This thread is for discussing any issues that may arise around ‘Fast Correspondence Tournaments’. I’ve created it to avoid cluttering (further cluttering) the primary thread which is used for announcing tournaments:
I’ll kick things off with this: In relation to a discussion about the rate of time-out disqualifications, I said,
Consider what is required to avoid timing-out in a worst case scenario with Fischer clock. If the clock increments by +12hrs/move then I can definitely avoid timing-out by making moves every morning and evening (~12hrs apart) and this is fine and doable even on most work days.
However if the clock increments by +8hrs/move then we cross a line where it becomes necessary for all participants to having overlapping periods of availability with all other participants. This is possible for those that spend 15hrs online every day but in any tournament that is open to all-comers there are bound to be some who don’t overlap on a daily basis. In every game where the participants don’t overlap, one of them will time-out. We’ve all encountered that opponent who seems to only make moves just after we’ve gone to sleep and so the +8hrs/move tournament becomes a giant global game of rock, scissors, paper based on time-zones.
Since I like to make most of my tournaments as open and inclusive as possible, +12hrs/move is preferable to +8hrs/move. I believe this is sufficient to differentiate it from the slower auto-sitewide tournaments. Thus attracting faster players most of whom will probably play faster than required anyway and even those who join unwittingly may discover that they can handle and enjoy the format.
I still think there’s a place for the +8hrs/move format but as @lysnew says:
Yes. I think there’s a good case for limiting access to the fastest tournaments to those who know what they’re getting into.