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A better clock for backgammon

Posted By: Colin Owen
Date: Thursday, 12 March 2015, at 4:53 a.m.

In Response To: A better clock for backgammon (Chris Yep)

Thankyou for your thorough explanation of the TC Mochy and Phil will use.

With regard to the increased variance of the number of moves in a short match or money game, and how best to deal with this, I attempted to address this in my weekly heads up game some time ago.

We play a fixed number of money games at the start of a session, usually about 20, with match type TC, though faster. Either a 12 sec delay and 1.25 min per game, or 15 sec and 1 min/game. Both are therefore applied over the set, ie 25 min for 20 games, for example. If you time out, you lose the max you could have lost in that game, plus any remaining games not started. As we no longer play Jacoby, that could be expensive. If we've tailored things well, we tend to have time to play a much shorter set at the end of the session.

These shorter, 'secondary' clocked sets always felt more cutthroat to me! Usually 4 to 8 games, they might nonetheless be just a pair of games, even just one - particularly as they might be a tertiary set after the second set finishes early. In the main set, if there are one or more much longer, and more complex, games in the early or middle of the main set, you have time to try to address this in the remaining games, including steering towards simpler positions with the opening rolls, and passing close takes. (Of course, if opponent is in no time trouble, he can steer towards more complex games, and ship the cube early.) Not so in a 2 game set!

A year or so ago, we agreed that, in every set - including the main, longer one - one games worth of reserve time would be added. Playing 15s/21min for 20 games is next to no different; getting 15/2 for a single game is a whole lot better than 15/1!

Intuitively, this albeit simple adjustment feels right to me. Does it make mathematical sense? If so, I wonder whether something like it should apply to match play, ie any match has a points worth of time added to it?

Messages In This Thread

• A better clock for backgammon
  Phil Simborg -- Monday, 9 March 2015, at 9:56 p.m.
  • A better clock for backgammon
    Omar Shah -- Monday, 9 March 2015, at 11:13 p.m.
    • A better clock for backgammon
      Jason Lee -- Tuesday, 10 March 2015, at 12:31 a.m.
  • A better clock for backgammon
    Bob Koca -- Tuesday, 10 March 2015, at 3:42 a.m.
  • A better clock for backgammon
    Tom Keith -- Tuesday, 10 March 2015, at 12:52 p.m.
    • A better clock for backgammon
      Colin Owen -- Tuesday, 10 March 2015, at 4:47 p.m.
      • A better clock for backgammon
        Phil Simborg -- Wednesday, 11 March 2015, at 2:58 a.m.
        • A better clock for backgammon
          Colin Owen -- Wednesday, 11 March 2015, at 3:28 a.m.
          • A better clock for backgammon
            Chris Yep -- Wednesday, 11 March 2015, at 6:40 a.m.
      • A better clock for backgammon
        Chris Yep -- Wednesday, 11 March 2015, at 6:31 a.m.
        • A better clock for backgammon
          Colin Owen -- Thursday, 12 March 2015, at 4:53 a.m.
          • A better clock for backgammon
            Chris Yep -- Friday, 13 March 2015, at 7:06 a.m.
      • A better clock for backgammon
        Tom Keith -- Wednesday, 11 March 2015, at 1:06 p.m.
        • A better clock for backgammon
          Tom Keith -- Wednesday, 11 March 2015, at 1:10 p.m.
        • A better clock for backgammon
          Colin Owen -- Wednesday, 11 March 2015, at 2:16 p.m.
  • Is this how it works?
    Chuck Bower -- Tuesday, 10 March 2015, at 5:19 p.m.
    • Is this how it works?
      Chris Yep -- Wednesday, 11 March 2015, at 5:22 a.m.
  • A better clock for backgammon
    Kevin Finch -- Saturday, 14 March 2015, at 7:11 p.m.