What is the point of time increments? I am having difficulty understanding the purpose of increments in time control. What is the point? If it just adds more time to the game, why not simply make the game that much longer? I am aware that I am missing something fundamental here. Apologies for this complete newbie question!
It depends on what you mean by &quot;increments&quot;. If you are referring to something like &quot;playing a game in 10m + 4s&quot;, then the main reason is preventing that a player with a huge material advantage (v.g. king plus rook versus king) doesn't lose on time. With the increment of 4 seconds after each move is made, the player with the advantage will have no problem winning the position. Without increment, if the advantageous player has something like 1 or 2 seconds on their clock (and provided the other player has plenty of time, or just much more than a couple seconds) they'd probably lose on time -which usually is called &quot;getting (dirty) flagged&quot; in games without increment.
This is a somehow famous example of an online game in which Gata Kamsky was (dirty) flagged in a 3 minutes game without increment, with just one rook and king per side.