Quote:
Originally Posted by Do it Right
In classical chess the clock is meant to ensure games finish in a set amount of time, not to be the means by which the game is decided. A 30 second increment ensures games finish in a reasonable amount of time while simultaneously never directly deciding the result of the game. Chess is hurt in that there is no real 'small punishment' that could be inflicted for violating the time. Imagine if in basketball your team immediately lost the game if you went beyond the shot clock! Yeah you could argue 'well they shouldn't go over the shot clock time then' but it would certainly not be a positive change to the game. For starters there'd be less action for the fans, no different than in chess. Watching somebody sweat out 20 moves on a 30s per move timer is much more interesting than seeing a game just immediately end without result on the board, similar to draws in unclear positions.
I like your suggestion and wouldn't mind a 30 second per move situation. But I should comment on the analogy as I don't think it matches.
In basketball there is a mutual clock and the victory goes to whoever has the edge in points at the end. Thus, originally, teams could run the clock down purposefully in order to play a shorter, higher variance few possessions at the end which lowered the effects of long-term domination by a superior player. Thus the shot clock was introduced in order to penalize individual teams for taking excess time, on a "per move" basis.
In chess they already have individual clocks and only the staller gets forced to eventually rush, so the "run down the game and go crazy at the end hoping to gain a tiny edge in the chaos" strategy can't be used. And since there is one overall clock in time, they can give a game loss to the person who runs out without it warping things too much. In basketball, if they gave each team a total 24 minutes, they could also give a loss to the team that runs out without it totally ruining the game. But since basketball is a collection of individual possessions, they can assess tiny losses of points for running out of clock on each individual "move." In chess this isn't an option and thus there must be an overall loss given in total.
Anyway, I do think your original suggestion is fine, but I just wanted to clarify the differences between the clock systems in the two sports.