What's your opinion about the Lichess rating pools? (Blitz vs Classical)

To start with; I love Lichess. I'm a 13 month Patron and it's my main site. I'm not here to bash Lichess.

My opinion: The classical pool is way too wide and the Blitz pool too narrow. This causes some problems. Explanation below.
The reason for this topic: in several topics about Lichess rating, this 'problem' gets mentioned, but Lichess never responds. Same goes for reddit/r/chess.

The way I see it, there are three types of ' classical' players on Lichess:
- A. Players who mostly play the classical arena's and shorter time controls like 10+0, wich in my opinion is Blitz.
- B. Players who play rapid time controls like 15+10 or higher. In my opinion the ' true' online classical player. (I'm fine with calling rapid classical for online play)
- C. Players who play both.

The problem; player A with a 1700 rating is much stronger than player B with a 1700 rating. And player C is probably somewhere in between. So the ratings are all over the place. I'm player B in this scenario and to me, this is annoying. If I get paired against player A or C, they can be MUCH stronger, even if I carefully select a rating range.

My question: why did Lichess choose for this? If they could explain it very well, maybe I would understand. Now it's a stab in the dark. And very frustrating

The solution: Widen the Blitz range (everything below 15+0 is Blitz for example). This should be an easy fix? Right now, 5+5 is still classical, wich is absurd. Maybe this solution would even fix the ' problem' that the Lichess ratings are way higher than OTB and other sites right now.

What's your opinion? And please correct me if I'm wrong.

I agree that the Blitz/Classical demarcation is really quite difficult to make. I also don't believe 5+5 is classical. I'm a slow player at heart, so prefer longer games (15 minutes is where it starts to "feel" classical for me).

I would personally increase the boundary to 15 minutes, but considering that so many players are used to the time controls already, there might not be much that can be done

On most servers for live chess, it is done like that:
quick blitz, bullet, blitz, and standard are determined by the sum of the time bank and increment:
quick up to 3
blitz 3 to less than 15
standard 15 and up

As much i understand, this sum is calculated on average chess game lenght (40-60 moves)
5 3 will give 5min +180 sec per side on case of 60 moves = blitz.
2 12 will give 15min on 65 moves, so also still blitz, but 2 20 will be standard game.

here they have also ultrabullet- less than 1 min per side.

An extra category might be nice here.

I agree. Having a separate category for hyperbullet, but at the same time having everything from berserked 10+0 games to 45+45 games in the same "classical" category doesn't make much sense.

@Doevert
Good observation.
I think that also would be great if Lichess would promote longer games popularity, for example if the external site: www.lichess4545.com functionality becomes an internal part of Lichess. (Who don't know about that, it's a Swiss system tournament where teams plays against each other, and team members play one game per week with a 45+45 time control. Or the similar Lonewolf where not teams but individual players encounters.)

And it follows that longer tournaments also would create the need for the appropriate longer rating categories.

I would like to see a 15+10 hourly tournament offered, I think it would be really helpful to beginners like myself who need to think longer in order to learn more about the game and improve, 10+0 I almost always run into time trouble when the game reaches the endgame.

5+5 should DEFINITELY be classical.

I often play 15 seconds + 5

Having +5 every move is basically infinite time.

If your average move time is less than 5 seconds, you are not playing chess but merely moving pieces around the board.

First off; thats complete nonsense Turd. Might be true for some players; but certainly not for experienced blitzers.

The key to low time games like my 15 second 5 is this:

You must have a good opening plan. OBV Easiest with white; but not that different with black. Premove everything.

E4/E5 NF3/NC6 BC5/D6
etc.

So you premove all your opening. After the 5-6 moves of the opening now I have 40-45 seconds on my clock.

Now I can think for 10-15 seconds. Come up with a plan based upon their moves. Plan my next 2-4 moves. Premove them; barring a surprise; I just gained another 20 seconds.

Lots of moves are just answers to other moves. So they do not take thought. Obviously; this is a much risker game as you do not have a lot of time to think.

But; you dont just have 5 seconds. You just must toss out a few moves via premove (as you lose NOTHING on time when you premove and gain 5 seconds every time with increments)

Feel free to challenge me. Give yourself 10 minutes. Give me 15 seconds + 5

If I lose it will have nothing to do with the time. <3