Enforcing Tournament Conditions

My tournament used a 3 hour minimum time move and it still happened. The problem is your "average time to move" figure is easily - very easily - rorted, and so the figure is basically meaningless.

There are no options you can set in the tournament criteria that will guard against bad players from joining, and once the tournament has in fact started, you have no options by which to get rid of them.

I hope chess.com reconsiders their approach here, community participation both in entering tournaments and creating them is important and I believe that will be less than what it could be where there are no tools avialable for a degree of player self-regulation - unless chess.com wants to have so many staff on call that they can quickly respond to it.

I go with 3 days per move and it moves along okay. If you want it to go faster make it 48 hour or 24 hour.

It was 24 hour. However, that's not enough I think. Consider an average game being 30 or so moves, a player could make that game last a month or more. Meanwhile everyone else has finished inside a week and then has to wait for this one player.

I said earlier, if not TD powers to eject such players, then at least a 12-hour time control would be a step in the right direction.

If they finish within a week then they played too quickly.

Look Zigwurst - I get it. You're a slow player. That's fine. But other people on this site would like to play a bit faster than you - is that really beyond your understanding?

More to the point, these people would like to play with other like minded people. If you really can't understand that, then I fail to see what you have to add to this conversation.

If people don't want to play a good game of chess, then I am at a loss for why, especially with how much people whine about ratings.

The Tournament Board is loaded with Tournaments, take your pick.

You are not the arbiter of what defines a good game of chess, Zigwurst - you're starting to sound quite arrogant in your beliefs that your style of play is the only legitimate one.

This site ought to cater for people who don't want to spend the next 6 months slowly playing out a single game/round of chess.

And how many of those do you think are short play tournaments wherein the majority of players are being held up by a small, slow playing, minority of players?

There are hundreds of games, take your pick.

You're missing the point. Most of those will be slowed down by the last few games each round.

24 hours every move doesn't seem at all unreasonable.

What if 35 players sign up agreeing to move faster than that, as laid out in the tournament conditions, and 1 player decides to ignore the conditions, sign up anyway, and hold everyone else up?

It seems that the thread is getting a bit astray. The question is twofold:

1. Can the TD impose arbitrary regulations, no matter how weird, if they are clearly stated in the tournament rules which can be seen before registrating? In other words, does chess.com approve of any time controls though only a handful of them are possible technically?
2. Does the TD have enough powers to enforce said regulations?

Notice that none of this two questions is related to "Will many people join if the TD chooses such and such regulation?", or the more pervasive "Is such and such regulation reasonable?". Just don't join the tournament and mind your own business.

Perhaps something can be done by way of forming a group for people wanting fast play (I think I have come across a group called fast correspondence players). Then only invite players onto your tournaments who are members of the group. You would have the sanction of expelling from the group anyone who failed to meet the tournament conditions.

It might not deter absolutely all anti-social slow play but it might deter a lot of it.

This is essentially what I'm doing. Future "Very Fast Play" tournaments will be invite-only.

Not sure if I'll agree with the weird tag , but yes, points 1 and 2 about sum it up.

Giving power to TDs is a terrible idea. Abuse will be rampant, even good intentioned abuse. As HessianWarrior says " a TD should have the right to toss Sandbaggers, Cheaters, and 2000+ players coming in as 1300 players", but even a quick glance at the forums  tells you that chess.com users are not to be trusted to do that. 

I can't even count how many threads I've read about someone claiming their opponent is playing a position that's "too complex" for their rating or players who think they can recognize engine play on a single move. 

Chess.com is just filled with too many borderline superstitious pieces of misinformation and players with weird beliefs. I've given up on trying to understand why people expect others to take their own personal preferences as gospel, but I am damn certain that if TDs are given more power people will end up kicked for all sorts of interesting reasons. 

Sidenote: I think it is perfectly reasonable for OzHawkeye to be annoyed at slow players in a tournament meant for fast players, but he is basically trying to set up a tournament in a time control that doesn't exist on chess.com. Some players don't read tournament descriptions so this is probably something that you will have to live with. 

I doubt Chess.com is going to create shorter time controls, 24 hours is already very short for correspondence chess and any reduction would probably just lead to a LOT more clocks running out. 

I think 12 hour time control is a good compromise. I agree, if TD's had power to kick, some would abuse it - sad but true. So, if we can't do that, we could at least do a 12 hour time control.

If people timeout, then they timeout - as bas as that is, I think that's still better than the current "Impotent TD" arrangement.

I'd be happy to continue offering open "Very Fast Play" tournaments, but as things stand, I won't be, because I know - that if I don't make it invite only which is what I'm going to do - at least one player will ruin it for everyone else.

I can't really see any problem with chess.cm offering a 6 hour - or even a 3 hour control. People who don't want to be subject to that discipline won't play at those limits.

I suppose, to get Oz what he wants a rather different time control is needed - say a minimum of eight moves in each 24 hour period. That, I imagine, would take some programming and I have no idea if it would be difficult to write, and to implement, or easy.