How Long Are Official Rated Live Chess Matches?

When speaking of professionals, how long are officially rated chess matches?  Thanks.

Last year's World Championship match between Anand and Carlsen had a primary time control of 40 moves in two hours.  The secondary time control was 20 moves in 1 hour, followed by 15 minutes for the rest of the game, with a 30 second increment after move #61.

At most, 12 games might have been played.


At the recent U.S. Chess Championships help in St. Louis, the primary time control was 40 moves in 90 minutes followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game.  For this tournament there was a 30 second increment beginning with move #1.

The men's tournament was 11 rounds and the women's tournament was 9 rounds.

Hi, MrEdCollins

I'm literally illiterate on chess terms and was wondering what you meant by primary vs. secondary time controls?  What do they mean?  

Also, to clarify, are you saying that people HAD to make 40 moves within two hours in the first example?  I'm not sure what you meant by saying 40 moves within 2 hours.  

And, lastly, what are increments?  TVM!!! 

The primary time control is simply the first time control.  Only if this time control is met does the secondary time control kick in.

Yes, in the first example above the players each HAD to make (at least) 40 moves in two hours.  After two hours if they didn't make 40 moves, the player would lose on time.

Once each player makes the first time control, they then have to make the second time control.  Continuing with the first example, after their 40th move, no matter how much time is on their clock, they are given an additonal hour.  And now they have to make a total of 60 moves before their time reaches zero.

An few examples may help clarify:

A player makes 39 moves and their flag falls.  (They used a total of 120 minutes but they didn't make 40 moves.)  They lose on time.

A player makes 40 moves in 115 minutes.  (They have 5 minutes left.)  So the first time control has been met and we add one hour to their time.  This player now has a total of 65 minutes to make a total of 60 moves.  (20 more moves.)

A player makes 40 moves in just 60 minutes.  (They have 60 minutes left.)  So the first time control was met and we add one hour to their time.  They now have a total of 120 minutes to make a total of 60 moves.  (20 more moves.)

petrip is correct about increments.  It's additional time that is given to each player.  Generally, after each move each player makes, that amount of time (30 seconds, in the second example above, at the U.S. Chess Championships) is added to their clock.

Please clarify.  I don't know what you're talking about.  Increments generally lead to good chess since it avoids unnecessary time scrambles.  I don't know what you mean by bad chess and repeating moves. 

English is not my mother language, but in the title of this forum I read "How long are matches ?"

A match is when two people play chess, and when the question is "What are the longest matches ?" we know Karpov-Kasparov...

To start a list, what about De la Bourdonnais - Macdonnell in 1834, 88 games ; and Paris, 1850, Kieseritzky - Schulten 151 games...

1 hour and 45 min each without a time increase, so the max of a game is 3 hour and 30 min.

I respctfully disagree with eveything you said.

"It will no longer be possible to win on time."

EXACTLY!  That's one of the advantages of increments.  This way the game is decided by the position.  The quality of chess has actually increased.

"You can't play really good chess at 30 seconds a move."

This makes no sense.  You can't play really good chess with no time at all remaining, either.  And that's what you would have with NO increment at all.

"It alters the character of chess..."

I play in over-the-board tournaments all the time and most all of them now use an increment.  Trust me, the "character" of chess hasn't been altered.

"When someone gets short of time they will repeat moves and go round the houses in order to build up time on their clock."

This doesn't happen nearly as often as you might suspect.  Furthermore, if a player is truly making "nothing moves" then their opponent would be able to capiatlize on that.  A build-up of several moves worth of incements isn't very much at al.


Another advantage to increments is they make it much easier for organizes.  TDs are are less likely to have to make a judgement call when one player claims a draw based upon, for example, insufficient losing chances.

And yet another advantage is that long games are often interesting and exciting and the players need to be able to spend enough time to play them properly.

There are far more advantages to increments than any disadvantages.  I do agree that one should manager their time accordingly, but one needs to do this with or without an increment.

I think you misunderstand the concept of an increment.  This means that you get an extra 30 seconds per move on top of the 2 hours you are given.  So you can take more than 30 seconds per move.  For examnple, a game with time controls of G/45 d/10 means that you have 45 minutes to play the entire game, but for every move, 10 seconds is added to your clock.  So if you make 60 moves, then your clock would get an additional 10 minutes, and you could take 55 minutes to make all your moves.  You can spend any amount of time on your move as long as you still have time on your clock.  You are not limited to the increment.

Defenseruiz,

A primary time control is the first time control that applies to the first N moves in the game, typically 40.  The secondary time control applies to the next N moves after the first time control is reached.  Once you hit 40 moves, then the additional time is added to your clock and you have a total amount of time equal to the primary and secondary time controls added together.  Of course, if you run out of time before you hit 40 moves, you lose and don't get the additional time from the secondary time control.

You should also be aware that each player gets that much time (i.e., the time is not split between the two players).  Some of my friends who are not chess players think that when i say that the time control is G/30 (read game 30), that means the entire game lasts 30 minutes.  In fact, it could last up to an hour because each player gets 30 minutes.  In the example given by MrEdCollins, each player would potentially get 3 hours and 15 minutes (plus increments after move 60), which means that the game could theoretically last more than 6.5 hours (because of the increment).  In practice, you rarely get to the maximum time allotted, and games probably finish in 4 to 5 hours, sometimes less.

It's not clear to me what you mean by "professionals."  In the Open section of most regional or national USCF tournaments, the time control is typically 2 hours for the first 40 moves and 1 hour for the rest of the game.  In most cases, there is also an increment but not always.  Theoretically, a game could last 6 hours.

Based on my observations, the higher rated players tend to play longer matches.  For example, most of the games that I have played during USCF tournaments have lasted about 2 hours or less (in a few cases, under an hour).  After my match, I sometimes go take a look at the Open section games to observe a GM match.  Almost always, there are a few matches that last past 5 hours, and very few of the games wrap up in less than 2 hours.  My longest game ran over 4 hours, and I was really tired (and hungry).  The game started at 6 pm, and I had not eaten dinner.  I didn't finish until almost 10:30 pm, and I was starved.

Very helpful!!

Two quick follow-up questions:  

1.)  What is the purpose of increments?  Seems odd, given there is already a time control in place.  

2.)  What if BOTH players fail to make the minimum moves in a time control?  Would the player with less time left lose...or is it a draw?

Thanks again! 

Silly people not explaining it when he said he was chess illiterate lol.

defenserulz, first of all, a chess clock looks like this:

As in the picture, there is a different timer for each player.  Note it's not possible for both timers to count down at the same time.  When the button (or in the pictured clock a leaver) is pressed, it simultaneously stops your timer and starts your opponent's timer.

The time control 2 hours for 40 moves means each player gets 2 hours.  Note also that your moves don't count as my moves... i.e. white has 2 hours to make 40 moves with the white pieces.

If a time control isn't met, that means one of the player's clocks has reached 0:00, and that player loses.  AFAIK most modern clocks will freeze the timer so that the player who has run out of time can't start the opponent's clock.  So the answer to your #2 is that it's impossible for both players to not make time control.

Note also that the answer to your original question with a time control of 40 moves for 2 hours + 20 moves for 1 hour + 15 minutes for the rest would last 6 and a half hours if both players used all of their time (each player having 3 hours and 15 minutes).  This isn't counting increment.

Increment effectively doesn't matter except in cases where at least one player is starting to get low on time.  Its primary purpose is to affect cases where a player has a favorable or winning position, but not much time left, which answers your #1.  As long as they play quickly enough, they can never run out of time.  Compare to no increment, you may be winning, but if you physically can't make the moves fast enough to checkmate, then you will lose in spite of having outplayed your opponent on the board.

Really ?

If I remember correctly, there is a good old tournament trick that if you lost on time but the opponent did not notice, and eventually he times out as well, you can claim a draw.

But well, maybe that was at the era where most clocks were mechanical and dinosaurs reigned on the Earth.

I tried to use my mechanical clock at a tourney once.  The TD said it was a very nice clock, politely told me I couldn't use it, and provided me with a digital one for the game

I've only messed with 3 or 4 models.  2 of them had the option of freezing the timer.  I don't know what's standard on most clocks.  At least for professional games I can't imagine both players hitting zero.

I also don't know the rules for what happens when both clocks hit zero.  A draw sounds reasonable.

I assume you are from the US - in most european tournaments the TD provides the clock, and using your own would be highly suspicious (especially nowadays that they are all numeric).

I didn't know about the timer thing. I have not had a double-timeout game for a long time (dinosaurs, etc.) so I cannot tell whether it is standard practice, or compulsory, or else, to freeze the timer, but I know some clocks keep ticking down on the other "half-clock" while the opponent's 0:00 is blinking. Maybe it keeps blinking only on one side once both reach 0:00 ?

Yeah, what gave it away?  TD vs arbiter I guess?

In the old days, you had to look.  Today, like you said, the clock makes it nearly impossible not to notice... beeps and flashes and such.  I don't even recall people claiming wins.  When it does its little dance both players look up and shake hands.

USCF (and I believe FIDE) rules require the opponent to point out that the opponent has run out of time.  Otherwise, the game continues, and if the player who ran out of time checkmates her opponent before the opponent points out that the clock is at zero, then the player who checkmated wins even though she is out of time.  If both clocks hit zero, then it is a draw when either player points out the time situation.  Notably, if a player's time runs out but the other player has insufficient mating material, then this is a draw and not a loss for the player who ran out of time.

I want to make a small correction to my earlier post where I characterized a game with d/10 time controls as involving increments. My example was actually an example of a 10 second delay rather than 10 second increment.  With a delay, your clock does not start for the first N seconds.  With an increment, your clock time is actually increased.  So in theory if you move fast enough, you can build up time, whereas, with a delay, the best you can do is prevent your time from running down.

Has anyone ever run out of time and thereby lost a major GM championship match?