Hi TC,

I am interested in playing in the Faster Backgammon Tournament you are organizing. I have concerns with the proposed time parameters. A 3 hour bonus means it would take 8 moves to add one day of time. A 9 day limit would never be reached in every game of Backgammon that I have played, even a game that was extraordinarily long such as forty or fifty moves long. I believe that the times are reset after the conclusion of each game in a match. If the times were carried over then maybe a 9 day limit could be reached with a 3 hour bonus. I am thinking the tournament will have many time outs or not too many entries from people that are familiar with the Fischer clock and aren't able to spend many hours per day waiting for their opponents move. Sure, I can finish a 5 point match in two hours if my opponent and I are online at the same time, and move as a fast as possible. That doesn't happen too often for me. Maybe it is more common for other people.

If you have run tournaments with these time parameters without any problems or complaints, I am impressed and please feel free to ignore this post. If this is the first time using these parameters, I think you might want to reconsider the parameters.

I am a fairly fast moving player and I know that those players that like a game to keep moving can get upset with those that drag a game out, perceived or actually doing it. If you want games to be finished in four or five days, I think the parameters you have set will work. If you would like people to join your tournaments that might only make one or two moves in a day and might miss a day from playing and yet move fairly fast, I would change the parameters in such a way to encourage fast play and yet allow people in this situation, such as myself, to play without an undue fear of timing out.

All that needs to be done is to lower the limit and increase the bonus time. Maybe a limit of 2 days 3 hours or even lower such as 1 day 3hours with a bonus of 1 day 3 hours, or times similar to this would work fine. With the limit set this low, a player would have to move every 1 or 2 days, but could get a day back with the bonus and yet would not be able to run it up to 9 days as the limit would be 1day 3 hours or 2 days 3 hours. Those players that move eight or more times a day wouldn't be affected, but the moderately fast moving players could stay in the tournament without slowing it down for the very fast players. It might take some testing of the parameters to find the pace you like, but I think this would be better and would get more people to join the tournament even if it might slow it down slightly. It would still discourage the clock using and slow players from entering the tournament in the first place.

I will copy and paste this post to send this message to you.
I have posted it here in the case some other players have concerns, suggestions, or see a flaw in my thinking. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Walter