I have seen many changes in tournament chess since I started playing in 1973. One of the changes I have seen growing more popular here in Europe is using increments in otb classic games. A very popular FIDE time control here seems to be G/90 but with a 30 sec increment from move 1. Are increments popular in the uscf events now too? What about other countries? If you are an otb player , what do you think of them? Are you for or against their use?

The USCF prefers digital clocks with time delay or add back (Bronstein) settings. There are a number of pages in the USCF rules explaining this. Not all directors will do things the same way. What they do should be announced in advance. A typical practice is to announce an event to be played at Game 60 minutes with a preferred setting of 55 minutes + 5 second delay. Another example is to have two time controls with the second being sudden death. For example, 40 moves in two hours and the rest of the game in 1 hour. The first may become 115 minutes with the time delay used during the whole game. Practices vary, so reading the USCF rules and knowing the director's rules are necessary.

I think this has been good for directors. It reduces the need for them to rule on faulty clock and insufficient winning chance claims. This can also benefit players. However, the concept of time not being linear disturbs me. Another problem is that there are different digital clocks with different methods of setting and different information on display. Not only is each company's clock different from others, but each company changes its clock when it produces a new model. This makes for confused players and directors when clocks are set and watched, especially when there are multiple time controls in a game.

In the last few years here the 2 most popular time controls have been G/90 with 30 sec increment , OR  G/2 hrs   with no increments.  I am not sure I like either of them myself.

They no doubt are becoming more popular but I dont fully understand the logic behind a time increment. Why not just give more time? Can you guys enlighten me on increments?

Thanks! Chuck 

Directors have a reduced need to rule on claims of faulty clocks and insufficient winning chances. Sudden death time controls conclusively end games more than do longer time controls. The need for adjourned games and/or adjudicated games has ended. Pairings can be made based on actual results sooner, rather than supposed results. Players with 2 or 3 games per day get more breaks when games end on time.

I just played in a tournament where the time control was 50/50 (50 minutes plus 50 seconds per move). I liked it as you never got into crazy endgame time trouble messes.

Personally i don't like the time delay feature but since it seems to be the way of the future i guess i have to live with it if i wish to play OTB chess. I like the way we used to do it years ago 40 moves in 2.5 hours and then 1 hour for the rest.

As a player I dont much like SD time controls as I think they lower the quality of the games and too many are decided by the pressure of the clock. I think SD controls also favor younger players as they tend to play/think faster than older players.

I like time increments. I don't believe a player should lose on time, but a time limit needs to be imposed to prevent people from not moving.

Yes, Reb, SD has drawbacks. However, without a final time limit, games used to be adjourned. A player could concede the time remaining and seal a move in order to study the position. This was limited only by the need for the player to not go beyond the time left by conceding time. This would happen in simple positions (such as R v. B) that could be played out quickly, yet would be adjourned, sometimes more than once. This required additional playing sessions on other dates. That lowers the quality of the chess experience and distorts the result that the players should get playing one on one.

I never did like adjournments but in more than 30 years of tourney chess I only had 2 or 3 games adjourned and one of those was when I was playing in Germany. After 10 years in Europe I have been spoiled by the one round per day tournaments here. I dont know if I could ever enjoy 2 and even 3 rounds a day anymore like US swisses usually are.

2 Rounds a day isn't bad...but in the tounaments I play in saturday is usually a 3-round day and I'm completely exhausted by the end of it.