If you've ever played a serious chess game without a chess clock, you know how frustrating it can be to sit and wait for your opponent to finally make their move. Since the 1800's, tournaments have been played using a chess clock, which sets a fixed pace for the games and keeps them from taking forever.
Chess clocks are really two connected clocks. While I'm thinking, my clock is running and my opponent's clock is stopped. Once I make my move, I "hit my clock," which stops my clock and starts my opponent's clock.
Why is only one clock running at a time? That's because in chess, each player gets their own separate amount of time. This is to allow for the fact that some moves take only a few seconds to play, while others might take several minutes, depending on the complexity of the position. You'll see how this works as we look at the different kinds of tournament time controls.
Chess clocks can be either "analog" like the one in our picture, or digital. In either case, the clock has a "flag" that falls when the time control is reached.
Blitz, Standard, and Increment
In blitz chess, each player gets a fixed amount of time for the entire game. A common time control would be "G/5" which means "Game in 5 minutes." Each player gets 5 minutes on their clock, so if you're using a regular clock, the time might be set to 5:55 on each side. Remember that only one clock will run at a time.
As the player with White is thinking about the first move, her clock is running. After a few seconds, she makes the move and hits her clock. This starts her opponent's clock. He can take as much time as he wants to for each move. He could take a minute for the first move although, again, he'd probably only take a few seconds. Then he hits his clock. This goes on, back and forth. It's not at all uncommon for there to be a difference in the amount of time taken--one player might have only 20 seconds left while another has over a minute. Of course, you can think on your opponent's time, too, but the real key is what you do when you are presented with her new move each time.
In sudden death or blitz, when your five minutes is up, that's it! If you're the first one out of time, you lose, regardless of the position on the board--unless your opponent has "insufficient material to mate." (For example, if your opponent has only a King left and you run out of time in blitz, the game would be a draw--even if you had a Queen and a Rook. But if your opponent had a pawn left, then you would lose on time.)
Blitz chess is very exciting, and lots of fun for social games and one-day tournaments.
Most serious international tournaments, and many amateur tournaments, use a quota system for time controls. You might see the time control announced as "40/2." That means "40 moves in 2 hours." As in blitz, each player gets their own time, so each player would get two hours. Probably the clocks would be set for 4 o'clock, with "time control" being reached at 6:00. The difference is that this is a quota; as long as the players makes 40 moves in 2 hours, they "make the time control" and will be given MORE time to continue playing. It's only if you fail to meet the quota of moves that you would lose on time. Players also get to carry forward any extra time. Say White took 90 minutes to make 40 moves, and Black took 119. If the second time control was 30/1 (30 moves in 1 hour) then they would just keep playing, with the next time control being up at move 60 at 7:00. Notice, though, that White now has 90 minutes to make the next 20 moves (30 left over from the first time control, plus the new 60 minutes), while Black has only 61 minutes to make the next 20 moves. So time saved early in the game can become a factor later on.
During the 70's, most serious tournaments had a never-ending sequence of time controls, something like 40/2, then 30/1 repeated until the game was complete. In the 80's and 90's this began to gradually shift, and now even major international tournaments usually switch to a sudden death time control for the 3rd or 4th "period." So you may see time controls given as 40/2, 20/1, SD/30. (40 moves in 2 hours, then 20 moves in 1 hour, then sudden death in 30 minutes.) This would make a maximum of 7 hours for one game: 2 + 1 + .5 for each side. The use of Sudden Death time controls has eliminated the need for adjournments in most important events.
Common amateur time controls are 30/90, SD/30 and 35/90, SD/30, which make a maximum of 4 hours for any one game.
The newest wrinkle in time controls is "increment times." Bobby Fischer has supported these for some time, and in fact holds a patent on a mechanical chess clock which provides an increment. In 1996, the US Chess Federation adopted a digital increment clock as the "standard" clock for its tournaments.
Before increments, many top players had complained that too many important games were decided in a time scramble. As the game approached the time control, the players might have only a minute or two for about 10 moves. The game would suddenly shift in character from a standard game to a blitz-type ending, and sometimes the chess was wild and sloppy. Fischer, for example, complained that this spoiled the "beauty" of the games.
The increment clocks use a principle that has also been used in Go. The time is defined like blitz, but each time the player makes a move, a small "increment" of time is ADDED to the clock before the flag is allowed to fall. This means that you always have a certain minimum amount of time for each move, and you can technically keep the game going until it's decided on the board.
An example will make this easier to understand. I like to play at 4 12, which means "Game in 4 minutes, with a 12 second increment." Now "game in 4" sounds very fast, but the increment ADDS 12 seconds for each move. So a 40 move game will really take 4 minutes + 12*40 = 4 minutes + 480 seconds = 12 minutes. Still fast, but not really blitz times.
Here's the way it works. Say we're using a countdown, digital timer. We set the clocks for 4 minutes. I have White. I take 3 seconds for the first move. The clock has counted down the 3 seconds--but now it adds back 12 seconds. So at the end of my first move, I have 4:09 on my countdown clock. My opponent takes only 2 seconds for his response. So now he has 4:10 showing on his clock. We both have more time than we started with!
Of course, we will get to the point where we're taking more than 12 seconds per move, and the clock will start to countdown. Now we get to the stage that Fischer and other top GMs felt was important. Suppose I have only 30 seconds left on my clock. Whether we're using a quota format or a sudden death format, I'm still going to get back 12 seconds for each move that I make. So I have a minimum of 12 seconds for each move--I can't be rushed more than that. Theoretically this should improve the quality of the game, at least among the professional players. No more time scrambles, with players trying to make 10 moves in one minute.
Increments are very popular at the various Internet chess servers, where the computer-operated clocks make them easy to set up. Popular time controls here are 2 12 (which is similar to a G/5, but without the time scramble) and 4 12.
Copyright 1996, 1997 Jade River
Designs, Atlanta, Georgia.
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Last update on 03/31/97