Delay instead of Increment

@chessenthusiasts1990

Well if you put it that way, then I definitely advocate that they make that option available for you so that you can practice with it and get used to it for your local OTB tournaments.

With that said, the logistics are nasty in terms of splitting the memberbase.

If they made both options available and 1/2 went with it and 1/2 stayed with increments...then we'd all have x2 wait times in queue.

It's probably not the biggest deal at the lower ratings brackets, but after 2000 it can already take a minute depending on the time of day and on the luck.

But truth be told, there are nearly as many standard games being played weekly, as there were rapid games a year ago.
The growth is phenomenal and there are no signs of slowing down.

So I think I'd actually be OK with it as long as everyone is doing what they can to make sure that people are immediately addicted to the community and want to play and stay here for life.

With that said, if the split was closer to 25:75 to one side or the other...then 10s of 1000s of people would be put out with x4 wait times.

If I was an efficiency expert and in charge of Lichess maintenance, I'd need to have some rock solid numbers, objective numbers, in order to write policy on the matter.

I would not split the quick start pool. The delay player should seek in the lobby like somone who wants to play 25+0, 30+0 or any other classical time control or maybe find other players with forum posts, teams or by organizing tournaments...

@Onyx_Chess well said.
@Karpfenkopf that would be nice.

@Onyx_Chess funny that you use Garry Kasparov in your argument against the delay whereas Garry himself has always been one of the biggest proponents for Bronstein's delay. At least when he actually played chess competitively. Moreso he actually opposed the whole idea of increment exactly because of what you described - he didn't like the idea of the time growing at all.

Delay as seek option is fine but as quick search argument. As @Onyx_Chess mentioned it would split the pool and make pairing even worse they are now. In particular classic pool is small

I woudl not personally play 15/15 with delay as it woudl shorten the game quite a bit.

Also the delay would not be popular as people tend favor Guillotin end any way.

I've seen a couple of 15+15 games with 20 minutes or more left when the game was finished. Maybe playing with delay would let some players slow down a little bit, because they wouldn't gain something for playing faster than the delay. But in the first place they're much too fast anyway..

When playing the club championship we use 90 minutes + 30 sec increment, no second stage after 40 or so moves. When one player is down to zero, he could at least gain some time by playing a simple recapture fast and then use the gained time in a more complex position. With delay one has too much time for the simple recapture and not enough for the complex position. So that will produce more errors in such situations, but will also keep the game shorter. That could be important if there is more than one round each day or when the club has to close on a specific hour.

#6 Who is GK?

#17 Garry Kasparov

With delay, once your clock goes near 0, you are in perpetual time trouble, you can't ever rebuild some margin. Thus, even if you got a superior position earlier on, you can't cash on it by playing somewhat faster and getting more time for the upcoming critical moves. Rather, you are always forced to react to what is coming without thinking it through. In blitz with 2-3 seconds increment, this can make a big difference. Thus, delay incentivizes more keeping a bigger time reserve. Bullet 2+1 is even worse in this regard.

At equal total time spent on a game, I'd bet delay lowers quality because fixed time per move is an inferior time management and delay strongly incentivizes fixed time per move towards the endgame.

I'd be fine with the option for custom games, though, but as a wholesale replacement for increment, this is a bad idea.

@Alayan
I never assumed that this would be a complete replacement for the increment, so your post is interesting. I do believe that the OP wanted the delay to be an option in addition to the increment.

Many of the arguments I hear I've heard before when they suggested shortening the time control: Not enough time to think. The quality of chess hasn't deteriorated, but has actually improved.

BTW, I am still against both the increment and the delay. This allows for an inconstant finishing of rounds. It's difficult for me to waste time waiting for some person--normally in a losing positin--dragging out the game and causing the next round to start late. Of course, I can give the same advice I'm given when I complain...If you don't like it, stop playing.