help bot wrote:

David Richerby wrote:

wrote:

[...] given the determination of organizers to
use sudden-death, it was the best anyone could
come up with.

Well, you want there to be a fixed time when the next
round starts, right? The only options are sudden-death
time controls or adjournments.

Wrong. There is another possibility which
still yields a "fixed time" for the start of the
next round; it's called adjudication.

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Back in the old days, there were serious
problems with adjudication, including bias
on the part of the adjudicator which might
have him granting, say, Jose Capablanca a
draw where he has given Joe Patzer a loss.
But today, we have the answer to personal
bias: computers. It also just so happens
that the /strongest/ chess players in the
world are reasonably inexpensive programs,
and many tournament directors already
have a notebook computer handy, for their
pairings program. In addition, there are
sites on the internet which give easy
access to some basic endgame table-
bases (although of limited use for now).

You would have to factor in ratings.
If a game between two 1500-rated players
is adjudicated as a win using a line that
only a 2500-rated chess computer can find,
that wouldn't be fair. But if you factor
in ratings, what of the player who is
playing his first rated game?

I wonder if some variation on the backgammon
doubling method of forcing a losing player
to resign might work...