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BGonline.org Forums
Clocks in Charlotte
Posted By: Rich Munitz In Response To: Clocks in Charlotte (Bob Koca)
Date: Wednesday, 21 January 2009, at 3:33 a.m.
Painful was probably not the best choice of words here, as I completely agree with you that this term is best reserved for matches that would likely be well beyond a clock timeout, possibly by an order of magnitude. But I think Stick said it well - that if a match is comprised of a bunch of nexts, and someone uses 95% of their reserve, they are playing uncomfortably slow whether they are holding up the tournament or not. I have no idea what the nature of your matches were. If they were all a bunch of DMP matches with lots of 1-2 point games and lots of tough decisions, it is completely reasonable for time to get tight. But if playing a match and the score is 8-4 after three games, and one of the players starts thinking forever about every play or counting pips on every turn just because they have lots of time to burn, well that can certainly be painful.
Something to ponder - if you were to play the last third of the match at the same pace you played the first two thirds (and I don't know that you didn't), how long would it have actually taken? While the entire match time was "within budget", is it possible that during the earlier "unpressured" games that an average opponent or spectator would have considered the pace to be uncomfortably slow?
Bottom line, this is a minor issue. If all matches were clocked, and everyone used every second of their reserve time, we'd probably still be better off than without the clocks.
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