The sound of the flag falling, the most subtle and most horrible of all chess sounds, is almost a sound of the past and can now only be heard in the lower amateur groups, because in the higher ones the new electronic clocks are used, where no flag falls. On the first rest day of the tournament a new sound could be heard. A blitz tournament on the stage where the top group is playing. Blitz tournaments have always been quite common at the Hoogovens tournament, but they always were casual affairs, played in the bar or in the big hall, and their sounds where much different from this one, in which the world top players played for quite a lot of money. A round starts.
Spectators hold their breath.
Then an arbiter hits the gong and suddenly for about half a minute there is a pandemonium, a rapid fire of clocks that are punched not quite synchronously. Then, at move fifteen or so, they become a little bit more quiet. All in all it is an hilarious sound. A few times I have seen spectators burst out in spontaneous laughter when the games started. Their merriness was caused by the contrast between the profoundness of thought these players were supposed to represent, and the fury of their apparent child's play.