Increment and excrement

The science-fiction writer Douglas Adams ridiculed our primitive species for considering digital watches to be ‘a pretty neat idea’. Digital chess clocks really are pretty neat, because they enable modern competitive games to be played with an ‘increment’. For each move played, you earn extra seconds to make the next one, a simple innovation which allows all games to reach a natural conclusion. (By contrast, analogue clocks allot a tranche of thinking time for a series of moves). A lack of increment on the clock occasionally makes for excrement on the board; bashing out 20 moves in five remaining seconds may be physically impossible, but that never stops people trying. Pieces topple like bowling pins and the clock gets thumped like a broken television.

Still, online speed demons get a rush from playing without increment. Two-dimensional pieces don’t fall over, it is true, but getting ‘flagged’ as the last seconds tick away can still induce molten rage in the best of us, especially when the position is completely drawn.