Hello!
There is a small wish on the duration of the classical tournaments, can not it be increased to 2 hours? Because when you control 10 + 0 for 1 hour you don't have time to play enough games.
Thank you for your great work.
The Arena pairing works well when players are both playing fast time controls. Both players play fast.
In slow time controls things are different.
If one player plays their turn fast and the other takes their time, the matches will probably only produce about 12 complete games in one hour. Even if the duration of the tournament is extended, it does not fix the problem of one player playing fast while the other is taking their time to think things out.
The arena format is made to get as many games won to increase your standings. If a player takes their time to play well in ever game, the results will be less than the player that resigned to games that took to long to play. Most likely the player that resigns slow playing opponents will have a better standings than the ones that take their time to win only a few games.
I think the arena pairing is not good for long time controls.
Arena: Quantity vs Quality.
Round robin: Quality vs Quantity.
As the time is increased to force the players to play slower and more accurately a round robin would be better than simply increasing the duration of the tournament.
The length of a tournament should be similar to watching TV. Some times we do not have time to watch a movie, but have time to see a sitcom.
To me sitcoms are like playing rapid games with time controls of 20 - 25 minute long.
A drama would be twice as long: 40 - 45 minute long.
With longer tournaments than an hour, it would be like watching a movie.
Only the ones that played fast and participated during the whole tournament would have a chance at winning the trophy.
The true solution is to change the pairing system according to the length of the tournament.
Like Sitcoms timing lengths use the arena pairing, Drama lengths use the round robin system, movie lengths use the swiss pairing system.
I'd like there to be longer time controls. If you increased a classical tournament to two hours, you could increase the time control to say 15+0 and still play as many or more games.
All the chess books say you learn more by taking more time.
