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tZMF-II with new firmware - Bronstein increment incorrect?

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dfroula
dfroula
Dec 17, 2020
0
#1
I just purchased a new ZMF-II chess clock. There have been some updates to the firmware, as the printed manual shows an added feature that is not in the Zmartfun support area, that is, a setting for the Increment time mode, either "Fischer" or "Bronstein".
 
According to my understanding, the Fischer mode adds a fixed increment at the beginning of a turn when the opponent completes his move. The clock immediately shows the total of current time plus increment and counts down immediately from that point. This all seems to work correctly.
 
The Bronstein increment differs from the Fischer increment in that the time is added to the clock at the end of a player's move when he presses his button. In addition, the Bronstein method only increments the amount of time that was actually used to make a move, up to the a maximum of the set increment. If a player has a 10-second Bronstein increment set and takes only 3 seconds to move, only 3 seconds should be added back as an increment.
 
The ZMF-II with the latest firmware does not work this way. In Bronstein increment mode, it always adds the full amount of the increment at the end of the player's move, regardless of how long the player took to move. This seems to me to be incorrect and a significant bug with this new feature.
 
Any thoughts on this behavior?
 
Thanks!
 
Don
Micahsmith
Micahsmith
Dec 20, 2020
0
#2

The terms "Fischer increment" and "Bronstein increment" are incorrect terms for the two different increment options the clock actually has.

There is no such thing as "Bronstein increment". Bronstein timing is considered to be one of the two forms of delay. The other form of delay has various names such as "simple delay" and "US delay" but perhaps "discrete delay" is the best way to describe this version of delay (the Zmart clocks currently only support "discrete delay"). Both forms of delay are mathematically equivalent but differ on how the delay is displayed on the screen (see this Wikipedia article for a good explanation on the difference between "simple delay" and Bronstein delay, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_clock#Timing_methods). "Fischer" is another name for increment, regardless of if the increment time is added to the display right after you press your clock or after your opponent presses their clock. 

The two increment options the new version of the ZMart clocks actually have are "add-before" increment and "add-after" increment. Both are mathematically equivalent but differ when the increment time is added to the display. "Add-before" increment waits until your opponent presses their clock for the increment time to be added to your display. This is the way the ZMart clocks used to always display increment. "Add-after" increment adds the increment time to your display right after you press your clock and this is the excellent new option the ZMart clocks have. "Add-after" increment is the way both FIDE and US Chess rules recommend increment be displayed so you can always see on the clock how much time you will have for your next move if you are low on time.

Hope this clears up the confusion. 

dfroula
dfroula
Dec 20, 2020
0
#3

The president of the company actually responded to my tech support question regarding this and confirmed what you say here in your comments. The problem with the firmware is in the label of the setting rather than a bug in the code. The "bRON" setting is actually the Fischer increment, but applied at the end of a player's move so that his clock always reflects the correct time remaining. The "Fischer" setting applies the delay only after the opponent has completed his move. Both methods of adding the increment correctly implement applying the increment to Black or White's first move.

As you said, the Bronstein delay is mathematically equivalent to the simple delay, except the time adjustment is made at the end of a player's move if he has not used the full amount of the delay. The ZMF-II does not support the Bronstein method of displaying delay.

Thanks for the very clear response.

Micahsmith
Micahsmith
Dec 25, 2020
0
#4
dfroula wrote:

Both methods of adding the increment correctly implement applying the increment to Black or White's first move.

Yes, this is a good feature of the ZMart clocks. Not all clocks automatically give the increment time for move one. If the time control is, for example, G/3;inc2, under both FIDE and US Chess rules each player gets 3:02, not 3:00, to complete move one. A lot of people are unaware that you get the increment time for move one and thus won't know to add the increment time manually to the base time on clocks that don't automatically give the increment time for move one in order to get the increment time for move one.