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Bullet Chess is a Chess game that is played very rapidly. At the beginning of the game each player gets a timer set to a specific number of minutes that runs down towards zero while it is his move. For the sake of this discussion, let's limit Bullet Chess to two types of time control: with and without increment. In a game without increment, each player has a specific number of minutes (typically 2 or less) to make all of his moves. The time control for this sort of game is usually denoted by minutes/0, so a game where each player has one minute on his clock at the beginning of the game would be denoted 1/0. In a game with increment, in addition to his starting time each player gets a specific number of seconds added to his clock every time he makes a move. Such time controls are denoted by two numbers x/y where x is the number of minutes each player has at the start of the game, and y is the number of seconds each player gets per move. Typically, the longest games considered bullet are 2/1 or 1/2. Games that are 3/0, 2/2, or 1/3 are usually too long to be considered bullet games.

Now that I've defined what a bullet game is, my question is what sort of distribution would best map to the total time taken for a bullet game. The distributions for games without increment would be sharply truncated -- for example, the longest time a 1/0 game could go would be 2 minutes. On the other hand, a game with increment could theoretically go on more or less endlessly. So perhaps there are two different sorts of distributions that describe these two different situations?

Empirically, the total time distribution is high near the upper end of the distribution for games with no increment, as might be expected. As an example, for 1/0 games I found a mean total time of 92.3 seconds, with a median of 104 seconds, a standard deviation of 28.3 seconds, and a mode of 117 seconds. The longest game was 119.9 seconds. To the untrained eye, for games with no increment the total time distribution looks almost like a truncated normal distribution, but I have no idea if this is correct or not.

For 1/1 games I found a mean of 148.2 seconds, a median of 155.5 seconds, a standard deviation of 52.7 seconds, and a mode of 153 seconds. The longest 1/1 game on the other hand was 497 seconds. I'm not entirely sure what the distribution for games with increment looks like, but if I had to guess it looks normalish (though obviously it's truncated on one side -- a game can't be shorter than 0 seconds!).

Anyway, my question is, are there any distributions that would theoretically fit this sort of data, and if so, which ones should I look at?


Edit

At the suggestion of @Schach21 I have added histograms for 1/0, 1/1 and 2/1 games below

Histogram for 1/0 Games

Histogram for 1/1 Games

Histogram for 2/1 Games

1 Answers1

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You would have to share the data or a histogram of it. Different parameterized distributions might fit the data with different accuracy.

As for your specific question, there is no "theoretical" distribution to fit that data. It works the other way around: you observe the data and try to derive a distribution that "fits" to the data.

Moreover, I think to address the question you posted on the title (distribution of duration of bullet games) you also need to consider the level of player. I could imagine for advanced players it looks very different than beginners.

Schach21
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  • I've added a couple of histograms. I'm curious as why there would not, or perhaps could not, be a theoretical distribution to fit this kind of process. I'm thinking of things like coin flipping which are random, but things like a Bernoulli distribution can be arrived at from theoretical instead of empirical considerations which fit coin flipping well. Is the underlying mechanics of total time for bullet chess just too complicated to come up with a theoretical distribution? – Dargscisyhp Feb 14 '22 at 05:57
  • Yes, the underlying distribution depends on human behavior in chess. As far as I know there is no theoretical distribution for that. I think it's interesting how truncated the 1/0 is; I guess that means most games are decided by who is a better flagger. – Schach21 Feb 14 '22 at 15:35