Seriously now: A Case for 45+45 Time Control (From a Biased League Moderator)

A couple of days ago, I quickly shot from the hip and put together a jokey piece about 45+45 time control. It came up from reading this piece from @jdannan where they explain why they feel 45+45 time control is flawed from the get-go.

I was not in the mood for a serious reaction at that time and given April Fools day was right there, I wrote what I wrote. Now, we are in the serious days of April and I wanna present a more serious case for 45+45 as time control.

Disclaimer: I am a 4545 league moderator and I have not consulted any of this with fellow league mods. This opinion is solely my own. If you hate it, attack me, not others.

Ok, first things first: How do we evaluate time control? We have a ton of ways to look at it, and in the end, the whole good/bad time control discussion has a bit of silliness to it in the first place, because it is subjective and your player preferences are going to impact your perception a lot. Jdannan in their text pretty much judged the time controls by a single criterion and that is length of very rare outlier games and how that might impact players, the scheduling process, the playing, etc.

I do think there is something to that argument. I think if league moderators today were building a league from scratch, this is certainly one point I would listen to. It would not make 45+45 "bad" in my eyes, but it has merit. Even though I find it quite arbitrary to choose it as the most meaningful criterion of time control quality.

Comfort in the increment

Now, when it comes to the pros of a 45-second increment (which I think is kinda the contentious point), here is the main one to me: I want the league to be attractive to players of all skills who want to play some semi-serious games and learn. When it comes to the current league pool, it is comparatively quite strong to Lichess average (and I don't mean overrated rating-wise). There is a lot of untapped potential in attracting lower-rated players. For them, for whatever reason, a league like this can be intimidating.

If I think about my own road in 45+45, I do think this long increment provided some basic level of comfort when getting in. If you are a nervy newcomer who has self-doubts about whether they are strong enough for this type of league, that can help. And even now, as a bad player, I do like having that 45 increment in my pocket.

I am (personally) not looking for the league to become "more serious" and "more similar to FIDE" or "more convenient for super-strong players". If I did, my thinking on this matter would probably be a lot different.

Long games are awesome

Now to go to an even more subjective point. I think long marathon games are kinda awesome. Doesn't it feel great when you win these? Now, again, games over 4 hours are very rare in this league. In Season 47, we had none. In Season 46, we had one. In Season 45, we had one.

But when it happens, and I am involved in a long game, it feels memorable and epic to me. Some of my best memories from the league go to my longest battles.

I am jealous of Hepatiaaa, who in Season 44 broke the record along with Mennonite for the longest 4545 league game ever, clocking in at 5h 12m 38s.

So in my view, there is a trade-off. These rare super-long games might be impractical, but when they happen, they can also be kind of awesome, depending on whether you have enough time or not. They create memorable moments both for the players and the league history.

It markets well

The last argument I will make for 45+45 time control is probably the most subjective of them all and here both my professional work bias and my league moderator bias come through the strongest: I just think it makes the league name memorable and cool.

I think there is some, pardon the dirty word, "marketing value" in placing the time control in the name of your flagship league (Lichess4545 league) and having it be interesting/memorable and self-explanatory at the same time.

With all due respect, I have no idea what 4NCL means or what its features are by name, nor do I know from the name "White Rose", and even Lone Wolf I think has a bit of a weird label. All these things require a potential newcomer to dig for more info, there is a bit of inconvenience there in figuring out whether this league is the right fit for me.

It's also in my humble opinion not as likely to stick in a player's mind as 4545 league. I do think there is some attention-grabbing quality and simplicity to the league name that works well for it (which I think would not work so well with, let's say, "2020 league"). Again, this is not really a defense of the time control per se, just giving my two cents on another reason why it works quite well in my opinion.

I do not have any data on this thought, it is very much based on my hunches.

Now unlike Jdannan, I am not gonna go with a claim that 45+45 is "good" or "bad" time control here. I do think there are probably a lot of other factors that go into it and whether you are a serious OTB player or online chess newcomer is going to have a strong impact on your perception as well. That would probably make for another blog. Luckily, there are options for all kind of players out there.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk. See you in Season 48 of Lichess4545 league.