Tournament Mode in Tempest Chess Clock - a review

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PastMyPr1me

Hi all. I got a Tempest clock in exchange for doing a tear down and review of it a couple weeks ago (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ecwj51qqmAo) and have been playing with it for several weeks and can report the thing is legit high quality! Very innovative. Very solidly built. Anyway in my review, I tried to address a variety of pros as well as concerns i heard voiced in these forums about fit in and out of cases (pretty good)  safety of the device under bullet chess strains (not even an issue). And came across one question i couldn't really answer. Although less than 1% of games are played in a tournament hall, i didn't know if a USCF TD would allow a phone in airplane mode to be used as 'just a clock' in this context. I just don't know if they would, nor what it would take to disable all phone features to make it just a screen in a TD's eyes. But i did see a number of posts that did worry about where the USCF (for example) would stand on that. Or what it would take to approve it for tournament usage.

So i kind of didn't know what to say about that and read here and on some other forums that players worried TD's wouldn't make an exception as is. I gave that feedback as best i could to the Tempest developers and thought that was that. But a week later, they came back with a "Tournament Mode" (that was fast!) which i *think*  addresses the lingering concern a TD of say a local tournament (perhaps not a championship tournament? i don't know) that ensures (visibly) that the device is essential not a phone in any way that the spirit of the rules is concerned with.

 

So having asked for (and got!) that TD-centric feature developed in what felt like a week (or maybe they were working on it already)... and since i have their ear, i wonder if i could hear from registered TD's if this addresses a TD's concerns that it's not a phone in this context (disabled calls/texts/notifications) and can't reasonably be used for cheating. I think this solves it but I'd like to hear from actual TD's if there's anything they would ask? I have the developers ears, so if there's something you'd add/change, what would it be?

 

Thanks in advance. 

Here is my walkthrough of their Tournament Mode...(in beta, not on appstore yet).


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUSAq4PFNi0

BlackKaweah
No way.