OTB Tourneys

I have a one day tournament tomorrow. G/60 dammit. That's two G/60 tourneys in a row for me, and I did not do well in my last one. What's up with shrinking time controls in live tourneys? I can't afford to go to the Chicago Open coming up, even though I only live about 100 miles away from it, pity pity pity. And my in-laws will be in town that weekend, which I thought was a good reason for going, but the wife disagreed for some reason I couldn't fathom. 🙄

Anyone else having problems with shrinking time controls in local tourneys? I barely have time to think in these things. My USCF rating is dropping like a stone. Obviously it is nowhere close to my rating on this site.

Originally posted by thesonofsaul
I have a one day tournament tomorrow. G/60 dammit. That's two G/60 tourneys in a row for me, and I did not do well in my last one. What's up with shrinking time controls in live tourneys? I can't afford to go to the Chicago Open coming up, even though I only live about 100 miles away from it, pity pity pity. And my in-laws will be in town that weeke ...[text shortened]... F rating is dropping like a stone. Obviously it is nowhere close to my rating on this site.

How many rounds in the tournament? Are the shrinking time controls due to fewer games in the one-day tournaments, or holding more one-day tournaments instead of two-day affairs?

I haven't yet noticed a decrease in my club's time controls. (They're usually longer than G60.)

Yeah, those lightning fast G60 controls... You'll just have to do the best that you can. 🙂

Just quickly, 1-day tournaments with faster time-controls are becoming more prevalent because of the economics of chess and the 'speeding-up' of life in general.

There's more to it than that of course but unfortunately I don't have time to write much just now : (

My club matches are 60/30 + 15 so I don't see what you're whining about. 🙂

I'll be playing in a small G45 tournament this Saturday. And yep I'll be giving away my rating points.

I usually play 90 + 30, or 50 + 10, so, nope, I'm fine. 🙂

Did crappy in the tourney. 1-3. Should have played in the reserve, but heck, I had fun, and I had a winning position against an 1800 player before I threw it away without thinking. 🙂

I'll keep playing even if they make me play faster than I should with my slow brain.

Forgive me for not knowing. Could someone explain what G45 represents and the 60/30 +15 statements? I just like to play chess. I haven't played in any tournaments. I am involved with a small club and we have started to discuss playing in a tournament sometime soon. We are all still learning and we started the club just to have people to play with. I'm just curious about these terms.
Thanks!

Originally posted by Eric LeFavour
Forgive me for not knowing. Could someone explain what G45 represents and the 60/30 +15 statements? I just like to play chess. I haven't played in any tournaments. I am involved with a small club and we have started to discuss playing in a tournament sometime soon. We are all still learning and we started the club just to have people to play with. I'm just curious about these terms.
Thanks!

G45 means game in 45 minutes meaning each player has 45 minutes to make all their moves. I'm not sure what 60/30 + 15 means; I assume the +15 means 15 seconds are added to your clock after each move (5 seconds is the norm in the US) but 60/30 is not clear to me.

60/30 + 15

30 Moves in 60 minutes and 15 minute blitz at the end.

Originally posted by Eric LeFavour
Forgive me for not knowing. Could someone explain what G45 represents and the 60/30 +15 statements? I just like to play chess. I haven't played in any tournaments. I am involved with a small club and we have started to discuss playing in a tournament sometime soon. We are all still learning and we started the club just to have people to play with. I'm just curious about these terms.
Thanks!

At least in the U.S., 60/30 would mean 60 moves in 30 minutes. (If you mean to say 30 moves in 60 minutes, then in USCF parlance it would be stated as 30/60, or alternately 30/1, meaning 30 moves in one hour.)

no1marauder was right to not know what the +15 meant. (I didn't know, either.) This isn't standard USCF terminology. If it was meant that the rest of the game is played out in 15 minutes, then you would state it as SD/15 (meaning sudden death in 15 minutes.)

Concerning time delays, marauder correctly states that the standard delay in the U.S. for slow games is 5 seconds per move. (However, the delay can be less for faster games. And a tournament director doesn't have to use delays at all, although the majority of TDs use delays because of its advantages.) If you're going to state this delay time, it would be stated as t/d5. However, none of the local tournaments that I've been in have bothered to state the delay time in the flyer. They usually just announce the delay time right before the first round starts.

(It CAN get even more complicated than that. If the TD is using a time delay, he has the option to specify that the time control be reduced a little to compensate for using a time delay. For example, lets say you're about to play a G/60 time control. The TD wants to use a 5 second delay, but he doesn't want the games to drag out too long due to the scheduling of the next rounds. So he's allowed to have a basic time control of G/55 with a 5 second delay for each move, which should end up taking about the same amount of time that a G/60 with no time delay would take. And in this case, the tournament results would simply be reported as G/60, even though the TD got fancy with juggling the minutes. Got all that? 🙂 )

So to recap, if you're playing a game with the first time control of 30 moves in 60 minutes, with the rest of the game played in 15 minutes, with a time delay of 5 seconds to apply to all moves in the game, then it would be stated as:

30/60, SD/15, t/d5
or
30/1, SD/15, t/d5

Those time controls sound very fast for tournaments. No tournament in Ireland would be faster than 90 minutes for all moves (other than rapid events which aren't rated). I wouldn't fancy having 1 hour games rated!

Originally posted by Schumi
Those time controls sound very fast for tournaments. No tournament in Ireland would be faster than 90 minutes for all moves (other than rapid events which aren't rated). I wouldn't fancy having 1 hour games rated!

Better brace yourself then for it appears to be the future of chess.

I don't like it either 😠

Thanks folks for all of the input. My question is pretty thoroughly answered. Thanks again.