What is the average speed in tournaments for USFC rapid chess ratings? Rapid ratings cover a very wide range of time controls and bump up against regular (where games are dual rated) as well as blitz time controls.

What is the average time for USCF rapid games that are rated in USCF tournaments?

Comments on the validity of the extremes are also welcome.
But in practice what is the average encountered in all or most tournaments? Or even a distribution for high endish , low endish, middling value? And which of those is prevalent?


This page will let you see every tournament that was rated in a particular state in a particular month. It takes a little effort from there to click through and see what the time controls were for each tournament. Going through all of them is too much for me, but I decided to take a couple of sample states. Looking at every quick rated tournament in December 2019 and January 2020 in Wisconsin, the time controls were:


G60 d5 (7 events)
G45 d5 (2 events)
G30 d5 
G26 d3 (3 events)
G25 +4 


So, if you add the increment/delay to the time, half were 65 minute games (the maximum allowable for dual-rated games) and 4 out of the other 7 were 29 minute games (the maximum allowable for quick-rated-only games). The average was about 50.4 minutes.

Now let's look at a larger state. Florida had the following quick rated tournaments in December 2019:


G60 d5
G55 d5 
G50 d5 
G45 round 1 G60 rounds 2-3 
G40 +10
G40 d5 (4 events)
G30 d5 (4 events)
G25 +10
G25 d5 (10 events)
G24 d5 
G20 d5 (3 events)
G15 d5


As was the case with Wisconsin, most of these were dual rated events; games well below 30 minutes were rare. But in Florida, it seems that 30 minute games (the minimum allowable for dual-rated) were the most common. The 65 or 29 minute games that were the most common in Wisconsin were rare here; only one of each of those were played. The average was about 36.5 minutes. 

If you combine the two states, then the time controls were as follows:

Time  Number of tournaments
65    8
60    1
55    1
50    4
45    4
35    6
30    10
29    5
25    3
20    1


It would seem, then, that which time controls are popular depends on your area. But in both states, there tended to be many tournaments right at the edge of where the events would be dual rated, at 65 or 30/29 minutes. The average was about 41 minutes, and the median was 35. There weren't many tournaments that were towards the low end of what can be quick rated.