"Wholesale Chess" clock

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AndreyUSA

I’ve bought the “Wholesale Chess” clock as cheapest available on a market for my nephew who is 6 years old and he started to play in tournaments with time controls.

I was very surprise how this model is good a specially for a price in $29 (at Amazon) including shipping.

I have three different chess clocks for myself (DGT 3000 for Regular games, Chronos GX for Quick/Rapid games and DGT NA for Blitz games). I completely satisfied with this set and I did a decision between Wholesale Chess and DGT NA for my nephew. And I bought Wholesale Chess model to try/test something new.

 

There is a list of advantages Wholesale Chess model:

1) Seconds are on display starting from beging in all possible time control modes.

Only the professional clocks like DGT 3000, Chronos II etc. have the same feature.

For example, DGT NA shows seconds if remaining time is less than 20 minutes, Cronos GX shows seconds if remaining time is less than 99 minutes etc.

2) There are big and contrast digits on display.

See a picture:

http://www.andreyhomepage.com/Photo/IMG_20180427_105549.jpg

3) It has a color contrast rocker arm that is easy to see from a distance so you can know whose turn it is.

For example, one of negatives of my favorite chess clock (DGT 3000) is low contrasted white rocker arm. It’s very hard to see from distance whose turn it is.

4) Price.

This model is very good designed and it has lot of features for few bucks it costs.

 

There is something I could say "negatives" of this model:

1) It has 38 pre-programmed timing modes but only 5 of them exactly match the USCF tournaments timing modes.  

In the USA I played with 20 different timing modes (5 for Blitz, 3 for Quick, 5 for Quick/Regular and 7 for Regular time controls). There are maybe 3-4 additional possible timing modes are used in the USA.

It’s a question for designers who developed the Wholesale Chess model: did they analyze the real timing modes are used in the tournaments. Why it was created 38 pre-programmed modes and many of them are not used in the real tournaments?

Maybe this model fits better timing modes are used in Europe.

2) There are only 2 custom timing modes and both of them are with some restrictions.

In “00” timing mode you could set any combination of time periods but with "increment" (bonus) time delay only. You could not set US delay in “00” custom timing mode.

The “F##” timing mode could be set in the modified setup one of existing (1-38) timing pattern.

Actually 38 pre-programmed patterns cover almost all possible timing modes in the real tournaments and it couldn’t be a big issue.

3) “Freeze at the end” option is not configurable.

It’s not strictly forced even in the FIDE tournaments but any way it’s better to have an ability to configure this option.

4) There is no way to set a different delay mode in the different time periods.

Some tournaments don’t have any delay in first and/or last period(s) while have it in remaining time periods.

 

Conclusion:

The Wholesale Chess clock is very good one a specially for their price.

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