Single Comment

Thomas makes a good point. Even though both players might make moves at
24-hour intervals, the time that each chooses to move may favor one over
the other. This would be unfair to one of the players. So the method I
proposed for enforcing time controls is not a good one. The main goal
behind time controls is to get games to finish in a timely manner, and a
secondary goal is to get all games to finish by a specific deadline. The
method I proposed meets both these goals, but it's unfair. The method
used in the last multivariant tournament meets the main goal but does not
meet the secondary goal. I suspect that there may be no fair method that
meets the secondary goal, but if anyone can think of one, I would be
pleased to hear it.

I like the idea behind the one used in the last tournament, but it strikes
me as being too liberal. Let me suggest this in its place. Each move that
takes more than 72 hours costs a time unit plus one more time unit for
each 24 hours beyond the initial 72, and a player would forfeit a game if
he ran out of time units. I chose 72 hours, because it accomodates the
person who plays from work and doesn't have access to the web over the
weekend. As for the initial number of time units, 14 might be a good
choice. One possible modification to this method would be to reward
players for picking up the pace. For example, a player might get an extra
point for making at least seven moves within a week's time. In that case,
it might be okay to initially allot fewer time units to each player.

I'm really not familiar with what other PBM systems do for timing
tournaments. If there are some good methods I should know about, please
report them here.