A time control is a mechanism in the tournament play of almost all two-player board games so that each round of the match can finish in a timely way and the tournament can proceed. Time controls are typically enforced by means of a game clock
Game clock
A game clock consists of two adjacent clocks and buttons to stop one clock while starting the other, such that the two component clocks never run simultaneously. Game clocks are used in two-player games where the players move in turn...
In chess played with a time control, time trouble, time pressure, or its German translation Zeitnot, is the situation where a player has little time to complete the required moves. When forced to play quickly, the probability of making blunders is increased, so handling the clock is an important...
or zeitnot) is the situation of having very little time on a player's clock to complete his remaining moves.
The World Chess Federation FIDE sets a single time control for all major FIDE events: 90 minutes for the first 40 moves followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game with an addition of 30 seconds per move starting from move one.
Classification
The amount of time given to each player to complete their moves will vary from game to game.
However most games tend to change the classification of tournaments according to the length of
time given to the players. Shorter time limits, which do not afford due consideration to moves, are afforded a lesser degree of importance. Indeed shorter limits are normally given special names to distinguish them.
'Lightning' is the quickest limit, then 'blitz'. Chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
has an 'active' category after this. In chess, Lightning refers to 3 minutes or below, blitz refers to between 4 and 15 minutes, and Active is between 15 and 30. As an example, for Go
Go (board game)
Go , is an ancient board game for two players that originated in China more than 2,000 years ago...
anything under twenty minutes can be considered blitz. In terms of chess ratings, 30 minutes is considered to be both blitz (fast chess) and long (slow chess) at the same time as it affects both ratings.
Sudden death
This is the simplest methodology. Once a player's main time expires he loses the game.
Hourglass
Each player's clock starts with a specified time (e.g. 1 minute, 10 min etc.). While Player 1 is deciding on their move, their clock time is decreasing and Player 2's clock time is increasing. This is similar to how an hourglass
Hourglass
An hourglass measures the passage of a few minutes or an hour of time. It has two connected vertical glass bulbs allowing a regulated trickle of material from the top to the bottom. Once the top bulb is empty, it can be inverted to begin timing again. The name hourglass comes from historically...
works, sand empties from one container, and fills into the other. Moving slowly gives your opponent extra time. The sum of both clocks will always remain the same. There is no maximum amount of time alloted for a game with this timing method; as long as both players play quickly, the game will continue until its natural end. When time runs out on one player's clock the game is over and that player loses. This is very uncommon to be used in chess tournaments outside of certain online websites.
Overtime formats
Here the game time is separated into two basic domains: the main time, and the overtime. To switch between the two requires some trigger event. Often this is the expiration of the main time. In chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
, reaching a fixed number of moves can trigger the gain of a fixed amount of bonus time. This is the general chess rule and it usually occurs in long games after the 40th move.
In go
Go (board game)
Go , is an ancient board game for two players that originated in China more than 2,000 years ago...
two common forms are:
Japanese byo-yomi
After the main time is depleted, a player has a certain number of periods (for example five periods, each of thirty seconds). If a move is completed before the time expires, the time period resets and restarts the next turn. Now if a move is not completed within a time period, the time period will expire, and the next time period begins. This is written as + byo-yomi
Byoyomi
is an extended time control in two-player games, specifically Shogi and Go. The word is borrowed from Japanese; the term literally means "counting the seconds," or more generally, "countdown."...
time periods> of . Using up the last period means that the player has lost on time. In some systems, such as certain Go
Go (board game)
Go , is an ancient board game for two players that originated in China more than 2,000 years ago...
title matches, there is no main time; instead, the time used is rounded down to the nearest whole increment, such as one minute, and the actual counting of time occurs toward the end of one player's time. (The term byoyomi literally means "counting the seconds [out loud].")
Canadian overtime
After using all of his/her main time, a player must make a certain number of moves within a certain period of time — for example, twenty moves within five minutes. Typically, players stop the clock, and the player in overtime counts out the required number of stones and sets the remaining stones out of reach so as not to become confused, whilst the opponent sets the clock to the overtime period. If all the moves are made in time, then another period of overtime starts — another set of stones and the timer again reset to the overtime period. If all the moves are not made in time, the player has lost on time. This is written as + in
