A frequent topic of conversation among correspondence chess enthusiasts is the issue of time control, included the dreaded DMD (Dead Man's Defense). In the following article Wim van Vugt (Netherlands) discusses the issues related to time control and accumulation of time, covered some details usually not thought of. Wim is known for his thorough treatment of issues, included mathematic analysis. His attention to tournament length and amount of time used on individual moves is unique in my experience. Wim has made a major contribution to how to view the different aspects of the issues discussed. The controlling International organization for correspondence chess is ICCF (International Correspondence Chess Federation), analgous to the over the board organization FIDE.

Wim references the popular correspondence chess forum TCCMB below (The Correspondence Chess Message Board) and the new ICCF forum. You can probably go to the forums right now and find some discussion of these topics.

Wim has previously written the "On the Square" articles The ideal time allotment, Numeric or alphanumeric - The final verdict and Freedom, inequality or brotherhood? and provided an English translation of one of his Dutch language columns "De Vliegende Hollander" (which appeared on the Nederlandse Bond van Correspondentieschakers (NBC) web site) titled How much difference does it make?.
-- J. Franklin Campbell

Recently a lively discussion has arisen again about the best time schedule that can be applied for ICCF email and server games. In my view there need not be any difference between these two forms of correspondence chess. A characteristic of CC is that the reflection time is counted in days, not in hours, minutes and seconds. The current 8pm rule (see 6c) could easily be changed into a server analogue, saying that if a move is sent back within 24 hours ZERO days are counted, and so on. Such a unification of the rules would be my preference. But even if this slight rule difference remains between the two types, one can still look at how the allotted time is spent and saved up.

A few months ago I was asked if I had some ideas what length of tournament would be achievable under the current ICCF rules of play, i.e. 50 days per 10 moves. During this time another item was discussed thoroughly on TCCMB: the so-called DMD (dead man's defence). DMD can be described as an extreme slowing down of the game in a completely lost position. All the accumulated time is used to postpone the inevitable. Under the current rules all unused reflection time is carried over to the next group of 10 moves. It is not unusual for 200 days to be accumulated by move 40.

There are two different viewpoints if one asks "How long does a tournament take?" Firstly there is the viewpoint from the position of the organiser. He wants a clear and easy to handle end date, say two years after the start. Ideally there then are no unfinished games remaining that need to be adjudicated. However, a too short end date will result in many unfinished games and a late end date makes players wait too long for decisions like promotion and the start of the next round.

The other viewpoint is from the position of the players. They need a reasonable time allotment and most of them prefer a steady and continuous flow of moves. Although it's everybody's right to use one's time as one likes, it's generally felt as bad behaviour and a show of bad sportsmanship if a game is suddenly delayed by many weeks per move as soon as a lost position has arisen.

But does the DMD influence the general length of a tournament? If not then organisers don't feel much drive to ask for a change of the rules. If it does then a counter measure is to be expected. Several proposals have been made to stop players from abusing a huge accumulation of time, employing it to delay the game needlessly. One idea recently proposed is doubling the time used after 15 days, a method formerly used in postal chess and currently still in force within the IECG organisation. Another idea often repeated on both TCCMB and the new ICCF forum is limiting carry-over until a maximum of 100 days is accumulated. Another idea well worth considering is connected with the use of the Fischer clock: 30 days at the start plus 3 days per move, with maximum of 60 days reflection time.

From the viewpoint of organisers another quite revolutionary idea has been proposed: give 300 days in total for the whole game to each player and let the players decide for themselves how this time is distributed over the course of the game. This looks simple and it solves the organiser's problem completely, but it creates another set of huge problems. We could see equal games continued on and on as one side attempts to win on time, a clear conflict of FIDE rules (art. 10.2). See the FIDE Laws of Chess section E101A and go to paragraph 10.2.

Players who want to stall their game(s) when prospects become worse have often played quickly in the beginning and are left with 200-250 days accumulated time that can be used to delay the end for almost a full year. Any saved-up time more than 100 days will be abused sooner or later so that the "300 days per game" idea will miss its goal.

It would be a serious mistake to experiment with this idea in a successful tournament like the Champions League. It could ruin that tournament in one season. In short, the "300 days per game" may be an easy solution for organisers but would create abuse and new problems for the players and should not be considered.

In order to answer the question of how long tournaments should take I decided to do a more fundamental research about the length of games, expressed in number of moves and time consumption per move. In order to get a reliable statistical distribution I have used some 48,000 ICCF games. When analysed with ChessBase it's easy to get an output showing the whole distribution. The result turned out to be a slightly asymmetric skew distribution with the following parameters: mean number of moves: 37; standard deviation: 15. And, most importantly, 95% of all CC games are shorter than 60 moves.

Figure 1

You would expect to base your reasoning on this figure since 60 moves takes 300 days per player and 600 days for both, at maximum. Leave must also be added for both players (30 days per year) so 720 days are needed. For a two-year tournament no time would remain for scheduling the next round, to perform adjudications for the approximate 5% of remaining games and for the players to prepare themselves for the next round. Therefore, an extra three or four months might be needed causing us to conclude that only a 2.5-year cycle can be reached.

But, before going into more detail about the characteristics of the time distribution curve, let's first look at the 95% criterion. This means that 5% of the games are not finished and must be adjudicated. In an 8 man tournament this means 1-2 games, but in a big 13 man qualification group the number of games to be adjudicated becomes 4. This is a too high figure, in my view. At most one game per qualification group (78 games) should be acceptable. This boils down to 1%. Or 99% of the games must be finished by the end date.

When looking at the more rigid requirement of 1% it turns out that the time distribution is remarkably less symmetrical than the game length distribution. What's important is not that we know in how many moves 99% of the games are ended but in how much time 99% of the games are finished. Here also must be taken into account that in longer games it sometimes occurs that more than 6 days per move are used as an average, due to the accumulated time. A general effect is that in the beginning about 3 days per move are used as an average while at move 60 this has become about 6 days or more.

Figure 2

Making use of data from about 1000 games, most of them coming via TCCMB from players who have sent me their data by private communication, I have been able to combine both variables (time and length) into a general time distribution curve for correspondence chess games.

Figure 3

From this time distribution well founded conclusions can be made.

Some characteristic values are:
Mean = 250 days; standard deviation = 170 days.

But more important are the following values:

It is easy to see that the time distribution is significantly more skewed. The centre of gravity is shifted to the left, caused by a combination of short games and little time consumption per move. The average time consumption per move is not constant. The more moves a game takes the more time is invested per move. In the beginning of the game about 3 days per move are used. In this stage a large accumulation of time is generally built up. As the game progresses, the time consumption increases supported by time accumulation.

If no more than 1% adjudications is desired, a tournament must take 800 days. This is 2.2 years. But if these 800 days are spread over three different calendar years, then 3x30x2=180 days must be added for player leaves, making a total of 980 days. This is 2.7 year. The remaining 4 months can be used for adjudications and planning the next round so that a 3-year cycle is the best one can achieve under the current rules.

It is suggested that the increasing time consumption keeps pace with the complexity of the position. This sometimes is true. But it also happens quite often that there is no relation at all between these variables. A complex position in another game or simply an overload of many games may cause a player to decide to stall a game or several games only to provide some breathing room to spend extra time on one particular game.

Yet it is not a healthy system when such enormous amounts of time can be accumulated as is now the case within ICCF. A buffer of some 100 days must be sufficient to cover the whole spread in time consumption as displayed in figure 2. Larger time consumptions have been reported several times on TCCMB but always in connection with completely lost positions. From my own experience I can confirm that it is a very frustrating phenomenon. Not everybody considers it an abuse of the playing rules when moves are sent once a month in a lost position. But, in my view, it's not just making use of one's right to manage one's time as one likes. It is bad behaviour and it should be made impossible by the rules.

Looking at the time distribution (figure 3) one can conclude that the tail at the right-hand side is caused by a combination of long games (many moves) and a high time consumption per move. The former cannot be prevented but the latter certainly can. There are a few simple measures that do not harm the normal player but prevents excesses on the high time consumption side. It isn't necessary to speed up all games if one likes to speed up tournament cycles. One only needs to speed up those games that cause the delay of the cycle. Therefore a change from 60/10 to 40/10 will not result in a change from a 3-year to a 2-year cycle, because it's the tail that causes the delay.

The first necessary measure is to limit carry-over time to a maximum accumulated reflection time of 100 days. A healthy build-up of a reserve is still possible and it does not harm normal play, but it makes an extreme DMD behaviour impossible.

A second necessary measure is to limit the total leave that can be taken. Under the current rules each player may claim 30 days leave per calendar year. This means that if a tournament starts in December one can take a free leave for the whole month without any consequences. The same applies to a lesser extent when the tournament starts in the second half of the year. An improvement to shorten the total duration of a tournament could be that the "30-days per annum" claim is maintained but combined with a tournament maximum of 60 days. This would lead to a tournament duration of 800+120=920 days (2.5 years). The remaining half year can be used for adjudication and planning the next round. Under these circumstances there also may be reserved some time between the announcement of the tournament to the players and the actual start date. A preparation time of two months seems desirable for the players, certainly when high level competition is at stake.

An additional measure could be to look for a more strict formulation of rule 3b. The previous wording (i.e. the TD must agree to a longer delay) was better than the current one, in my view. And a change from 40 days to 30 days in that article 3b would be welcome. It would make a simple ICCF standard: 30 days as a maximum for leave per annum and a maximum for days to be allowed to spend on one move.

Finally, a last idea to speed up games while a "normal" tempo can still be maintained is the following Fischer clock idea: 30 days at the start plus 3 days per move, with a maximum of 60 days reflection time. Then the previous three proposed measures can probably be omitted. In any case it's a good idea to experiment with it sometime.

© 2007 Wim van Vugt. All rights reserved.