Darnall & Handsworth vs the Rest of the World
(Follow the link above for full details.)
This sounds like it will be a lot of fun; it’s free and they still need some more players.
And on Sunday 30th it is followed by a six round rapidplay tournament.
Warning, this is very much a first draft. Before I can do a second better draft, I’ll need to see people trying to use this guide and the video, so I can find out which bits people find unclear, and what kind of mistakes people make when trying to use the clocks.
Using the digital clocks.
Pause
The pause button is the rightmost of the four on the front, labelled pause.
Press this button once to pause the clock. To restart it, you can press the pause button or either of the two buttons on top. However, if the current player does this their move will end.
To avoid ending a player’s move accidentally, always terminate pause using the pause button.
During pause mode, the light on the top button will go off.
Holding the pause button down for at least three seconds resets the clock’s mode. Don’t do this during a match.
Moves
This is the button immediately to the left of the pause button.
Holding this button down displays the current move number on the left screen, but doesn’t stop the clock. There isn’t much need to do this during a match.
It is possible to disable the move counter, but we shouldn’t ever need to do that.
Four way control pad
This is the round button under the left screen. It can be used to select the timer mode.
The options, listed on the underside of the clock, are
To use this, first hold the pause button down for three seconds, then use the arrows to navigate though the options.
Up and down move through the suboptions for each mode, also listed on the underside. Left and right move through the modes, or through the mode settings if in a submenu.
The current mode is displayed at the bottom left of the left screen. Be careful, on this display the letter B looks like a number 8.
If the edit button is pressed, pressing the left and right arrows will decrease or increase the value currently selected.
Timing modes
Hourglass
For every second you spend thinking, a second is added to your opponents time, and vice versa.
Blitz
Standard blitz play. The default is five minutes, but other options can be selected through the control pad.
Tournament
Standard match play. It’s possible to have up to three phases of play, but we only need two.
Fischer
A set amount of time is allotted for each move. If a player moves faster than this, the remaining time is added to their clock. The clock can be set to add time before or after each move.
Bronstein
This is similar to Fischer, but it’s not possible for a player’s total time available to increase.
Game + Word
When a player’s time is expired, the clock will start to count up. This is not useful for chess.
User
Modified versions of any of the standard options, picked by the user.
Edit an existing setting as desired, then press store. Using the up and down arrows to select slot 7A, 7B, or 7C, then press store again.
It’s possible to create asymmetric settings – e.g, giving one player 10 minutes and the other 30 – but we will seldom need to do this.
Sliders.
There are two sliders on the underside of the clock. The one on the right turns it on and off, but can also turn the light and sound off.
The slider on the left can be set to ‘modify’, allowing settings to be edited, or to ‘lock’, preventing settings from being edited. Normally, it should be set to lock.
This is a brief guide to our digital chess clocks, found on youtube. It doesn’t explain absolutely everything, but it should give you a decent idea how setting the clocks is supposed to work.
A big thanks to Phil Beckett for organising a Chess 960 (Fischer Random Chess) night. (See rules here.)
There were four rounds, with John, Jo, Eric, Jeremy, Phil, Robert, Steve and Henry playing. Henry was the eventual winner with four wins.
