What is your favourite Live Chess game mode?

Recently, I have taken an interest in 15|10 standard time limit on Live Chess. After playing a few games I learned that a 15|10 game between two players rated between, say, 1100-1200 is a much higher quality game than a 5|0 Blitz game between two players of the same rating.

I enjoy playing Standard Chess because the strategies used by both players are much more in depth than they would be in a Blitz game. Of course, this has one large drawback in that it can take a long time for a game to end. However, I feel that I would learn more from ten Standard games than I would from 30 or more Blitz games.

And now we come to 5|0 Blitz. This is much more fast-paced than Standard chess and requires quick thinking in order to succeed. That said, it is not unreasonably quick and players have time if they know how to use it well. Blitz can be very enjoyable once you learn to adapt to its speed.

The game below shows how the clock can either be used well or poorly in Blitz:

White won this game because he was careful with the use of his clock. If you use it carefully, five minutes can seem like a much longer amount of time than it otherwise would.

The fastest time limit available on live chess is 1|0 Lightning. Many titled players play lightning games on live chess often, and have many members at a time (such as myself) watching their long series' of games, marvelling at their incredible speed and skill. Unfortunately, for those of us who aren't quite as gifted, the majority of lightning games are decided by time.

If you learn to capitalise on blunders in a matter of seconds, you get much better at Lightning Chess:

After being down and out, black came back because he was able to react well after white blunders and win. This was largely thanks to the clock.

One of the most populare games lengths is Superblitz, 3 minutes each. This provides a balance between Blitz and Lightning. 10 minute games, or 'rapid' chess, is good as it isn't extremely slow but it provides players with plenty of thinking time.

What I'd like to know is, which game mode is your favourite, and why?

PBM :-D

What's PBM?

Play-by-Mail. I was joking. Your talking about all of these really fast ways of playing so I thought I'd wind you up with the slowest way of playing chess I could think of. PBM games can, and often do, run for years. :-)

Ah. Yes, I've heard of that. But as far as I'm aware, you can't play it over live chess ;)

Not unless you can see an option for "43200 | 86400" games. That would be one month on the clock plus one day per move. Hmm. Interesting.

Lol.

Perhaps that's in development right now, you never know.

I feel this was somewhat wasted effort. Writing this took me a while and it's come to nothing...

30 minutes, my brain works too slow for anything else.

I have a non-chess blog for which I put a lot of effort into the first few articles and had a similar experience.

I think the thing to do is to write many short articles which people find interesting and the occasional longer article to get the practice in. When you've got a reasonable size following is when you know you can justify the effort which goes into writing longer articles.

But in the end, just write about whatever you find interesting. I genuinely didn't think many people would be interested in New Athens and would have been happy with just 20 members who were into it but it seems people like the idea and can see it growing.

My blog, on the otherhand, is still a little stale but I'm not giving up on it because I think it does have potential. I just need to keep at it until I build up an online community around it. A medical school friend was writing a blog for two years before it finally "came to life" so I know it could be a long process.

You've written a good article. You just need to keep doing that so when people see "slide_checkmate" they know they can expect to read something worth their attention.

Fair enough. The faster games take a long time to get properly used to.

Thank you for that Shah.

1. 1|0 for bullet
2. 3|2 for blitz
3. 25|5 for standard (or 10|10 against computer)

25|5? Does that tend to be longer or shorter than 15|10?

If it is 60-moves-game, it is longer for 5 minutes, but for 120-moves-game, it's equal I think. So, it depends how long the game is but generally it is longer. :)

There is probably the difference in time trouble. It's easier to play with 10 sec increment as with 5 sec.

3|0 at the moment. I'd rather play 3|2, but I usually can't be bothered to use other time controls than the preset ones. Sad, I know. 

Not really. You can't join live tournaments for 3|2 or custom games like that, so maybe it's a good thing, you get used to the slightly faster game :)

Of course, OTB would be different.

15|10 is the,best !!!

I like 90/30

now i like 30|0 !!