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BGonline.org Forums
Clocks
Posted By: Bill Riles
Date: Tuesday, 2 February 2010, at 12:02 a.m.
I played, I think, every match except one (I had loaned my clock and it was being used) with a clock in Santa Fe. Several players who had never before used a clock agreed to it's use and claimed to enjoy the experience. There were few clocks at the tourney but those were in almost continual use. One first round match (a usual suspect) took somewhere between 3-4 hours for an 11 point match and created some scheduling difficulties throughout the remainder of the weekend. I believe after that event at least two parties (including one of the original two) were clocked in every one of their remaining matches over the weekend. The slower player won the first round match and then was paired with another notoriously slow player in the second round -- that match was clocked -- and, as those players were hopelessly behind for the remainder of the weekend, they were, effectively, clocked throughout.
An interesting circumstance occurred in the Jeremy Bagai/Sean Williams consolaton semi-final. After Jeremy had gotten ahead 8-2C/9 Sean rallied to tie at 8-8. They each had something on the order of five minutes reserve time remaining. They took a short break and forgot to center the clock so when play resumed Jeremy had less than a minute showing on the clock.
It confused the spectators a bit but the two of them, upon noticing, had agreed to continue the use of the clock, with only two dice, to signify the end of each player's turn.
Again, in addition to the time aspects (advantages in my opinion), the mechanics of the game are enhanced by the use of the clock. No fast rolls, no argument over what a roll was, etc. I think Sean and Jeremy demonstrated this by continuing to use the clock as a game tool despite the fact that the times were meaningless.
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