Time Controls - Everything You Wanted To Know

Time Controls - Everything You Wanted To Know

How do the time controls work for Chess.com Live Chess?

"Live" chess on chess.com is a form of online chess that is timed in seconds or minutes per move. where a given game is classified into one of three categories -  Bullet, Blitz, or Rapid - depending on a game's specified (i.e., nominal) maximum allowed duration, which for the purposes of this article will be referred to simply as "Total Available Time".  The total available time sets a constraint on the choice of the so-called "Time Control" used for the game.  All of this is further clarified below.

Specifying A Time Control

A Chess.com  "Live" game is always timed in accordance with its Time Control.  Conventionally, there are two numbers required to specify a time control:

• the first number is base time - how many minutes you have to make all of your moves at the start of the game, i.e., not counting the addition of any (optional) bonus time which may be added after making each move.
• the second number is bonus time - typically referred to as increment, which are additional seconds which may be added to your (digital) clock's remaining time after making a move.  The increment effectively allows for additional time to be added to your total available time during the course of the game.

Note:  Most digital chess clocks now feature the ability to enable a time delay or an increment. When delay is chosen, when it is your turn the clock will begin counting down after a specified time delay (in seconds) has elapsed. However, unlike increment, delay does not result in additional time being added to the total available time during the game.  That is, on each move any unused delay time is not added to the clock upon completion of the move.  

Together these two values (base + bonus time), called the "Time Control" are used to calculate a total available time for the time control.  This is exactly what it sounds like - that is, it is the total  or maximum time available to be used by each player in the game.  The total available time is also used to determine which of three classification categories - Bullet, Blitz or Rapid -  the time control will be assigned to.  How the total available time is calculated for any given time control is described further below*. 

As well, it should be clear that total available time is not the same as, and is to be distinguished from the actual time used by a player in the game; that is, if a player's actual time used reaches the total available time, that player will be automatically timed out and lose the game.  As each rating category (Bullet, Blitz or Rapid) has a unique, non-overlapping range of total available time, a player is assigned a separate rating for games played in each category.  This will also be further clarified below.

Let's take the process step-by-step, starting from the beginning:

As an example, a time control of 15 | 10 means a base time of 15 minutes for the game + 10 seconds of bonus time which is added to your clock after each move made (regardless of how long you have taken to make your move).

Another example:
18 | 5 would represent an 18 minute base time game, with 5 seconds bonus time per move.  If this game were to be played with no bonus time it would be specified as:  18 | 0 where in this case 18-minutes would be the total available time to the player, due to no bonus being added at the end of each move.

Chess.com Live Chess has three different game categories and associated player ratings based on their different total available time controls, as follows:

• Bullet - For games under 3 minutes total available time.
• Blitz - For games equal to or longer than 3 minutes AND less than 10 minutes total available time.
• Rapid - For games equal to or longer than 10 minutes AND less than 60 minutes total available time

* the definition and calculation of the total available time follows....

Base Time and Bonus Time Are Used to Compute Total Available Time

For the purposes of categorizing a game as Bullet, Blitz or Rapid, a nominal number of 40 moves per game has been arbitrarily established by FIDE for calculating the total available time for each player, for any given time control.  Thus...

Total Available Time (minutes) = base time (minutes) + 40*bonus time (minutes)  

As previously mentioned, this value is used to classify a game as belonging to one of three categories - Bullet, Blitz or Rapid.  Again, it should be clear that if a player's actual time used reaches the total available time, that player will be automatically timed out and lose the game.   It should also be equally clear that, for the purposes of game classification, the actual time used by either player is irrelevant.

So, for example, based on the FIDE-specified nominal 40 moves per game, a game time control of 2 | 12 would result in it being categorized as Rapid like so:

2 minutes base time + (12 seconds bonus time per move x 40 nominal moves) = 2 min + 480 seconds = 2 min + 8 min = 10 minutes of total available time

For reference, here are some examples of Preset Time Controls in Live chess:

How "Daily" Chess Works...

https://support.chess.com/article/669-how-does-daily-chess-work

https://support.chess.com/category/158-daily-chess

https://support.chess.com/en/articles/8609725-how-do-chess-com-daily-tournaments-work

More on time controls...and related matters...

Time Controls on Chess.com...

https://www.chess.com/terms/chess-time-controls

Note that the following Chess.com support article says nothing about "Standard" or "Classical" time controls...