Since I'm incapable of understanding why a tournament would chose to be run without clocks for any reason other than not having a clock supply, I offer up another try to encompass all post about clocks.
The main objective of using clocks is to avoid slow play. Slow play even by one individual can bottleneck a tournament. I remember in a previous post here on BGO where an ABT tourney had 33 entrants so there was non clocked anti-bye round. These two individuals apparently thought they were out for a Sunday drive and their 9 point match ended up taking 3 and a half hours! Now one of these slowpokes had to advance and this entire scenario tore up the tournament making it less than enjoyable for many players who were forced to wait for matches, forced to play late into the night, forced to get less sleep, all because two donkeys played like molasses. There have been many other horror stories about non clocked matches.
I am not suggesting we've found the perfect time settings to use. In fact, these settings can vary widely depending on the event in question. Since the main purpose of clocks is to avoid the brutality of slow play and hampering the flow of a tournament, some tournaments such as Monte Carlo or 4 day weekend tournaments may be able to use and get away with a looser time control than your standard weekend ABT event. In this post I will be talking mainly about your status quo ABT event.
The weekend ABT event has serious time constraints and it is where I see the most possible benefits from clock use. The tournament doesn't usually start til Saturday and there is a lot of play on that day. Then Sunday people are rushing to make flights or get home early. Even on extended weekend tourneys there's still a time press and I believe these tourneys would be much better served implementing clocks.
As of now I am also only suggesting mandatory use for the main Jackpot (Masters) event, the Open or Main division, and doubles. This isn't because I don't think intermediates or beginner players wouldn't be able to handle clocks once they became accustomed to them or that they wouldn't improve their playing experience in some respect either, it's because these divisions/events (side events) don't generally have the ability to ruin everyone's good time if a match is slow. Also, we currently don't have enough clocks in circulation to clock everything. If everyone got on board with clocks I'm sure there would be a nice spike in clock purchases or even a fundraiser giving the money to various TDs or an organization like the USBGF to purchase clocks and make them available at all the tournaments.
Here are some positive aspects of clock usage:
- They allow a tournament to run smoothly. Both the tournament staff and players involved in matches now have a reasonable ballpark of how long matches will take. Most matches will finish within a given time frame and players won't be waiting around excessively long amounts of time. This should self monitor players dragging out matches and affecting the rest of the tournament. People shouldn't have to play matches so late in to the evening nor be forced to get up early and lose sleep because they were unable to finish matches the night before.
- Clocking these main events allows for more free time in general. This free time can be used to run more side events and create more revenue for the tournament running the event. More free time will also give the players time to socialize after their matches and not during. These weekends are mini social vacations for a lot of people. We go to them in hopes of breaking even but we really attend because we love the game and enjoy the company of many other people attending.
- With clocks comes 1 set of dice which also contributes greatly to the overall playing experience. With 1 set of dice many disputes can be avoided. A perfect example can be seen in diagram #1 below.
- One set of dice also eliminates fast rolling and needless shaking of dice. Your opponents are on a clock and they know it. When it's their turn to roll they are no longer going to sit there for what seems like an eternity trying to figure out their good rolls are, what they're rooting for, what their absolute worst roll is, they're going to roll, period. It also eliminates the annoying habit some of my opponents seem to have and that's shaking their dice while it's still my turn. Once they roll they aren't going to take the time to set up every silly play they know they aren't going to make and aren't really thinking about anyway.
- Clocks level the playing field for all involved. My opponent has the same amount of time as I do from the start of a match. You aren't likely to get in to a war of the donkeys as I've referred to before that I witnessed between Bob Koca and Chris Yep in an unclocked match. I was watching this thing and I swear I aged 3 years while this match went on. I have no idea who was playing slower but each player involved felt like the other player was taking more than his fair share of time. To counter this he made sure he took an extra bit of time time on his turn! And the snowball turns into an avalanche.
- I am not worried about cheating but using 1 set of dice does reduce the probability of a dice cheat being successful. One of the main weapons of a dice mechanic is being able to swap out the dice. If every time he touches the dice you have your eyes both on him and them, it's less likely to occur whereas if you both have your own set of dice he can switch them in and out a lot easier when you're making your plays. Also, if he manages to insert a die containing an extra 5 and no 2 for example, you will get to use that die also and there's a higher probability of you (or someone else) noticing it.
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Diagram #1
- Scenario #1 - You are playing with two sets of dice. Your opponent rolls what you see as a 65 but wait! He picked up his dice and is waiting on you to roll. He claims he rolled 66, now what?
- Scenario #2 - You are playing on a clock and with one set of dice. Your opponent rolls the same roll. Regardless of what is rolled there is no way this dispute shouldn't be easily settled. If your opponent rolled 66 as he believes he hits his clock and the dice are still on the board. If he rolled 65 and hits his clock thinking he rolled 66 the dice are still on the board. Either way the dispute is settled without calling a TD over, getting a ruling that is based on who knows what. All you have to do is point to the dice in the clocked version.
is Player 2
score: 0
pip: 108Money session
Jacoby Beaverpip: 66
score: 0
is Player 1 XGID=-bBCCCBB----------bcbbbb--:1:-1:1:56:0:0:3:0:10 to play 56Why are some backgammon players against modern delay clock usage? I really can't figure it out. I understand it's something new and some people are set in their ways but that's not a good argument about something that adds so much good to the game and has, as far as I can tell, virtually no downside. (minor notes of the scant negatives will be made shortly) Everything else on this planet is clocked. In professional pool do you think you can sit there all day and figure out every which way to run out the table and choose which suits you best? In tennis do you think you're allowed infinite time to serve? In chess, a game that is supposed to take a lot of time, they still clock it to make sure nobody keels over before the match is finished. If it's your turn to bowl do you think you can step on the approach and play with your balls all day you pervert!? Scrabble? Clocked! Go? Clocked! In poker you even have a limited amount of time to act, I'm sensing a theme.
The possible cons of clock usage that have been brought up are people may shake the dice less and plunk their rolls more. By 'plunk' I mean not allowing their dice to tumble freely out on to the board. This would certainly be a concern if it happened, esp. on a regular basis. I could see this as a concern as a player gets low on time but I have yet to witness anyone 'scoop and dump'. I have seen players low on time shake much faster but they still shook them an ample amount of times and they launched their dice on to the board instead of plopping them down.
In a recent article in the Chicago Point Bill Davis came after clocks amongst other things. I am only going to refute that argument by again linking to the original retort it in this post. Since Bill nor anyone else ever addressed my post I will take that as the anti clockers agreeing with what I said in that post until someone speaks up and tells me otherwise.
In a 1993 issue of Inside Backgammon Nack Ballard leads off his article It's About Time! with this:
In recent discussions, I've discovered that many backgammon players find a large percentage of their matches to be intolerably slow. In fact, I can't imagine getting interested in tournament backgammon again unless something is done about the time control. How can we speed up matches, but in a way that is fair to both players?
I think we found the answer.
Stick