Tournament API -> Settings: time_control

When you hit the following API end point: https://api.chess.com/pub/tournament/{url-ID}  you get a time_control subkey within the settings key. 

For example:

• using url-id = -titled-tuesday-blitz-1948540
• "time_control": "1800+10"

I checked the games in that tournament and they seem to be 3:1.. I was expecting a time_control like 180+1 or 180000+1000 or something.  What is the unit of measurement being used?

Sub-Way yellow train me

Check-Matte? A bouy A toy B bob B dubble"B"braw Vow C Cchild as in Avenue D Ddeecup2BIG

Ee Easy essay F school?Hhome ChoolFool eye&Jj IGA K kake bad move back too school?

Grade 10 Ten for Ment Apple dot eye Lenz okay dokey 100 Hunt Lee Strip Joint AnnAnn!!annah

Put LogOn Fire back Exhaust MenaFold Pazz OFF

Times are usually in seconds so 1800+10 should equate to 30 minutes with an increment of 10 seconds - that seems unlikely if this refers to Blitz chess.

I can't make sense of that either.

According to the documentation (https://www.chess.com/news/view/published-data-api#pubapi-endpoint-tournaments) the "time control" field is in the PGN standard notation (http://www.saremba.de/chessgml/standards/pgn/pgn-complete.htm#c9.6). The time control tag in the JSON response appears to be a kind of "incremental" control period where, "The first integer gives the minimum number of seconds allocated for the period and the second integer gives the number of extra seconds added after each move is made. So, an incremental time control of 90 minutes plus one extra minute per move would be given by "4500+60" in the TimeControl tag value."

It appears @stephen_33 is correct.

The trouble is, my being correct still doesn't make much sense of it because the individual games show 3:1 as the time control.

I think the API data is screwed in that endpoint 

@stephen_33 for individual games I see the same for the time control, but I'm wondering if this endpoint (https://api.chess.com/pub/tournament/{url-ID}) shows the time for the entire tournament. I'm not sure, but does "Titled Tuesday" typically last only 30 minutes? Still doesn't seem to make sense to include an increment in this value.

I can't make much sense of it & not being someone who gets involved in tournaments on the site, I can't offer a sensible opinion of what's going on.

At this point it would be useful to have some input from one of the club admins - I'll see if bcurtis can offer any ideas ...

* I've PM'd him  😊

Thanks @stephen_33

Links help speed up our responses. Are these what you are seeing?

1. https://api.chess.com/pub/tournament/-titled-tuesday-blitz-1948540 shows "1800+10"
2. https://www.chess.com/tournament/live/-titled-tuesday-blitz-1948540 shows the games list for that tournament
3. https://www.chess.com/live/game/6217265536 is one of the games, showing "3|1"

The "off by a factor of 10" problem is a common bug in our system, because Live Chess records times in deciseconds and the Web (Daily Chess) records it in seconds. This sounds like what you are describing. Should be an easy fix if that's the issue. I'll ticket this. Thanks for the report.

We are working on standardization of these, but naturally our main concern these days is to grow to support the increased number of players.

Many thanks & I think this explains it: "Live Chess records times in deciseconds"

So 1800 + 10 in deciseconds should mean 180 seconds plus 1 second. That would equate to 3 mins plus an increment of 1 second per move. At least that's consistent with the 3:1 time control shown in the actual games but I assumed it meant 3 secs with an increment of 1 sec.

When has Blitz ever had a time control per move of 3 minutes? Or am I thinking of Bullet that has maximum move times in seconds? I've always avoided games with time control under 24 hours.

Just an update: this fix is in the queue as ticket CV-176963. It is a lower-priority item, and a difficult fix because we don't know if there are scripts out there depending on this oversight. We do hope to fix it within a couple weeks, and will announce in the club Notes.

I don't have the full definition of the time classes based on time control. Generally, we multiply the increment by 40, add it to the base time, and then treat that as the "expected time per player" for the game. Blitz is less than or equal to 10 minutes, and Rapid is more than 10 minutes — but with one exception for "10|0" games: https://www.chess.com/news/view/10-minute-chess-now-rapid-rated-bullet-ratings-increased