I’m hugely in favor of 3|1 time controls even though it means I may never win another tournament. With 3|2, old fogies such as myself could spend 30 seconds or even longer working out tactics and still outplay faster inexperienced players in the endgame. I won’t be able to do that anymore.
But it also makes it much more clear who may be using an engine. And that is far more important.
I’ve seen masters lose R vs R endgames in 3|1, which is ridiculous. But the site is doing a better job of catching the cheats.
3|1 isn’t going away. The more events we have with it, the more normal it will feel.
Good point on that.
However, we have a 2000-member celebration tournament coming up. I'd considered making it a bullet event, but since we have interest in a slower blitz time control, I might do 5|0.
I stand by my original statement when points were first being discussed for the tour: the system should be simple enough for anyone to follow and work out the points for themselves.
I understand the desire to have different point systems for different tournaments, but it just makes working out the points very difficult for most people to follow.
And this year looks to be even more competitive than last year! (Unless of course several players "graduate" to the Titled Tuesday ranks.)
If the system is clearly documented, it's pretty easy to understand. Reminders, etc., will make it clear which type of tournament it is, and both systems will be clearly documented in the forums.
In the Tour de France, it's expected that different stages will have different numbers of points at the finish line depending on whether it's a flat stage or a mountain stage, and that different difficulties of hills will have different numbers of points. This doesn't cause any difficulty; it's expected, and people know where to look to find the details of how it works if they want to analyse various scenarios.
The other issue is that I want everyone who can only come to one event per month to come to the same event. Giving that event a higher points total helps encourage that.