The Most Common Time Controls And Game Results On Chess.com
Figuring out your preferred "time control," how long each player has to move, is the first step toward playing a chess game. Each time control leads to slightly different decision-making processes for the players and affects how the game will likely play out. Our data team did a deep dive into 24 hours of data, 19,794,105 games, to determine how you like to play and what it means for you.
Popular Time Controls
Can you guess the most popular time control for online chess?
The number-one time control on Chess.com is 10 minutes per side with no increment and it's in first place by a commanding margin. More than 41% of games played on the site are 10-0. It's a great time control for all levels because you have some time to think but can still play several games in a day.
Also coming in above 10% of all games played are the faster time controls of three minutes, one minute and five minutes. It's interesting that these "sudden death," no time added each move, time controls are more popular than any with increment. The most popular increment time controls are 3+2 (three minutes, with two seconds added each move), 1+1, 2+1 and 15+10.
How Games End
There are many ways that a chess game can finish.
Checkmate: Someone won with a checkmate on the board.
Draw: The game was drawn by agreement, stalemate, 50 moves with no captures or pawn moves, or three repetitions of the position.
Insufficient Material: This occurs either when neither side has material left to force checkmate or the only player with material to checkmate has run out of time. In either case the game is declared a draw.
Timeout: This means someone lost by running out of time.
Resign: One player clicked on "Resign" to give up and end the game.
Abandon: One of the players disconnected, either from bad internet connection, or they rage-quit. Please don't abandon games. Be a good sport and resign if you don't want to keep playing.
You'll notice that resignation and checkmate are both very common ways for a game to end. After that there's timeout and then rare endings, abandonment, and various draws.
How Time Controls Impact Results
- The first thing that jumps out is that timeout is very rare for longer time controls. It only occurs in a bit over 2% of games played at 15+10 and 30 minute time controls.
- On the other end of the spectrum, most games (59%) end in timeout in 1-0 bullet games. If you want time to be the main factor in your games, that's the way to go.
- Adding increment makes games similar to the next time control up. For example, 3+2 and five-minute games have very similar rates of timeouts.
- The long time controls unfortunately feature too many games ending in abandonment. Ten minutes, 15+10 and 30 minute games are the only ones ending in abandonment more than 10% of the time.
- The draw rate is below 5% in nearly every time control. It is below 1% in 1-minute games and even lower in 30-second games. The rate goes up as the time control increases.
What is your favorite time control? Let us know in the comments.
