Do Chess matches take time zones into account?

Question

I think I know the answer to this, but I can't prove it. Hence the question.

I present to you, XKCD 3014: 'Arizona Chess'

Assuming a match starts with significantly more than an hour per player, do Chess federations (such as but not exclusively FIDE) take time zones into account? The example in the image is about the timezone passing straight through the board effectively giving one of the players an extra hour, but perhaps a more likely scenario would be when players are playing online (or otherwise remotely) and are definitively not in the same timezone.

Is any of the time zones leading? Does the game exist purely in relative time ignoring time zones? This must have come up sometime.

Answer 1

I can think of one scenario where daylight saving might legitimately give an extra hour to one side but not the other: Chess by mail. This relies on postmarks, and the postmarks are going to be based on the legal time, including daylight saving time if applicable.

An extra hour of think time in a game which involves days of thinking (perhaps 30 reflection days per 10 moves) might be useful, but would probably not be critical. Variances in mail delivery times would probably be much greater than one hour anyway.

Answer 2

Assuming a match starts with significantly more than an hour per player, do Chess federations (such as but not exclusively FIDE) take time zones into account?

Of course not! Time controls, eg 90 minutes for all moves plus a 30 second increment from move 1, have nothing whatsoever to do with time zones.