classical chess

English edit

classical chess (uncountable)

(chess) Chess played at a slow time control, with games taking up to several hours (the most common format at professional tournaments).
- 2020 October 12, George Ramsay, “Magnus Carlsen's 125-game unbeaten streak ended by Jan-Krzysztof Duda”, in CNN‎^[1]:
  All good things must come to an end, and so it was that Magnus Carlsen's record-breaking streak without defeat in classical chess was halted by Jan-Krzysztof Duda on Saturday.
- 2021 November 26, John Gapper, “Chess faces stalemate in its match with machines”, in Financial Times‎^[2]:
  The problem is not that computers have replaced people, but that they have curtailed their space for adventure, especially in "classical" chess played under long time limits at championship level. Players always arrived for tournaments well prepared, but they now use software as well as human analysis to predict lines long past the opening.

The exact boundaries of classical and rapid chess are somewhat ill-defined, with some chess websites considering a game to be "classical" with as little as thirty minutes per side with no increment. This range of time controls is generally referred to as "slow rapid" by the professional chess community.