♞Reflex Chess

Blitz chess, and the point where it stops being rapid

The word has a definition, three of them in fact, and they do not quite line up. The interesting cases are the ones sitting right on the boundary.

Blitz is chess fast enough that you cannot calculate everything and have to rely on what you already recognise. That is the feel of it. The definition is a number, and there are three of them.

FIDE says blitz is ten minutes or less, counting the time allotted plus sixty times the increment. Chess.com says blitz is three minutes up to but not including ten, counting the base plus forty times the increment. Lichess says blitz is any game whose estimate lands between 180 and 479 seconds on the same forty move formula. For most of the controls people actually play, all three agree.

Blitz against rapid

This is the boundary that matters, and it falls in a different place depending on who is asking. A 10+0 game is Blitz under the FIDE definition, because ten minutes is ten minutes or less. On Chess.com and on Lichess the same game is Rapid, and on Chess.com it is rated in a different pool from your blitz games, which is why the question comes up so often.

One step either side and everybody agrees again. A 5+0 game is Blitz everywhere. A 15+10 game is Rapid everywhere.

The blitz boundary, computed from each body's published rule rather than typed in.

Blitz against bullet

Bullet is the faster neighbour and it is a website category rather than a rule: FIDE's Laws do not use the word. Both large sites cut it at the same place in practice, under three minutes, so 1+0 and 2+1 are bullet and 3+0 is blitz. Lichess adds one more category below that, UltraBullet, for games estimated at 29 seconds or less.

Increment moves the line, which is the part people forget. 2+1 is Bullet on Chess.com, but 2+12 is Rapid, because forty moves of twelve seconds is another eight minutes of clock.

Blitz against classical

There is a gap between them rather than a boundary, and the three do not even mean the same thing by the slow end. Lichess calls anything estimated at 1500 seconds or more classical, so a 25+0 game is Classical there and Rapid on Chess.com. FIDE reserves the word Standard for an hour or more each, so a 60+0 game is Standard to FIDE and Rapid on Chess.com, which has no classical pool at all.

What actually changes in the rules

Less than people expect. The pieces move the same way and every rule in this reference still applies. Two things are different in an over the board event.

Players are not required to write their moves down. The Laws say, for both rapid and blitz, that players do not need to record the moves but do not lose their rights to claims that would normally be based on a scoresheet.

And the full Competitive Rules only apply where there is proper supervision. For blitz that means one arbiter watching one game with the moves recorded by the arbiter or an assistant. Below that level of coverage the appendix's own simplified handling applies, so a club blitz night and a supervised blitz championship are not being run under identical rules. Read your event's regulations rather than assuming.

Recognition is the thing blitz testsBlitz does not give you time to work a pattern out from scratch, so the patterns have to already be there. That is what the trainer is for.Open the trainer

Questions people ask

What is the difference between blitz and rapid chess?

Length, and where the line sits depends on who is defining it. FIDE calls a game blitz when each player has ten minutes or less counting increment, and rapid when it is more than ten minutes and less than an hour. Chess.com and Lichess both put the boundary just under ten minutes instead, so ten minute games are rapid there.

Is a 10 minute chess game blitz or rapid?

Rapid on Chess.com and on Lichess, which both rate it in their rapid pool. Blitz under the FIDE definition, because ten minutes falls inside ten minutes or less. It is the one common time control where the three answers genuinely differ.

Do you have to record your moves in blitz?

No. The Laws of Chess say that in rapid and blitz players do not need to record the moves, and that not recording them does not cost you the claims a scoresheet would normally support.

Related

Blitz sits under The clock in the reference. Nearby: