lidraughts.org

Tournaments with increment

I doubt anything will happen because of this, but it's worth a try...

Almost all official Lidraughts tournaments currently have no increment. For instance, of all 19 tournaments today, only 3 have an increment. And not a single weekly/monthly/yearly tournaments has an increment either.

I have a strong preference for time controls with an increment. I've lost (and won!) a lot of increment-less games by running out of time, and neither is very fun. These results have nothing to do with the actual game.

It's not just my opinion, either: using the advanced search tool, I have found that outside of tournaments, about 63% of all 62k timed games has an increment. In other words, when people have a choice, they strongly prefer an increment over no increment. Some more statistics: outside of tournaments, 4442 games were played with 3+2, versus only 3833 with 5+0. And similarly, 2666 with 5+5 versus only 1377 with 10+0.

An additional advantage of using an increment is that there's no reason to continue playing in a clearly losing endgame. Increment-less games often continue until the last piece has been captured, which is just a waste of everyone's time.

"But time control is part of the game!" Sure, but with +0 it plays a much bigger role than with an increment. Ask any draughts players if they think giving all your pieces at the end of a game in order to flag your opponent is part of draughts. There's a reason almost all real draughts tournaments have switched to using an increment.

80% of all tournaments should have an increment with +0 being the exception, not the other way around.

Rant over :)

Hmmm, while I agree with your point, your evidence is not really significant, statistically. I have noticed that some players play much much more than others, hence they have many more games in the database, maybe even a majority. So the majority of games may have been played by the minority of players. If those active players prefer more time controls, it will swing the scale. More people might prefer +0, however, the active players who really care about draughts such as you might like increments more. Ok my stats rant is over. And I agree with you, however I think it should be 50% with increment and 50% without.

I would love to see tournaments with increment more often. I feel confident in chess blitz games (but not bullet games yet), I am good at blitz and bullet on many draughts variants on 8x8 board; but I have a small motivation to play any variant on 10x10 board (except antidraughts) if time control is less than 5' + 2".

@Frisian Fair point, this is the best I could do using the search tool. :) I do believe that most people prefer an increment though. Perhaps the fact that almost all real world draughts tournaments use an increment is better evidence.
50/50 would be a good start.

We can always consider more tournaments with increment, moving closer towards a 50/50 division seems fair. A downside of longer timecontrols is that you need more players to have a fun tournament (nobody likes long waits), but there are surely more players now than in the early days.

The weekly/monthly/yearly tournaments only have increments for the variants right now (daily antidraughts and weekly Frisian). For the standard tournaments it's less trivial, because their different weekly...yearly cycles are based on timecontrol, not variant. Maybe we can add a Superblitz Inc (or Blitz Inc) timecontrol to that, with its own daily...yearly cycle of tournaments.

The main blitz track of the hourly tournament schedule repeats every three hours, with two standard blitz tournaments and a Frisian one. Right now this is always a 5+0 tournament with an alternating 3+0 or 3+2. We can change it so that there's always a 3+2 tournament, while the 3+0 and 5+0 alternate. That way the main blitz schedule would be a 50/50 split with increment.

I don't think adding 5+2 in the mix would work, that timecontrol is too long for one hour tournaments.

It would be interesting a time increment only in the final 10s for each player, a 2s increment, for example, I think is fairer.

Has the distribution of tournaments with and without increment already been changed?
I thought there were only 3+2 standard tournaments at 14:00 and 20:00 CET (besides those at times that most Europeans sleep). I just looked at the tournaments to check and saw a 3+2 tournament at 17:00 CET. Has every three hour period now 1 slot 3+2 standard, 1 slot 3+2 Frisian and 1 slot alternating between 3+0 and 5+0 standard like Roepstoep suggested? The Sunday afternoon schedule looks a bit different due to daily and weekly tournaments. It seems to me it has been changed so thanks for the change as I only play the 3+2 standard tournaments at the moment (I might try Frisian at some point).

I wholeheartedly agree that more Fischer tournaments would be better. In fact, I don't play without increment at all. Winning or losing on the clock is not why I play draughts and the few times I have played 1+0 or 2+0 in the past opponents often continued playing draw/losing endgames until either they had no pieces left or I lost on the clock. That is not how this game should be played imo.

People wanting to play very fast games like 1+0, 2+0, 1+1 or even 1/2+0 can do so, but talking about just the superblitz games and tournaments I don't understand why anyone would ever want to play with something like 3+0 or 5+0. Isn't 2+1 and 3+2 just strictly better without the 'continuing to play until you win on the clock' shenanigans? At the moment I'm grateful for 50% of standard blitz tournaments having an increment, but why not more than 50%?
Tim already pointed out basically all physical draughts tournaments are with an increment nowadays. With an analog clock 5+0 and 10+0 were the standard blitz options, but now there is no reason to play without increment imo, neither on the internet nor in physical games.

When I play blitz at my club after a regular game or in a blitz club evening or tournament, the minimum time control used is 3+2. Other time controls like 5+3 or something in between can be used, but from all the draughts club players in the Netherlands that I know, the vast majority does not want to play something like 2+0 and plenty of (older) people find 3+2 already too fast and prefer 5+3 or 5+5. I understand however that that is too long for a one hour tournament as you can play only very few games and have to wait longer in quieter tournaments.

Odelschwanck's suggestion is interesting for people who want to play with less time than 3+2, but don't want to play the game of who can play faster in order to flag the other.

Yes @Finkeltje, the change was made before the weekend. Every three hour block now has one blitz tournament with increment and one without (except with overlapping daily/weekly/etc).

Why not more than 50%? I think its good to keep a balance, as timecontrol will always be a matter of personal preference. For me it is even a matter of mood sometimes, both in draughts and chess. I agree that games with increment will generally be of higher quality, but the fight against the clock can also be enjoyable in itself, trying to achieve the best quality moves with limited time. Ideally we can facilitate all preferences.

There is still the matter of increment in the daily/weekly/etc tournament cycles. Likely we will add a new cycle there with an increment timecontrol like 5+2 or 5+3.

Something to keep in the back of your mind as well: when the amount of active players grows enough, it will become viable at some point to expand the tournament schedule. We could have two blitz-tracks all day, one with increment and one without.

I think Odelschwanks suggestion solves a similar problem as the more common timecontrols with delay: one can keep playing reasonable moves in time trouble, but will never gain time on the clock. Maybe this is an idea, but mixing too many different clocks can become confusing as well.

It doesn't really help that the few tournaments with increment are often simultaneous...

You mean the simultaneous 3+2 blitz and 1+1 bullet tournaments?

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