TimeControl tag in .PGN files on chess.com

Hello. I have a query regarding the TimeControl tag in .PGN files for Live Chess games on chess.com.

Currently when a game is played with an increment, the TimeControl tag is displayed, for example as [TimeControl "45|45"] for a game played at 45 minutes + 45 seconds per move.

As I understand it, this is a non-standard format as far as the official .PGN standard goes. It suggests that the tag should look like [TimeControl "2700+45"]. Both of the time control, according to the standard, should be in seconds, not minutes and seconds, and the vertical bar is not used to separate the game/increment numbers.

Can this be changed to comply with the .PGN standard please?

I am in a group (Dan Heisman Learning Centre) that plays a LOT of 45|45 and 90|30 games on Live Chess and we have a growing database of these games for the use of our members and anyone else who cares to download it. Having to change the TimeControl tag before I import a chess.com game in Chessbase is making a lot extra work.

Thanks in advance.

Oh, and I will ask again - when are we going to get time stamping in the .PGN for games played on chess.com?

Cheers.

@Farnel, excellent point on the PGN standards!

And thank you for reiterating the value of the timestamps while you were at it :-)

This is rather disappointing. This post has been here for a week now, it has had 168 views but no response from any chess.com staff.

I hope this is not an indication of the standard or timeliness of help and support that chess .com provides as a matter of course. A week with no acknowledgement or response is very poor.

People have asked about time-stamps for years but there does not seem to be an inclination to provide them.

Who knows? Maybe they would have to make a big change to their database structure that isn't feasible. I have never seen staff really address the issue.

SirIvanhoe and Danny Rensch have had discussions related to timestamps. Staff understands the need and importance, but there seems to be some kind of big implemenation deal associated with it.

My main point here is not the timestamps, it is about the non-standard TimeControl tag in .pgn generated for games on chess.com. That is what I am most wanting to hear about from chess.com staff.

@Farnel, Yes, that is an even bigger issue than timestamps. Non-standard PGN is a big negative, as opposed to lacking a positive (timestamp).

Farnel, if I have an issue that's important to me, I don't waste time posting it here but rather report it directly to H&S. Here's a link..

http://support.chess.com/Tickets/Submit

Good point. That puts it into their tracker where they need to "take care of it" one way or another so your help ticket doesn't linger.

Seems like this is a dead subject since the most recent post was 2 years ago.  Has there been any movement or decision (minus non decisions) on this.  

  I tend to lose many games on time and in reviewing my games, I'd like to see where that time was spent.  Then, maybe I can take a closer look as to what I was thinking, seeing, or considering at that point.  And at what point did my time get out of balance with my opponent's?  

How can I improve on something I can't measure?

If you want to fix all the errors in a file at once, you can use this Python script:

import re
filename = "games.pgn"
with open(filename, 'r+') as file:
~content = re.sub(
~~r'\[TimeControl "(\d+)\|(\d+)"\]', 
~~lambda match: f'[TimeControl "{int(match[1])*60}+{match[2]}"]', 
~~file.read()
~)
~file.seek(0)
~file.write(content)
~file.truncate()

# Replace each tilde (~) with a tab, and replace "games.pgn" with your actual filename. Keep the quotes though.