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BGonline.org Forums
Clocks in money game session?
Posted By: Colin Owen In Response To: Clocks in money game session? (Mislav Kovacic)
Date: Wednesday, 12 September 2012, at 4:55 p.m.
It is clearly best to have the bank of reserve time apportioned for a set of games, rather than one game at a time. Playing for single games and then resetting the clock is more cumbersome, and not akin to match play. It reminds me of the old Scrabble tournament time controls here in the UK. You got two mins per turn I recall, and couldn't therefore play faster one turn in order to save up time for more difficult ones. Now, I believe Scrabble players get 25 mins each for the whole game; much better.
I have played clocked money play sessions many times; it is my favourite form of the game. Apart from an experimental analogue clock session or two, many years ago, I think my first session was with Weaver, a couple of years back. He was sufficiently enthusiastic about the format to describe it on the forum. I have played this format with at least five different players, though time controls have varied. Most commonly we now play an initial set of 30 games. The clocks are cleared when a set ends, of course. You can tag on shorter sets to pad out the remaining session time.
If you want controls similar to match play, then you have to consider the average number of games in matches. According to data on 'Backgammon Galore' the average number of games in 5 and 7 point matches, for example, are 3.83 and 5.02 respectively. So, with 2 mins/point players are getting an average of 2.6 - 2.8 mins/game. Money play being less complex, you would want to round that down to nothing more than 2.5 mins and more likely 2 mins, or quite possibly less. You can experiment with shorter (probably 8 - 10 sec) or longer (15 sec+) delays if you want, adjusting the reserve time accordingly.
If a player times out with the Delay or Bronstein type system, then it does not seem natural to me to try to adjust for how much one player was faster than another or such like. That is more appropriate to the old analogue method, where players received penalty points in matches, but were given additional time. Nowadays in tournaments, with free time for each move, you simply lose the match - the maximum possible penalty. UBK suggests the penalty I have used (it has never been invoked) which is consistent with match play: you lose the current game unless it's gin. You would also lose a gammon or bg in that game unless saving them was also gin. If you time out whilst considering taking a double then naturally, it counts as a pass. If it's not the final game of the set it's 1 additional point for all games that remain, with the Jacoby Rule. Without it (as with UBK) it's 3pts - fair incentive not to time out before the last game!
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