Types of Chess Games

Posted by chessbazaar on February 6th, 2020

Types of Chess Games

There are many ways to play chess not just one!

Chess can be played with different formats and rules. Each format may differ in terms of time or standard positions or standard powers. Many create their own version of chess by altering the standard according to make the game more thrilling and exciting.

The most commonly played chess games are as follows:

Standard

Games where the accumulative projected duration of the entire game is either equal to 15 minutes or more.

Untimed

Untimed chess games are those in which clocks are not used so basically the start time is zero. The opponents can take as much time as they want to play the move. These are usually unrated games.

Wild

Wild chess games are different from other types of chess games as they do not start with the standard chess positions. Since these games have non-standard positions, they are also rated differently. They also do not account for the controls for time. One such variant of a wild chess game is that the white pieces on the board are set up in the conventional position, but the position of black king and queen is interchanged.

Armageddon

a game guaranteed to produce a result, because Black has draw odds (that is, for Black, a draw is equal to a victory). To compensate, White has more time on the clock. Common times are six minutes for White and five for Black, or five minutes for White and four for Black. This can also be played with a small increment. This is also known as "time odds" and it is used in various tie breaks for quick tournaments.

Lightening/Bullet

A general term for extremely fast chess. It can also refer to games with a fixed time (e.g. ten seconds) for each move. This also can be used for one-minute games.

A variant of blitz chess, bullet chess games have less than three minutes per player, based on a 40-move game, and this extends down to one-minute-per-player games; lower time controls are called 'hyperbullet' and 'ultrabullet' for 30-second-per-player and 15-second-per-player games, respectively.

Other time control options for bullet games include 2 minutes with one-second increment or 1 minute with a two-second increment.

Rapid

10 to 60 minutes per player, sometimes with a small time increment per move (e.g. 10 seconds).

Blitz

10 minutes or less per side. Usually sudden death (no increment), but may also be played with a small increment. More recently due to the influx of digital clocks, three minutes with a two-second increment is also preferred.