BGonline.org Forums

Amusing clock reactions from first-time clock users

Posted By: Barry Silliman
Date: Tuesday, 3 March 2009, at 12:51 a.m.

I'm not sure how educational this post will be other than as a reminder than people are different!

Yesterday at the local club I played all four of my matches with the clock. Two were against players that have used clocks before and there is nothing of interest to note, other than noting that Ed O'Laughlin is perfectly capable of playing excellent backgammon with a clock, and I have the "runner-up" title to prove it! :-)

But what I found interesting was this. One player, who is a very fast player, did not want to use the clock but he deferred to me because he is a very gracious person and a gentleman and one of our most active players. He's truly one of the nicest people to ever play at the club. I told him that he should play with the clock and get used to it with a nice guy like me rather than being forced to use it against some of our more merciless players. :-) He complained about the clock throughout the match and threatened to give up backgammon if clocks became the norm. We have generous time controls- 2.5 minutes per point reserve time with 15 seconds delay per move. I told him he would have no problems with time. At the end of the match, he had used 17 seconds of his reserve time and still had 17:13 left in the bank. Before he left I begged him to give clocks a chance and to keep coming back.

Another player was a first-timer to the club. He is not new to backgammon, just first-timer to this club. He had not played with a clock before, but he agreed to. He played rather deliberately. In fact, he took his time just gathering up the dice and shaking after I hit the plunger, and I was concerned that he might run into time trouble, which I did not want to happen. It turns out he didn't, although our match went several games, going to 5-5 before I turned the cube at DMP, which I usually do at the first possible chance at 2-away/2-away unless I think I'm playing somebody who I can possibly steal a point from later. This diversion into the 2-away/2-away early cube is only relevant in that, although my opponent played decently, since he was a first-timer I might normally have been inclined to wait to cube to see if I could steal a point later, but I purposely doubled so as to really reduce the chance that he would run out of time. Anyway, the interesting thing was that his reaction to using the clock was along the lines of "boy, I'm not used to the clock, but I think I should go get one because this is the future of backgammon."

So one player who will never be impacted by the time controls is upset enough to consider retirement while another player who will probably be okay at 2.5/15 but may need to pick up his pace a little bit to play at 2/12 is ready to embrace the clocks.

You never know.

Messages In This Thread

• Amusing clock reactions from first-time clock users
  Barry Silliman -- Tuesday, 3 March 2009, at 12:51 a.m.
  • Amusing clock reactions from first-time clock users
    rew -- Tuesday, 3 March 2009, at 11:18 a.m.
  • Amusing clock reactions from first-time clock users
    mamabear -- Tuesday, 3 March 2009, at 1:56 p.m.
    • Amusing clock reactions from first-time clock users
      Chuck Bower -- Wednesday, 4 March 2009, at 5:47 p.m.
      • Amusing clock reactions from first-time clock users
        Rich Munitz -- Wednesday, 4 March 2009, at 6:10 p.m.
  • Amusing clock reactions from first-time clock users
    Chuck Bower -- Wednesday, 4 March 2009, at 5:32 p.m.