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BGonline.org Forums
Is 2 minutes enough clock reserve time?
Posted By: Rich Munitz In Response To: Is 2 minutes enough clock reserve time? (Stick)
Date: Tuesday, 9 June 2009, at 3:01 p.m.
I am certain that the large majority of matches can be very comfortably played on 2/12. And I agree that there are people that waste time or ponder the ridiculous. My point was that I have seen too many situations now where that was not the case and players were under time pressure. Sure, each time people speed up and don't time out. But the point is that they shouldn't have to. A reasonable pace should be sustainable an entire match without having to worry about the time.
Stick - you and I played a 15 point Super Jackpot match in Vegas in which we each started with 30 minutes. You ended with around 3 minutes, I ended with 40 seconds. Were we goofing around too much there? Playing unreasonably slow? Making moves just to prove that we saw them? I don't think so. We had a large number of games with a number of difficult decisions. The match just took that long. What if we didn't start with a 4-cube? Sure, we both could have played another 10 games if forced to on the time remaining, and to some, the fact that there was no timeout would prove that there was ample time on the clock to begin with. I could have played that match with 30 seconds reserve per point and not timed out and so could you. What does that prove?
Anyway, my point is that allowing for a potential 5-8 minutes of extra think time per player for an entire match is not going to cause matches to back up and people to be playing at 2 AM. But it will allow more matches that happen to run many games or have a large number of difficult decisions to be played at a comfortable pace without time being a concern. That is my view of what a time control should accomplish. Backgammon played at a "reasonable" pace should be aware, but not have to worry about remaining clock time. We want clocks there for the mechanical advantages and to manage the "unreasonable".
And, as per Chiva's post, I think it would be good to see the Americans and the Europeans converge on standards for clock rules. Their time control was too generous. I sense that ours is too strict. Optimal may lie somewhere in the middle.
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