Time Control Notation

[Greg Breed]

Hi all,

I was wondering what the correct shorthand methodology is to describe all the various time controls there are.
I know G90 for example is all moves in 90 minutes, but I start getting muddled when there is x moves in y minutes, second time control, increments and where they should all appear in the shorthand.
Is there a list and rules anywhere?

[MSoszynski]

I don't know about rules but I prefer, for example, 5'+3" (straight not curly quotes).

[Joey Stewart]

I'm not exactly sure what the question is here - are you trying to determine which time controls count as bullet, blitz, rapid, classical ?

[Ian Thompson]

The USCF attempt to explain it in Chapter 1, Section 5 of their Rule Book (on page 19).

I don't know whether their nomenclature is universally accepted outside the USA.

[Greg Breed]

I'm not exactly sure what the question is here - are you trying to determine which time controls count as bullet, blitz, rapid, classical ?

No I'm trying to learn how to write the time controls in shorthand.
e.g. 40 moves in 2 hours plus 50 minutes plus 30 second increment from move one could be written: 40/120 G50 30s.
There must a proper way to write it but i don't know how and can't seem to find anything online to direct me.
The time controls themselves I'm not interested in, its how to write it in as short a way as possible and have it mean something.

[Greg Breed]

Ithink the word i'm searching for is "nomenclature"

[Greg Breed]

The USCF attempt to explain it in Chapter 1, Section 5 of their Rule Book (on page 19).

I don't know whether their nomenclature is universally accepted outside the USA.

Thanks for this Ian. Its a good start. It has this as a guide:
40/90 SD/30 inc/30 Regular
40/120 SD/60 d/5 Regular
40/115 SD/60 d/5 Regular
G/120 inc/30 Regular
G/120 d/5 Regular
G/115 d/5 Regular
G/90 inc/30 Regular
G/90 d/5 Regular
G/60 inc/30 Regular
G/60 d/5 Dual
30/30 SD/30 d/5 Dual
G/30 d/5 Dual
G/25 d/5 Dual
G/25 d/3 Quick
G/15 d/3 Quick
G/10 d/3 Quick
G/10 d/0 Blitz
G/5 d/0 Blitz
G/3 inc/2 Blitz

But I think we have something different. e.g I'm not sure we use SD for Sudden Death and instead use G for Game.

[Mick Norris]

If you look at TWIC, you can see how Mark does it

e.g., Hastings Masters TC: 100:50:15+30spm(1), Hastings Open TC:110m+10spm, Tata Steel TC: 100: 50:15+30spm(1), Airthings Masters TC:15m+3spm., Rilton Cup TC:90m:30m+30spm(1), Rilton Cup Match TC:45m+10spm, Swedish Blitz TC:3m+2spm

[Greg Breed]

If you look at TWIC, you can see how Mark does it

e.g., Hastings Masters TC: 100:50:15+30spm(1), Hastings Open TC:110m+10spm, Tata Steel TC: 100: 50:15+30spm(1), Airthings Masters TC:15m+3spm., Rilton Cup TC:90m:30m+30spm(1), Rilton Cup Match TC:45m+10spm, Swedish Blitz TC:3m+2spm

Thanks Mick,

Although I don't find those examples to be universal (for Brits at least), which is what I'm after.
The British this year had these time controls:
Championship 40/90 + G/30 +30'
Weekdays and Weekenders G/90 +30'
Rapidplay G/10 +5'
Blitz G/3 + 2'

I get the feeling that punctuation is very important to ascertain what is what, so I'm just trying to find out if there is a proper way to do here in the UK and if so, what is it.

[Joey Stewart]

I get what you are trying to do now.. if you were looking to make it as shorthand as possible then for starters we could get rid of the pointless "G" that seems to have just been shoved in arbitrarily to sound cool. And time controls need getting rid of as well, another relic of the past that serves no purpose in the modern game and actually can be hugely detrimental when you are using a clock which doesn't show the bonus time until it hits 0 seconds

If every time limit was simply minutes and increment that would be the perfect world.

[Roger de Coverly]

I get the feeling that punctuation is very important to ascertain what is what, so I'm just trying to find out if there is a proper way to do here in the UK and if so, what is it.

Personally I would just record all the moves in 90 minutes with 30 second increments as 90 30 and all moves in 80 minutes with 10 second increments as 80 10. lichess puts in a plus sign so 5 + 3 means 5 minutes with 3 second increments.

Other than what the USCF put into its Rule Book many years ago, I don't think there is a standard notation. It's more important in the USA because they expect players not organisers to supply clocks and program them correctly.

[IM Jack Rudd]

On the punctuation thing: a single quote represents minutes, a double quote seconds.

[MSoszynski]

On the punctuation thing: a single quote represents minutes, a double quote seconds.

Yes, as I'd indicated though strictly speaking they're not quotes but prime symbols.

[Roger de Coverly]

G/90 inc/30 Regular
G/90 d/5 Regular

The d stands for delay, being a feature where the clock time remaining always goes down, unlike with increment where it can increase. It's popular in the USA, almost unheard of elsewhere. Whether G/90 d/5 would work better for British evening league play than G/80 inc/10 is untested.

[Mike Gunn]

Any notation has to include the (relatively rare) case of increments only being used in the final period. Perhaps 40/120+0;20/60+0;G/0+30 is sufficiently general to cover all possibilities. If you omit the increment values from the earlier periods then you assume the last increment given applies throughout the game. In each period it's moves / duration in minutes + increment in seconds.