Leland: I think that any tournament that has money involved needs to be at least 3 rounds.  The situation with the tournaments at NC State are really a pipe dream.  Round 1 would start at 10, and it would go until 10pm.  Like Leland said, most places don't want you using their facilities for that long.  However, I think that we could at least lengthen the time control a little if people would take a few things into consideration.  Number 1, first and foremost, ROUND ONE STARTS AT TEN O'CLOCK, PERIOD!  Part of what is forcing the time to be shortened is that players drag in at 10:15 or 10:30, and the director drags in at 10:30, or even 10:45 sometimes.  There's a good hour wasted.  Secondly, Leland tends to insist on this "No-Rush Lunch Break", and never really enforce people to start round 2.  You need a FIXED Round 2 start time.  If you want to eat, go ahead and eat, but your clock runs at that given time.  Thirdly, LIGHTING!!!!  It SUCKS at Bertucci's.  You have to rely on daylight there, and when it's winter, that's not good. Therefore, my suggestion would be as follows: First of all, don't go for fancy restaurants.  Stick with a simple fast food, or more preferably, a non-eating facility with fast food restaurants nearby (Asheboro Open uses a meeting room at a Day's Inn Hotel with places like McDonalds a stone's throw away).  Start at 10am Sharp!  Registration 9-9:45 (I went to Asheboro for the first time back on the 14th of January, and there weren't hour-long delays for round times there).  Leave maybe a small gap to eat (with a fast food nearby, 20 minutes with a director-approved 10 minute round 2 delay for players that specifically went to the last second in round 1, ought to be sufficient, and start rounds 2 and 3 promptly).  Doing that, you could have all games done by 8:40, and have a time control of Game in 100 minutes with 5 minutes taken off each clock for those using a digital clock with time delay, which isn't that terribly far off from game in 2 hours.  Otherwise, if that's too late, 7:30 with time control of Game in 90 minutes with 5 taken off for delay clocks.  Using these 2 scenarios, round times would be: Using G/100, Rd1 - 10:00, Rd2 - 1:40 (Those that go past 1:10 in game 1 start at 1:50 via director approval, director writes 1:50 beside the pairings that involve a player that got the permission), Rd3 - 5:20.  If you don't want to have the 20-minute break between rounds 2 and 3, schedule it for 5:00, and if you had a round 2 game that started at 1:50 instead of 1:40, start round 3 at 5:10. Finish time:  8:40 (8:20 if you start third round at 5 instead) Using G/90, Rd1 - 10:00, Rd2 - 1:30 (This includes a 30 minute lunch even for those with round 1 going full time, no extension needed), Rd 3 - 5 (4:30 if you don't want to inject the 30 minute break between rounds 2 and 3. Finish time:  7:30 (7:00 if you start third round at 4:30 instead) Another important factor, and director MUST enforce this for this idea to work.  If neither player has started the game in time...when the first person gets there to set up, director must impose the time penalty.  As the rulebook says, if neither player starts in time, time is taken off equally between the 2 clocks.  So if you went with the G/100 schedule, and in round 1, neither player is set up at 10:00, and later on, White sets up his board at 10:18, both players start with 9 minutes taken off their clocks (so if it's digital with time delay, using the G/100 schedule, both players would start with 86 minutes, 5 off for the delay, 9 off for the penalty), White starts his/her clock, makes his/her move, and then hits his clock and Black's runs until he/she shows up.  The 60 minute rule still applies, which means that since it's a 95-minute time control, and Black has used 9 minutes already (doesn't matter that it's 18 minutes late at the moment, both players used only 9 minutes since neither had shown up until then), in another 51 minutes (or when Black's clock reads 35 minutes), White can claim a forfeit win. As it is right now, we don't finish until about 6:30 or 6:45 with the current time control of G/75.  This goes to show that dilly-dallying is part of the problem, and no enforcing a fixed time to start clocks.  Players drag out their lunch period, and round 1 doesn't start until 10:45 many times.  The fact that we can get out a mere 15 minutes later, and extend the time control 15 minutes sure says something. Well, you now have my 2 cents...I'd like to know what others think about this. Patrick.