to finish a 4 hour scenario within a 6 hour maximum time frame so that they can keep the tournament they spent weeks organising on some kind of track. What utter scum we are <shrug>
Didn’t come to that at our tourneys (20-25 ppl affairs). We came together to play a few games with friends and to make new ones for games going forward. No “tactically slow” players that I can remember. And to eat. :)
 

PresterJohn

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Parse the video later?

So if there are 50 games per round over 5 rounds, that makes 250 games, each lasting ap. 4 hours. 1,000 hours of video. Who gets to devote 1,000 hours of unpaid labor to review that footage, keeping track of each side's accurate time in each game? The TD?

I wouldn't want to review a single match and try to keep an accurate record of each player's time. Screw that.

Leave the chess clocks and video equipment at home. Just play some frigging ASL and quit whining like Chicken Little about the sky falling. There have been slow players since the beginning. I suspect it's no more of a problem now than it ever has been. Yet tourneys have rolled merrily on for decades.

If a TD feels slow play is actually that much of a problem, he should advertise that slow players are not welcome. Every tourney advertisement has language like 'All are welcome!' Well, don't say it if it aint true.
I hate to be the first to tell you this but you are allowed to look at the time stamp for the end of the video to determine the length of the video. You don't actually have to watch the video all the way through at x1 speed to determine the length of the game/video. (Well you can if really you want to.) You can therefore immediately group the 1-2% shortest videos together and also the longest videos (for the eliminations from the next tournament) together just by time stamps. And you don't have to review play time for all the shortest videos to determine who the fastest players might be and arrive at their prize winning shortest time. That would be silly. Each player who thinks he is in the running for "the Blaze" (i.e. fastest player) can parse his own videos, and if he is claiming the fastest time his video is submitted and reviewed (at high speed, not at x1!) to confirm the winning time. So as everybody keeps saying, lots of objections about how impractical it is to time games but when you actually come down to it, it almost takes care of itself. It will be a bit slower to parse the 10% slowest players but that only has to be done before registration for the next tournament so that those "too slow" players can be sent their rejection letters.

Now what will "the Blaze" prize look like? A 3D printed rendering of a blaze counter about 100 mm on a side.
 

Robin Reeve

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If a TD feels slow play is actually that much of a problem, he should advertise that slow players are not welcome. Every tourney advertisement has language like 'All are welcome!' Well, don't say it if it aint true.
I don't agree with your syllogism.
"All are welcome" logically implies minimal constraints:
  • accepting the format of the tourney
  • having minimal grasp of the rules
  • minimal social adapatation to other people.
And that last aspect is where the problem of extremely slow players arises.
If they know that they never will be able to end the scenarios within reasonable time, they are not accepting the tourney's format (adjudicating a win should be a last resort measure, not a nice and normal one).
It also comes down to respect of one's opponent - I mostly see very slow players requiring everybody to adapt to them, not giving a rat's ass of their own adaptation others.
That type of victimization tells a lot about their "I, me and myself" set of mind.
Why knowingly force your opponent to systematically suffer adjudication rather than a result obtained in the expected way?
How does one feel when they win a tournament only on games settled by adjudication?

Adjudication is quite certainly always doubtful and unsatisfying, given in a God-the-Father, up-to-down, way - especially when the result is not blatant.
Is it an objective that one will deliberately aim?

A tourney is a competition, which is organised in rounds. If too much time is taken to complete the rounds, the time to rest and eat is affected.
Occasionally acceptable, of course.
But depriving other people from having time to rest, to social talk, etc. on a regular basis is making their time at the tourney rather unpleasing.
It is not about discrimination.
No more than when a player decides to join a tournament without knowing the rules, or while wanting to play other scenarios than those prescribed, or behaving in a disruptive way.
In the case of an extremely slow player, this not about prohibiting people to play as they like, but about them adapting to the necessary rules of an organised competition.

Most tourney meetings allow people come for casual play, anyway.
 
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lucamartini

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Do we realise what is playing against a slow pace player?! It’s pain, agony and hell. Pure frustration. Imagine. You are staring your mumbling opponent, he examines his stack like pocket tokens. Thinks and thinks again. You keep staring, then he moves one hex then thinks again. OMG!!! It’s not fun, it’s despair he’ll and utter frustration. I had a few opponents like this. Never again.
 

PresterJohn

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What hkwg wrote was the literary equivalent of "pull my finger" and included a reference to banning slow players. I responded with tic advice about how "pull my finger" could be administered in a joke tournament, but you people seriously want to ban them.

Okay.
 

hongkongwargamer

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What hkwg wrote was the literary equivalent of "pull my finger" and included a reference to banning slow players. I responded with tic advice about how "pull my finger" could be administered in a joke tournament, but you people seriously want to ban them.

Okay.
They do. Such is the prevailing state of the community.

This thread sure scare the crap out of new players.

One option is to do private tourneys where participation is by invite only. Slow players from the year before don’t get invited back.

Otherwise I don’t agree with pretending “All are welcomed” when you want everyone to pay but not everyone to play.
 
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hongkongwargamer

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Do we realise what is playing against a slow pace player?! It’s pain, agony and hell. Pure frustration. Imagine. You are staring your mumbling opponent, he examines his stack like pocket tokens. Thinks and thinks again. You keep staring, then he moves one hex then thinks again. OMG!!! It’s not fun, it’s despair he’ll and utter frustration. I had a few opponents like this. Never again.
For goodness sake, don’t ever get old, disabled or otherwise decrepit.
 
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Robin Reeve

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This thread sure scare the crap out of new players.
Off topic: this is not about new players at all.
New players will attend a tourney with the strong desire to learn the game with more experienced players.
They are at the opposite of the very slow player who doesn't care if he bogs down the whole tourney and if he bugs all his opponents by depriving them of a satisfying outcome of the played games.
A newbie cares a lot and their mind is set on adapting.


I think that most people, when engaging in a competitive contest, are eager to understand the requirements and to respect them.
How would a Marathon contest director manage someone who decides to walk the 42 km in three days?
Would he have all his staff wait for the deliberate straggler?

I have attended some ASL meetings - including a tourney (which is complicated in relation with my job.
I never felt offended when I was told the rules.
I strived to finish the games within reasonable time.
I tried to take my opponent's needs into account and adapt so they spent a pleasing time.

About all the veterans here are bent into helping the newcomers grasp the system.
I think I have personally introduced past twenty of them to the hobby. And I go on doing it on a regular basis.
Many experienced players do it too.
And newbies don't find the experience traumatizing, it seems...
I don't see how an accusation of agressivity or discrimination can hold water here.
On the contrary, our community is very welcoming.

Now, if the constraints of a tourney are too hard for a newbie - too narrow time limits, exotic rules, etc. - there always will be a place to play the game without entering the competition ring.
Especially as many players will progressively be shoved out of the tourney because they lost.
Where is the problem here?
 

Vinnie

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Really harsh. Tournament Directors asking players to finish a 4 hour scenario within a 6 hour maximum time frame so that they can keep the tournament they spent weeks organising on some kind of track. What utter scum we are <shrug>
Well to be fair, you are scum...

But seriously. In a tournament, if I finish my game on time but yours is dragging on an extra 2 to 3 hours, that means that me and someone else is hanging around waiting for the next game. We might have better things to be doing (like going out for a meal, drinking etc.)
One glacier
oh slow player can affect the tournament experience of 3 others each round!
Most of us are not in contention for the title but enjoy the match up format of tournaments and this affects our experience negatively.
 

PresterJohn

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After hearing all these horror stories, could it possibly be that the tournament format is wrong?
 

Martin Mayers

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Sarcasm...

Ultimately we need to somehow get 32-40 players (a rough average) down to one, in three days.

I'm not sure there are ways to do that which don't involve playing 5 scenarios over that 3 days but I'm sure TDs are open-minded if you have any ideas.
 

PresterJohn

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I don't know, but there are people who seem to think the current formats are absolute rubbish for the attendees (who have paid, in advance, to play).
It seems like you have a bunch of people who are good enough to pay, but not to play. This sounds like an injustice of some sort.
 
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