Trend in Time Controls

Hi,

I was looking to join a chess tournament around the California Bay Area and I have found a few. However, it worries me that I can't seem to find too many games with long time controls. (>90 min per game) I've seen a few tournaments with 45 min per game, but this still seems too fast for a high quality game. Is this just a false impression or are time controls becoming shorter in tournaments. What is the average tournament time control? Will we soon have only 5 min per game tournaments. ;p What were the time controls in the tournaments you've participated in?

They are typically SD/1 + 5 second delay. Once a year we have a larger tournament that is 40/120, SD/1 + 5 second delay.

Yes, I see that my conclusions were drawn too fast. There is a 2 hours/40 moves tournament in January. 😉 It seems standard time controls are still around but I wonder if they will be for long.

Also, what is SD exactly? I'm new to tournament chess.

SD is sudden death. So SD/1 or SD/60 both mean SD in one hour.
I may have been mixing up my #moves and #minutes, but I think you can tell which is which

So SD60 is the same as G60 right?

Yeah, basically some time controls have a given amount of time per some amount of moves, so they need a way to show that in the second half, you just have a flat amount of time to finish. So for instance, in the Ohio Chess Congress (State Championships) it's 40/2 SD 1. So you have 2 hours to make 40 moves, and one hour to play out the rest of the game. Keep in mind that generally long time control tournaments take alot longer to finish, and are harder to book for TD's, since they have to ensure enough interest and find a site for that long, and pay for a site for that long. It may not be that long time control tournies are dying, but it's just that they are harder to put together. I know Ohio has about 4 biggies that are around the same time every year, with maybe a couple of other smaller ones.