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I'm working on changes to the time control methods I previously described.
One cosmetic change is that $timelimit has been renamed $sparetime. One
minor change, which probably won't affect the tournament, is that getting
bonus time will be dependent on moving within a specified bonus period
instead of within the grace period. I say it probably won't affect the
tournament, because I plan to set the bonus period equal to the grace
period. I am just making them different for the sake of more flexible time
controls. The more significant change is the addition of extra time. This
is an amount of additional time that is unconditionally added to a
player's total time for each turn into the game. In summary, the time
controls will use four types of time keeping. These are spare time, grace
time, extra time, and bonus time. And here is how I'm thinking of
assigning them.

$sparetime = 7 days
$gracetime = 24 hours
$extratime = 24 hours
$bonustime = 24 hours for moving within 24 hours.

I'll first point out that this is more liberal than what I posted last
time. $gracetime remains the same, while bonus time is now more generous.
Although $sparetime has shrunk considerably, this is more than made up for
by 24 hours of extra time for each move. In any game of average length,
all the spare time I trimmed off will be given back as extra time, and
there will be more extra time besides that.

These time controls will allow an average pace of 2 to 3 days per move
while encouraging the faster pace of one move per day. They should also
accomodate players who need to take several days off from time to time.
I'll post more details when time controls are fully implemented and
documented.