5|3 vs 5|5 and The spirit of the game

Hello everyone,

I recently played some games with the 5|3 time control and discovered it vibes better with the spirit of blitz chess than 5|5 does. Basically a time control exists to pace the game at a rate both players can agree upon. And Blitz was designed to be fast paced, usually fast enough that stalling type moves don't work. 5|5 doesn't accomplish this. The games can essentially go on indefinitely. I understand increments exist to prevent either player from flagging, even still, 5 seconds is far too much bonus time.

I've found that usually the player with more time eventually equalizes because stalling moves usually take less than 5 seconds to decide on while attacking moves usually take more than 5 seconds. This would be less of a problem with 3 seconds because I generally don't see 5 minute players making endgame moves in under 3 seconds. Essentially making it possible to flag or at least put pressure on the stalling player. This is more in-line with the spirit of blitz chess and would benefit the play in blitz (with increment) play.

I understand that 5|3 exists on chess.com and that there are a few players who use it, however due to the fact that it isn't one of the standardized time controls it is impossible for it to gain popularity since 5|1 5|2 5|3 5|4 exists splitting the 5 minute (with increment) players over a range, preventing proper matchmaking, usually matching players with wildly dissimilar ranks.

For that reason, this is my formal petition to add 5|3 as a standardized time control.

Thanks for reading,

Tyler

I agree that 5/3 is better than 5/5. I like the ratio between the starting time and the increment to be high and 5/5 is kind of annoying. 

Back in the day, on kasparovchess.com (yup) they had a default time control of 2/12. Try that for size!