My new favourite chess clock setting (3m + 10s)

(Originally posted on Saturday, 30 November 2019)

For years I had been playing online blitz chess games with the clock set at 3 minutes + 5 seconds per move. This way I could play against players who quickly made some strange moves in the opening just to win the game on time. Unfortunately when I was playing against such players I often spent much time in the opening and in the middle game to reach a favourable endgame, but then I had to play the whole endgame living only on the time increment of 5 seconds for every move. It sucked away the fun from endgames because there was no time for finese.

This summer I was “forced” to use a different chess clock setting. I was on vacation and I was using a tablet to play chess online. Unfortunately the wireless connection was weak and I lost two games on time. In each case it was like this: after I made a last-second move it took one or two seconds more to get the signal out (because of the weak connection) and the chess server interpreted it as me losing on time. I got pissed off and I changed the chess clock to 3 minutes + 10 seconds per move. And I won 6 straight games.

After I came back home I set the chess clock back to 3 minutes + 5 seconds per move, but I lost or drawn some “won” games just because I had too little time in the endgame or late middle-game. More importantly, however, I realised that my endgames were less fun this way. I decided to set the chess clock again at 3 minutes + 10 seconds per move and I've been playing online chess this way ever since. Playing and having more fun.

The time increment of 10 seconds per move allows me to actually THINK about some deeper variations in the endgame or late middle-game, not rely on my chess instinct. For a chess amateur like me playing with this kind of time increment is MUCH more fun. Sure I still commit blunders, but the number of my blunders due to lack of time decreased significantly. Even if I'm down to 2 seconds on my clock, it's enough that I make relatively 3 quick moves (in forced variations it's very easy) to bring up my time to over 20 seconds.

Now, finally, I feel like I am playing true chess. Interestingly thanks to this chess clock setting I played a very wild game and won! Well, I still made some blunders, because I am an amateur, but most of the game I had an advantage. I was playing white.

I described the most basic ideas in this kind of opening here:
My 5000th online chess win!

There is one tiny disadvantage of my new favourite chess clock setting – less people want to play against me. It seems to me that many chess players like to rely mostly on their experience/tricks/openings and they try to either win on time or provoke me to blunder in unfamiliar positions, so they don't like such a big time increment for me to find a flaw in their strategy. Fortunately there are still some players like me – players who want to win (or lose) a chess game in a totally pure way.