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The Chess Clock – Timing the Game of Chess

The chess clock is a very important innovation for chess tournaments. The aim of the chess clock is to time each player's moves so that the game time is limited. There are a number of different types of chess clock timers available on the market today.

Originally, the analog chess clock was used. This is a mechanical chess game clock where players press mechanical buttons in order to physically stop their clock and start their opponent's clock. They also feature a flag that indicates that a player's time is up. These were first used in a chess tournament in 1883 in London. Since that time, the chess clock has advanced greatly and while the analog chess clock is still used, now the digital chess clock is the game clock of choice. The digital clock was invented in 1973 by Bobby Fischer and it has been improving constantly since that time.

The main attraction of Bobby Fischer's chess clock is its delay feature. He invented the digital chess clock with the ability to add small amounts of time for each chess move that is played. This prevents players from becoming desperately short of time while at the same time encouraging games to finish in a quicker amount of time, as fewer adjournments should take place. There are two types of digital delay clocks – the Bronstein delay and the Fischer delay.

An example of an analog chess clock is the BHB chess clock. It is considered to be the best analog chess clock on the market and is known to last many years. It is a simple clock to set and to use. It requires no batteries and features quality German engineering. It is also sometimes referred to as the BHB Turnier or simply the Turnier.

The Chromos chess clock is an example of a digital chess clock. It is considered to be an excellent example of digital chess clocks and is used by both amateur and professional chess players. It features seventy built in modes, as well as an additional twelve configurable modes that can be customized and saved.

The rules of the chess clock state that players must use the same hand to move his pieces as to press the button on the clock. A player's hand cannot hover over the button to stop the clock. If a player's time ends before they have completed their turns, they automatically lose their game.

The chess clock timer must be set at the beginning of each game to reflect the tournament rules. Slow games can be set that can last up to seven hours or bullet games can be set that allow each player less than three minutes to play. If a chess game is set as 40/2, then the chess clock will be set to allow two hours for the player to play his first 40 moves. If the game is not finished in the time, another setting may be set. Alternatively, a chess game may be set at game/30 in which case the chess clock will be set to indicate the end of the game after 30 minutes.




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