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From part of the "silent majority"
Posted By: Dave In Response To: My clock proposal for ABT events for 2009 and beyond (neilkaz)
Date: Saturday, 25 October 2008, at 11:18 p.m.
First the background. Until two days ago I had never played backgammon with a clock, nor have I ever participated in a backgammon tournament (though I'm committed to fixing that in 2009). My opponent (my long-time opponent) was in the exact same situation. Having said that we had both played with clocks before in chess (chess clubs and local tournaments in my youth; he playing blitz chess in parks) so we were at least somewhat comfortable with the idea.
So our first game. We only had time for one game and did so without the cube (or at Crawford, if you prefer) so that we could play all the way through a game without worrying about it ending too quickly with a D/P and used a 2/12 setting (since it was only one game it was 2 minutes with a 12 second delay). We struggled during the opening rolls. Not because they were particularly odd or complicated but because we were both struggling with the mechanics of the clock and the new rules (one pair of dice, etc.). I felt we got used to the feel of playing with a clock fairly quickly but by now were in the mid-game. Here's where things got difficult. We both had some fairly complicated positions that we definitely felt rushed on and didn't take the time we'd normally take on those positions (we are both pretty quick players but will on occasion spend maybe up to a minute thinking about a particular play -- checker or cube). Once we got to the end-game things went pretty smoothly. We were even more comfortable with the clock and even though some of the positions might have been complicated it's just easier to see your options toward the end and so making a decision is easier (i.e., you don't have that nagging feeling you're missing an option). And then the game ended.
Now for the post-mortem. When we looked at the clock we had each only used 11 seconds of our alloted two minutes. That looks good but there was a problem. We both felt we had each blundered a couple of times during the game. We both agreed that we didn't feel like we were playing against the time controls but against the delay. Basically we each kept an eye on the countdown timer and were rushing to finish our moves. This meant that even in complicated positions we were only giving ourselves 12 seconds to play the move (less the time to pick up and roll the dice).
I know that in time we will get used to playing with a clock and will be able to overcome that psychological barrier of playing against the delay instead of the time control. I'm sure we would be able to take the time to think through a complicated position without panicking because we're running out of time. Also, and obviously, in an actual match we'd have a lot more time to start with so the psychological factor wouldn't be as pronounced or at least not so early on.
My conclusion? For never having played backgammon with a clock I felt we both did well enough and with just a few more games under our belts would be just fine. So now for Neil's proposal and other issues I've read on the board:
1) From my own perspective having the clocks be "insistable" would actually make things worse. If players are unsure about their ability to play with a clock then not knowing if any given match is going to be clocked just adds more stress than should be there especially since those players have no say in the matter. Either clocks should be mandatory for everyone at all time or not be mandatory (except under current rules of slow play).
2) I do not believe clocks will keep newcomers from playing. Anyone considering playing in a tournament will most likely already be familiar with tournament game play in some version and that clocks are used throughout. Not that they would necessarily have ever played a game tournament before but will know the prevalence of clocks in chess, bridge, Scrabble, etc. I think this is a non-issue.
3) I'm not sure how much the 12 vs 15 second delay matters. For my first game it didn't matter at all as I was feeling the pressure from the delay timer more than anything. 6, 12, 15, 30 seconds, whatever, I would still have the same pressure. That said just having the little extra time for cocked dice probably will make things a bit easier to swallow. Also having the few extra seconds to experiment with the pace of play will be appreciated by a lot of players, I'd bet.
4) Someone else had mentioned in another thread how at the club level he was going to introduce clock usage without penalizing players for being flagged just to get them used to using the mechanics of using a clock. I like this idea but not sure if it really scales to the ABT level.
5) Has anyone ever considered using a move counter and adding time to each player's time if a certain number of moves are reached (like in some chess time controls) or even adding a few seconds per move? This would at least abate the fear, whether based on reality or not, that a match that has a lot of complicated backgame play wouldn't have the players penalized for reasonably needing to think longer. Or what about resetting the clock for each game? I'm not sure how that would be better but it's more that I'm curious about how the current rules evolved.
A transitional year certainly sounds reasonable and making clocks mandatory in 2010 is completely reasonable and necessary. As for the specifics of Neil's proposed transition it's difficult for me to form a solid opinion since I've never played an ABT event. I guess the main point of my post would be there is a lot of uncertainty among players who have never used a clock in backgammon play. And since we're talking a significant amount of money in the balance you'd hate for people to feel they are losing money in tournaments just because of this unfamiliarity. I'm not sure there is any easy way to sugar-coat the process but being generous with the rules (like Neil's 2/15 2pt penalty) sounds good but it needs to applied consistently to everyone at all time.
Dave
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