Thanks for the detailed analysis @AfricanRhino17, and thanks everyone that chimed in here, it’s apparent this is quite the popular idea.
I ran some numbers to double check and they of course agree with what you are seeing. For the curious here’s what I’m seeing for 2024 so far in terms of the top time control options for non blitz “live” games
19x19
The custom default is the speed settings that are default when you create a custom challenge. Automatch default is what’s used when you click the “Normal” button to auto-match.
13x13
9x9
So it certainly seems like 5m+?x30s has some very significant pull towards it, biasing towards 5m+5x30s but 5m+3x30s has a good following too. For 13x13, 5m+5x30s was the only significant custom setting for awhile down the list, and given that it’s closer to the default setting of 10m+5x30s, one could imagine that people would be less inclined to bother setting up a custom game to shed that extra 5m. For 9x9, basically relatively few people bother to customize that, which seems to jive with folks being reasonably happy with 5m+5x30s. Further the fact that the automatch to custom ratio is higher for 9x9 might indicate that folks are overall happier with that setting in general and don’t feel the need to bother with a custom game. (Though that’s partially conflated with 9x9 being the default size so with absolutely no customization or clicking anything extra, that’s the game that you’re going to get. I suspect some of both.)
All of this, and the feedback in this forum seem to indicate to me that 5m+5x30s is the sweet spot for timing and we need to better support that as an option.
Honestly it seems to me like we should definitely make this an automatch option and the default for the custom challenge. With that it seems like it’d make sense for Blitz to be changed to 1m+3x10s or something along those lines while we’re at it.
The real question in my mind is if we keep the longer 20m+5x30s as an automatch option or not.
The second question is if we keep fischer as a time control option. It does have some popularity, sitting about half way between 5m+5x30s and 5m+3x30s, but given the overall general bias towards Byo-Yomi it seems like maybe it’d be better to just go with Byo-Yomi for automatch and keep things simple and the challenge pools less fragmented. Canadian should be scrapped as an automatch option it’d seem.
Regarding a new Rapid automatch button, should we add a new Radid option or replace our “Normal” with 5m+5x30s to avoid splitting the challenge pool?
- Split the challenge pool and add a “Rapid”
5m+30sor5m+3x30soption, keeping the20m+5x30soption - Replace the
20m+5x30s“Normal” auto-match with5m+5x30s, making it the new “Normal” (or renaming it to “Rapid” or something else)
Regarding the Fischer automatch time control option for live (blitz/rapid/normal) games, should we remove Fischer as an option and always use Byo-Yomi? (Note: Fischer will be kept as an option, or perhaps the only option, for correspondence games.)
- Remove the Automatch Fischer time control option, simplifying the system and reducing the number of challenge pools
- Keep the Fischer automatch time control option as is