Do you prefer time with increment or without?

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maverick82d

I like a small time increment, because it allows you to spend a little extra time in the middle game, without worrying about time pressure so much @ the end game.

sharkey101

I much prefer increments, it gives more time to think and a much better endgame.

Pulpofeira

Yes, Knight, I also prefer increments, but I would like more the Bronstein clock

AIM-AceMove

Online blitz is pretty much pointless with increament.

You play blitz - so you want fast game.

You play blitz because you want time pressure, action and fast reactions in double edge sharp positions.

You can premove so save seconds on the clock. That's one of the main reasion everybody plays 3 min or 5 min only. Premoving is a skill, not just fast mouse.

+2 sec inc. can be very dangerous. It does not give you enough time to think, so you have to move pretty much imidiately if you have less than 5 sec on clock. So basically almost at  the same speed if you were premoving without inc. You constantly have to switch to bullet mode, then slow down, then again bullet mode. A blunder is way more likeable to happen that way. And most players use almost their entire time on opening and middle game with just 10 seconds for endgame. It's dubious. I can flag players even if they have +2inc on their clock every move.

I use inc only when i am playing on phone or i want to play pretty much "long" game like 10+5/15+10/25+10

.

I have no problems reaching endgame on 3 or 5 min blitz game. Infact i have blitz games with 60-70 moves and is not just king moves etc or some weak pointles moves. I don't panic and i can make strong moves with just few seconds on my clock.

America_de_Cali

"time" is code for sex, and "increment" is code for condoms. 

wb_munchausen

For blitz fun chess, I still like no increment.  But for any tournament game, a 10 second increment (either delay or Bronstein) is great.  Along those lines, if there were a delay clock that had an analog clock face instead of digital, I would buy one.  I'm kind of old fashioned, and prefer the old clock face.  It is surely technologically possible, so why doesn't someone make one?

ChessOfficial2016

No increment is good because the goal of bullet chess is to flag people on time by moving pieces back and forth even in lost positions. 

tygxc

All official FIDE competitions are with increment now.
No increment is a remnant from the provious century with analog clocks.

StumpyBlitzer

Without as my chess is bad 

THE_SYRIAN_FALCON

Of course without increment ..I got used to it ..if I try to play by increment start by rushing the moves and lose the game

bigD521

Straight time, deal with, and handle your time as you choose. To my understanding an increment for OTB was to allow time to record the game and have some semblance of a hour game being actually a hour playing time. Increment online is pointless in my opinion. For all the talk about how an increment solves many troubles, all I see is all of the troubles stem from playing to short of a time to begin with. Just increase the playing time. . Playing straight time means when I click on a hour that means that if the game does not end sooner then the clock ends the game. It also means that the maximum time will be two hours, not two hours and.......? This is very nice because one can start a game knowing that they can complete it when one knows they have something ese to do at a later time.

 

AprilGrimoire
America_de_Cali wrote:

I hate the increment since I'm not good at calculating how much time is left. Always in 15/10 games I play much faster than my opponent but he ends up winning. In the end I might have 13 minutes left and he maybe 1-2 minutes, and then the tables are turned and he wins.

Why not play blitz if you don't make good use of rapid chess

DrSpudnik

The increment stuff came along after "sudden death" time controls were invented and started to become used in tournaments. Before this, the time controls for tournament games was something like 40 moves in 2 hours with another 20 moves per hour in the secondary time control and so on... If a game needed to continue beyond the tournament session (like the hotel was shutting down the room) the next move would be sealed and the game resumed at some later date.

That being said, the whole motion to consider speed chess and sudden death time controls as rateable games has solved one problem while starting another. The big problem now is that no one wants to actually live and die by the "sudden death" nature of speed chess. When someone starts griping at my chess club about how they would not have lost if they had an increment or delay on their 10 minute game, I ask why didn't they play a 15 minute game then. But the same problem is there too. They take longer to move based on the amount of time and expect to be saved by an increment/delay. Well, why not play a 30 minute game? 45 minutes? An hour? It looks like these groaning losers will never be happy with any time control. The suggestion that they think faster and come up with better moves doesn't go over well at all.

PromisingPawns

I like having increment since it provides me and my opponent some cushion to ACTUALLY find a good way to continue the position and not just play a random move for the sake of it. ( Note: I am strictly talking about OTB chess, in online chess flagging is my best bud)