Rapid Transit

 Today I ran my first ever "Rapid Transit" event, which basically occurred by accident. 

For those unfamiliar, 'Rapid Transit' is a form of Blitz chess, where clocks are not used. Instead the referee calls out to the players to move every 10 seconds, which they must do so, or lose on time. It was popular before the widespread of chess clocks, although it was difficult to police, due to dispute about players being slow to move.

In my case, it was for a training event where players had to simply check mate with K+RvK. As setting up clocks was taking too long, I simply had the players choose an opponent, and then every 5 seconds I would shout 'MOVE'. The round went on until I decided enough games had finished, and enough games were never going to finish. A point was earned if you checkmated with the rook, or if your opponent failed to do so with the rook. The colours were flipped and the same opponent was played. At the end of the round, I simply had players on 2 points choose an opponent on 2, etc etc

We managed to get in 5 games (2.5 rounds) and as a training exercise it actually worked quite well. The only downside was that I felt like a guard in a North Korean penal colony, barking orders at unwilling prisoners. Indeed my shout of 'MOVE' was echoed from the next room by a bunch of giggling high school students.