I'm an on and off chess player, never have played seriously (tournaments, or official rating). I've recently started using the CM 11 and playing ranked games, started at 900 and have moved up to 1028.

My question is, what are the recommended time controls to use that would be best?

Whatever suits you best.

As far as I know there's no way to have separate time controls for a rated game. If that is the case, then what would be a recommendation to use so that it's a relatively normal playing game. I tried out "40 moves in 20 minutes" but that doesn't seem right.

For a beginner like myself, what would be a good start?

Whatever suits you best

There can't really be any other answer. There are no "right" and "wrong" time controls. Some people like slow games, some like rapid, some like blitz and some like bullet. I never (or very rarely) play under 15 minutes, and I never played longer than 1 hour. So I guess I'm a purely rapid player.

Bullet is everything that is under 3 minutes for the whole game
Blitz is between 3 minutes and (let's say) 15 minutes
Rapid is between 15 minutes and 1 hour.
Everything above is considered a "standard" game.


So set whatever you feel comfortable with. Just remember that your opponent will have the same ammount of time at his disposal. All lower ranked personalities (and some higher rated ones) will always move instantly regardless of the time controls. Higher rated personalities WILL USE the allocated time. So if you were thinking of setting up a 3 or 4 hour time controls, then you might reconsider doing this, or prepare yourself for a looong game


P.S.: Note that those classification of standard, rapid, blitz and bullet is from real life. Chessmaster consideres everything above 15 minutes as standard, and everything below as blitz.

quote:

P.S.: Note that those classification of standard, rapid, blitz and bullet is from real life. Chessmaster consideres everything above 15 minutes as standard, and everything below as blitz.

This is what I needed to hear. Thank you.