Chess Timer

Chess Timer is a small software application designed specifically for helping you time your chess games with the aid of a timer.

You can take advantage of the fact that the tool comes in a portable package and run it on the target computer without administrative privileges.

You don’t need to go through installation steps, as you may open the utility by running the executable file. You can store it on USB flash drives and carry it with you all the time.

You are welcomed by a clean and simple design. There’s no support for a help manual so you need to experiment a little bit with the dedicated parameters in order to understand how the program works. Some hints are displayed directly in the main window about the hotkeys that can be employed in order to control the two timers.

Chess Timer gives you the possibility to quickly switch between the left and right timer, pause the timer for each player, as well as rest the timer on the fly.

What’s more, you are allowed to activate tournament or non-tournament timing options and choose between several different timing modes, namely ‘Add before,’ ‘Add after,’ ‘Bronstein,’ ‘Hourglass,’ and ‘Gong.’

Other important configuration settings worth being mentioned enable you to set the player with white pieces to the left or right side of the working environment, configure the start and current time in hours, minutes, and seconds for the white and black timers, as well as tweak the current move.

When the time is up for the current player, the tool reveals a popup message. Tests have shown that Chess Timer carries out a task quickly and without errors. It does not eat up a lot of CPU and memory resources so the overall performance of the computer is not hampered.

To sum things up, Chess Timer comes packed with several handy features for helping you time your chess sessions, and is suitable for rookies and professionals alike.