> Yes, as a non chess player I think of the game as two people each taking about 15 minutes per move.

Not even classical time controls play that way -- 15 minutes per move would rapidly lose you the match. Prepared openings come quite quickly, obviously, but most moves even beyond that are played within a very few minutes of each other, with time being saved to spend on a "deep-think" of 15-30 minutes on only one or two key moves.

Which makes sense. Classical time controls in this tournament were, counting the per move increments, 120 minutes per player for the first 40 moves. That means you need to average a move every 3 minutes over your first 40 (and in reality, they spend less than that most games, preferring to maintain a healthy cushion).

Rapid (not Blitz, they did not play any Blitz games) only drops that down to 45 seconds per move over the first 40. Since they tend to live closer to the margin in Rapid anyways vs Classical, this is even less of a drop than it might appear.

It's unquestionably less time to think, but not nearly as much as you're suggesting.

The tie-break didn't get to blitz. Rapid is roughly an hour of playing which is well within the cultural concept of chess. Probably closer for most people actually.

Even for classic time control, 15 minutes per move is too much; they get about 3 minutes per move on average: 120 minutes for the first 40 moves is quite common. In this championship, they each had 100 minutes + 30 seconds bonus/move for the first 40 moves, which adds up to 120 minutes if they reach move 40 anyway. Of course, some moves are played very fast and the players do take 15 minutes, or more, in some tricky situations where they have to make a key decision.

What is the "cultural concept of 'chess'" then, and according to whose culture?

had they continued the same game instead of drawn, caruana would have had 15min to make 10 moves

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/sport/live/...