There are many different time controls in chess, but blits chess (or fast chess) has become the time control of choice for most chess players. Let's learn more about blitz chess.
Here is what you need to know about fast chess:
With 5 levels of difficulty and a behavior modeled to make human mistakes, this is a very fun game to play. Our online chess game also features an opening database created by analysing 145,000 games from international tournaments. There are 4 different board styles (a 2D diagram, two fixed 3D designs and a 3D rotatable board) to suit any style. COVID-19 survivor Irina Krush wins U.S. Women’s Championship. Women’s Championship was held online October 21-24, 2020. Organized by the Saint Louis Chess Club, the time control for the 12-player round robin was Game in 25 with a 5-second increment.
What Is Blitz Chess?
Blitz chess (more commonly known as speed chess) simply refers to a game of chess that has a fast time control. Speed chess is fun to watch and to play. It has been suggested that the faster a time control is, the lower the quality of the game. This may be true, but the rush one gets from playing or watching fast time controls is difficult to match. Pre-moves, unusual and offbeat openings, blunders, and other craziness define speed chess.
Without speed chess, silly and awesome things like giant bullet chess wouldn't exist. It has the same rules as a normal game, but instead of playing online or using normal-sized pieces, you use giant pieces. Here is IM Danny Rensch playing GM Vachier-Lagrave in a giant bullet chess game:
Pretty cool, right? Getting back to fast chess, the word 'fast' is subjective. For the purposes of this article, we use the widely accepted view that speed chess refers to games played faster than classical time controls, which are most commonly used for over-the-board (OTB) tournaments. According to FIDE, classical time controls refer to games that have at least 120 minutes per player. As an example, one game in the world championship chess match can last over six hours.
Speed Chess Time Controls
Speed chess is subdivided into rapid, blitz, and bullet time controls:
Rapid time controls on Chess.com are any time control longer than 10 minutes per player. The most popular rapid time controls on Chess.com are 30|0 and 15|10 (the same time control that FIDE uses for the World Rapid Championship), although many other rapid time controls can be created and played on Chess.com by creating custom time controls (see the How To Play Speed Chess On Chess.com section below to learn how to create a custom time control).
Blitz time controls on Chess.com are between three and 5 minutes per player. Blitz is the most popular time control on Chess.com with over 3.5 million blitz games played per day. The most popular time controls for blitz are 5|0, and 3|0, although 3|2 is very popular as well. FIDE's World Blitz Championship time control is currently 3|2.
Bullet time controls on Chess.com refer to any time control that is faster than three minutes per player. These are the fastest time controls and are the second most popular time controls on Chess.com with almost a million bullet games played per day. The most popular time controls for bullet are 1|0 and 2|1.
Here is an example of Chess.com's IM Danny Rensch playing a bullet game with World Champion Magnus Carlsen. Even with time odds (two minutes for Rensch versus one minute for Carlsen), the world champion is too much for our master to handle.
Who Plays Speed Chess?
Anyone can play speed chess. From beginners to grandmasters, almost five million games of chess are played per day on Chess.com—an overwhelming percentage (above 99 percent) of these games are at speed chess time controls. As of 2020, Carlsen is the reigning world champion for rapid and blitz time controls.
In 2019 the Chess.com Bullet Championship was held to crown the bullet champion. The event had eight participants: GMs Hikaru Nakamura, Vachier-Lagrave, Alexander Grischuk, Levon Aronian, Sergey Karjakin, Federico Perez Ponsa, Olexandr Bortnyk and Alireza Firouzja—a star-studded field of top players. Nakamura won the event after defeating the young phenom Firouzja in round one, Aronian in round two, and Bortnyk in the final.
Most of Chess.com's large events use speed chess time controls, including the Speed Chess Grand Prix, PogChamps, FIDE Chess.com Online Nations Cup, The Adopt-A-Danny series.
How To Play Speed Chess On Chess.com
Playing a game of speed chess on Chess.com is easy. Go to Live Chess and locate the time control pull-down menu. Click the pull-down menu and select the time control that you would like to play.
After you have selected the time control you would like to play, simply press the orange 'Play' button. Chess.com then automatically pairs you with another Chess.com user who is seeking a game with the same time control, and your match begins.
You can create a custom time control by selecting the 'More' button in the time control pull-down menu. Under the 'More' option, you can select the 'Custom' button. You may enter your desired time control in these fields (minutes and increment) and then select the orange 'Play' button.
Conclusion
You now know what fast chess is; what time controls are used for rapid, blitz, and bullet; and how to play speed chess on Chess.com. For most players, it takes time and experience to find their preferred time control. Some prefer slower games while others prefer faster ones; we are all different. Head over to Live Chess and play some games now!
Related Chess Terms
Dive into the world of free online chess games against other players. Test your chess skills. Play with real opponents. No downloads or installations. You are just a few clicks away from your first professional chess match. A large number of online users from different parts of the world won't let you get bored while waiting for the game. You can join existing chess matches against other people, or you can start your own game and pick your opponent by rating. You can decide how long your game will last, because we offer an option allowing you to choose one of several types of games. Playing chess against others is the best way to improve your skill. Competing with a stranger is much more difficult than playing against a computer.
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{{item.rating_type_locale}}On chess.cool you can play chess online against other people at any time of the year, 24/7. In order to start playing chess against others, you just need to register on the site. The registration will give you an opportunity to join online chess battles with other players. You can create your own game where other people, or your friends, can join you. Set your game rules. If you are tired of the long games of classic chess, choose fast Bullet, Blitz or Rapid chess, where each player is allocated from 1 to 20 minutes, and time is a key factor in winning. If you like non-standard solutions, choose a special type of game - Fischer chess, where in the initial arrangement all the pieces are swapped in random order. The wide time control allows you to create batches with a duration from 1 minute to several days. Play chess 1 on 1 against other players and prove that you are the best.
Bullet Chess is a form of the game when a player is given only 1-2 minutes to play chess against others + 1 second for each turn. This type of game is similar to standard chess, and it's quite popular. For many players, less than 1 minute is enough to checkmate, and this is the whole point of Bullet Chess. Play aggressively to force your opponent to spend more time on defense. This will give you an advantage in time and help you to win the game.
Blitz Chess is the most common form of quick play. Players are given 3-6 minutes to make all their moves that are required to win. Blitz differs from the standard chess match only in the fastest possible turn calculation. The Blitz game lasts a little longer in chess online with other players, because of the 1 second delay after each turn. Consider the fact that in a real game, you lose a split second when you click on the clock-- the difference is very noticeable. Therefore, a key factor in chess is time. Blitz Chess is a very popular type of game, which is proven by the ongoing international tournaments for blitz games, where the winners were famous chess players like Sven Magnus (champion 2017-2018), Sergei Karjakin (2016), Alexandr Grishchuk (2015).
Rapid chess is a type of chess game where each player is allotted 5 to 20 minutes for the whole game. The rules are simple: the player loses as soon as he runs out of time, or the one who mates first wins. There are two types of Rapid games. When the game is allocated exclusively from 5 to 20 minutes, or the second option, when a few seconds are added to the total time after each turn. Usually serious tournaments follow the rule of adding 10 seconds for each turn. Free online chess games against other players are slowly but surely pushing out classic games with rivals, since this format is so convenient.
Classic chess is associated with something well-established, reliable, and time-tested. In particular, it is. Classic chess games have existed since the start of the official tournaments. In classic games, players are given 60 minutes or more per game. Since the games could last for several hours, until the 1990s there was a practice of “postponing the games” when all the moves were recorded and the game was played the next day. Now it doesn't happen anymore and the match must end the day it was started.
Correspondence chess is a type of chess game where opponents are located at a distance from each other, and the time for one move can be measured in days. With the rapid development of the internet, this is not a problem and chess online against other people is not unusual. Earlier, the process of transferring the moves happened through the telephone, mail, telegraph, which caused a lot of difficulties, but thus gave even more time to move. The longest Correspondence chess game lasted 53 years between Dr Reinhart Straszacker and Dr Hendrik Roelof van Huyssteen.
Fischer chess is a special version of the game created by Robert Fischer - the Eleventh World Chess Champion. He suggested to swap the pieces in the initial arrangement. Read more about Fischer chess here. So are you are tired of standard chess and solutions? Then it's time to discover something new!