The famous time controls — 5+0, 15+10, 90+30 — earn their fame, but they’re a shortlist, not a rulebook. Clubs, leagues, federations and friends invent controls constantly, tuned to an evening’s length, a teaching goal or plain habit. This guide collects the best non-standard controls worth knowing, what each is for, and one-tap links to play them on the custom clock.
What makes a good time control?
Three questions decide whether a control works for its purpose:
- How long should the session last? Base time × 2 (both players) plus increment tells you roughly how long one game runs. An evening with three games of 20+10 fills about two hours; one 45+45 game fills the same slot.
- Should endgames be decided on skill or speed? Any increment or delay from about two seconds upward stops the pure flag race. No increment keeps the scramble — which is a feature in casual blitz and a bug in serious play. The increment and delay guide covers the mechanics.
- What are you practising for? If you have a rated event coming up, practise at its exact control — the rhythm of a G/60 d5 game is genuinely different from 60+30.
Blitz alternatives
3+1 — a step between 3+0 and 3+2. The single second is just enough to stop instant flagging in won endgames while staying faster than tournament blitz. Popular online with players who find 3+2 endgames too forgiving.
7+2 — the in-between control: meaningfully slower than 5+0, quicker than 10-minute games. A favourite for casual sets where 5+0 feels like a coin-flip and rapid feels like commitment.
4+2 — a compact tournament-style blitz game; some clubs prefer it to 3+2 for slightly saner middlegames on club night.
Rapid for clubs and juniors
20+10 — possibly the most common “unofficial” rapid control in the world: junior tournaments, club championships and one-day events run it constantly. Games finish inside an hour with real thinking time throughout.
10+5 — the quick-rapid compromise, widely played online. Faster than 15+10 but the five-second increment still keeps endgames honest.
30+30 — slow rapid bordering on classical; a good “serious game” control when a full classical session isn’t practical.
League and long-form classics
45+45 — the control that built an online community: team leagues adopted it because one game fills a comfortable evening (around two to three hours) and the huge increment means the game is decided entirely on chess. If you want classical depth online, this is the classic answer.
60+15 — an hour of base time with a modest increment; brisker than 60+30 for evening classical events.
USCF delay controls
US Chess events traditionally use simple delay rather than increment, and two long controls dominate weekend tournaments:
G/60 d5 — sixty minutes with a five-second delay: the classic one-day-event control, two or three rounds in a day.
G/120 d5 — two hours with delay, the standard for slower USCF weekend play. Preparing for one of these? Practising with delay specifically matters — unlike increment, your clock never grows, so the time-management habits differ.
The shorter USCF staples — G/30 d5, 15 d5, 10 d5 and 5 d2 — are on the preset list already.
Teaching and training controls
Custom controls shine in training:
- Long-think practice: 40+30 approximates classical pacing in a two-hour session — good preparation for a first weekend tournament.
- Endgame technique under pressure: set a short base with a real increment, like 2+5, and play out theoretical endgames. The base time evaporates and you learn to convert on increment alone — a classic trainer’s exercise.
- Deliberate speed work: 5+1 forces faster decisions than 5+3 without the pure chaos of 5+0.
Setting up your own
Open the clock, choose the Custom card, and set base minutes (1–180), seconds per move (0–60) and whether they apply as increment or delay. The clock classifies the result into the standard bullet, blitz, rapid or classical tiers automatically.
You can also link straight to any control — /clock/?tc=7-2 for 7+2, /clock/?tc=45d10 for a 45-minute game with a 10-second delay — which makes it easy to share a house control with your club or bookmark your regular game. The custom time controls page has more ready-made examples.