Adding a new 30+ min rating category !!

@milliways , yes the average games per week per chess variant is only 1.5k, but I'm quite sure the new 30+ category will be much more populated:

1. we have now 73k classical games per week if you watch for a few minutes the lobby for classical game adds, you'll notice the 30+ adds exist and take about 10% of the space. So it already easy enough now to get a 30+ game.

2. the new category would encourage more 30+ games, especially for those who have noticed they do better in longer time controls (which is the case of most players in the 1300-2000 range who try out multiple time controls).

3. Since the two most popular online chess clubs (chess.com and chessclub.com) only support 15+, our new 30+ category would encourage many long time control players to play here.

And I agree about having no trophies and no leaderboard in the new 30+ category, so that cheating is discouraged.

@Poldi_der_Drache , true that the new category would encourage longer tournaments in 30+ range too, such as 25+10, but that's a future step, since a different pairings schema would be needed, such as doing just one round per day, or even one per week.

For ease of calculation the equivalent calculation is using 60 moves checkmate. A smaller number will make the equivalent time controls smaller too.

Blitz Championships
3 minutes + 2 seconds / move. = Equivalent to 5 minute checkmate.

Rapid Championships
15 minutes + 10 seconds / move. = Equivalent to about 25 minute checkmate.

Semi-Rapid Championships
25 minutes + 10 seconds / move. = Equivalent to 35 minute checkmate.

Standard Championships (Minimum time settings for slow games)
50 minutes + 10 seconds / move. = Equivalent to 60 minute checkmate.

Since on the Internet we do not need to write down our moves, I see no need to increase the increment time beyond 10 seconds.

I think the following option could be a good standard to implement. Pre-moves should be disabled, if using increment time controls and enabled if using time without increments.

@Toscani , I have confirmed that we use an exact 40 move estimate (not 45 as I wrote before), so since 40/60 = 2/3 = 0.666, e-time is precisely calculated as [initial time] + [increment seconds] x 2/3

Based on the naming I suggested in my original post, the time controls you suggest would then fall in this categories:

3m + 2s = 4.333 = Blitz
15m + 10s = 21.666 = Rapid
25m + 10s = 31.666 = Standard
50m + 10s = 56.666 = Standard

Tournament are another topic though. Once the 30+ equivalent time control is created and we have consolidated a nice long game crew, we can then discuss about long time control tournaments.

PS: and a possible idea for 2018 could be the 90+ category, like:
1h:30m + 10s = 96.666 = Vintage (or Classical)

In case the rapid category would be implemented, I have a question. Would that affect all the games previously played and the ratings? Namely the classical ratings of everyone would change unless they only have played very long games before the introduction of the new category?

@Demonolith , as a developer (not yet for Lichess) I see 3 ways of doing it.

A) Classical would be renamed to Rapid and everyone given a provisional 1500 rating for Standard category.

B) Same as above, but those who have played long games can have their last N games analyzed chronologically to build their initial Standard rating.

C) Or, we could for analyze the entire Classical game history of each player and manually split them into Rapid / Standard, recalculating the corresponding ratings.

Note: Most players have never played a rated 30+ game, so would not have any rating change and just get a 1500 professional Standard rating, regardless of the implementation choice (a,b,c).

Option A is the simplest. Option C requires some caution. The user should preferably not be playing a game during the update.

+1, good idea

I was thinking, 8m to 30m would be quite a large range for the Rapid category. And the 30m+ Standard would not not include the popular 15m+15s time control. So I'd personally vote for Standard to be 25m+.

That also leaves more space for a future "Vintage" time control somewhere around 60m+ if there are enough people interested.

So here is a new voting poll, which also allows us to choose between 30+, 25+ or 20+.

https://strawpoll.com/4xga8yc

The following is my logical view of what the terms mean to me.

Slow games start at 60 minutes. So for me when I think of a standard game, I think of the regular chess starting position and time controls above 60 minutes. Since the term standard is a norm, then what is normal today will not be the standard of tomorrow. Maybe we should use another term instead of standard.

If we have 59 minutes or less, than that's the slowest rapid game we can have.

For me a semi-rapid game is half way between the fastest rapid games and the slowest blitz. So that puts that at an average of about 30 minutes.

I like clear and precise terms, without trying to guess at what the term means.

Conclusion: My chess terminology expressed with the smaller than sign. The 15 minutes and 60 minutes are time control standards of chess:

Bullet < Fast Blitz games < 15 minutes < Rapid & Semi-Rapid games < 60 minutes < Slow Standard games.

Hey @Toscani ,

15 minutes and 60 minutes are time control standards of chess

Those are frequently used because they are well rounded numbers; 1/4 hour and 1 hour. I think that is a retro standard, from the times when we didn't use digital clocks, hence there were no increments. Though most games in Lichess games are incremented.

So your suggestion is as below, right?

0--H.B.--.25--Bullet--3--Blitz--15--Rapid--60--Standard--|
|=======|========|======-|========|===========|

But note that for FIDE and USCF, 10 minutes is already considered Rapid. So I think it makes sense to start Rapid time controls at 8m in Lichess, since we can play faster with a mouse than with our hands.

I agree with you that the "Standard" name is a ambiguous. "Semi-Rapid" and "Slow" sound better. And I think the more rating categories we have the better. True that it will be a greater effort to have a established rating in all categories, if wanted, but spiting everything in 99 categories wouldn't make it any harder at all for us to have our Lobby add clicked by an opponent. Hence I am favorable using as many names we can, with no need to change the time control divisors which already exist. Example for a future approach:

0--H.B.--.25--Bullet--3--Blitz--8--Rapid--25--Slow--300
|=======|========|======|========|========|

And a 60+ divisor could be added later in future.

I prefere a slower time control as well. I don't understand why they added this crazy hyperbullet before having an ordinary slow time control.
I also miss slower tournaments with increment.

i like your idea:

0--H.B.--.25--Bullet--3--Blitz--8--Rapid--25--Slow--300
|=======|========|======|========|========|