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I took my time, my opponent didn't, and I still lost!
Time management goes deeper than calculating your average time-per-move.Time Management
For this article, let's assume you are playing a 30 minute game and your average game is 30 moves (adjust the math accordingly if you have a different average of moves in mind). That means you have 1-minute per move.
How do I increase my thinking time per move?
Here are a few ideas:
Opening
Knowing the opening well means you will not waste time choosing a move.
Tactics
Seeing tactical patterns quickly means saving time.
Planning
Understanding your opening's basic plans narrows your search for moves, and can make you efficient, thus saving time.
Endgame
Funneling the game towards endgames you know how to play will save time, which can be especially useful near the end of the game when you have less time.
Notation
When playing chess in person, being able to notate moves within the delay / increment allotted to you means your principle time is never used for writing.
Distractions
When thinking, the less distracting thoughts you have, the more efficient your time usage becomes.
Increasing Your Time
Anytime you understand a position, your time-per-move increases. Anytime you do not, your time-per-move decreases if you are putting in effort. If you are just blasting forth making moves willy-nilly, odds are time management isn't a skill you can work on just yet, and you have a different issue.
Therefore, if you think a lot, but lose, you are a step above people who do not think a lot, and lose. It is important to recognize your progress, even when you lose.
When a person thinks very little and wins anyway, it is generally because they understand the position very well, or at least they understand it better than you did. It often means they get into a game where they have fewer Knowledge Gaps.
Knowledge Gaps
Knowledge Gaps are the enemy of time management. Let's look at brief examples:
Opening
If you don't know the opening, you will slow down. You may even fall for tricks or traps which prompt you to think and think and think only for you to end up swindled anyway.
Tactics
Anytime you sense a tactic is present, you will burn time. If you don't see the tactic, you will burn time when trying to respond to it. In either case, a knowledge gap sucked time away from you.
Planning
If you memorized your opening, but do not understand why each move is made, then you will use a lot of time during the middlegame trying to understand what you're supposed to do.
Notation
Taking too long to notate drains your time away, but is a uniquely OTB problem since notation is automatic online.
Distractions
The more your mind wanders, the less efficient your thoughts become.
As you can see, knowledge gaps are very often the main culprit for why time gets wasted. Therefore, when learning anything in chess, an ever-present underlying skill you're developing is time management.
Notating Time
In OTB chess, I recommend notating both your time and your opponent's time. I never notate seconds, just minutes. By the rules of chess, you are allowed to notate time (which can be especially handy if there is a clock malfunction). After doing this enough, you can review your games and see where and when you are spending a lot of time. If you play the same opponent enough, you can assess this in their game, too.
Regardless of your findings, you should eventually see a trend. For example, if you are worse out of the opening a lot, and have less time, those are some big hints on where your study efforts should be. If you always reach the endgame with almost no time left on the clock, then you likely are not seeing tactics fast enough and/or you are having trouble with planning. Distracting thoughts can also be a trigger for personal improvement if you know you have trouble centering yourself.
Online, time is notated for you. On Lichess, you can see your elapsed time when going over your game by looking at the clocks during analysis move or in a study.
The Unfairness of Time Management
If you lose because you did not think enough, a coach could say "You aren't using enough time. You need to work on time management." The opposite can be true, too: "You're using too much time. You need to speed up!"
This is one of those balancing acts that a coach can rely on as an answer for poor results. And, both can be valid. But you cannot make objective strides with time management if you do not understand how much time you are using per move.
Another unfair thing about time management is you can have amazingly perfect TM skills, but overlooking a single thing can destroy your game. Yep, chess is unfair like that, and it happens to everyone. Therefore, time management is important, and can contribute toward winning games, but it isn't the sole reason a person loses, typically. Poor time management is a symptom of either impatience (moving too quickly) or hitting too many knowledge gaps within the same game. The remedy is to learn how to play more positions, which is now a quick fix, but it is a permanent fix over time.
Learning New Positions to Combat Knowledge Gaps
Here are methods I recommend for combating knowledge gaps:
Openings
First, learn 1 mainline variation of any opening.
Second, learn why each move is played. This may require you to buy a book, watch videos, hire a coach, etc...
Third, learn a variation off of the mainline and repeat steps 1 and 2.
Fourth, learn a good amount of an opening before moving on to a new opening.
Fifth, play through at least 10 high level games of the opening you're learning. Preferably, play through 10 per variation, too.
Sixth, play through at least 10 low level games of the opening you are learning to experience the difference in play.
Tactics
First, solve tactics according to theme (Lichess has a theme breakdown for you already pre-made!).
Second, solve at least 100 before moving on to a new theme.
Third, once per month solve 100 tactics using "Even Mix." Then, compare your success to last month's success. Overtime, you will see improvement.
Planning
First, play the same opening repeatedly, and don't jump around.
Second, review every game you play. I recommend Layered Analysis, but other methods can work, too.
Endgame
Endgame is broken down into 2 types for me: Mechanical Endgames and Principled Endgames. You can tell the difference because the simpler the endgame title is, the more mechanical it is. Here is a list of mechanical endgames:
- QQ v K
- QR v K
- RR v K
- KQ v K
- KR v K
- KQ v KN
- KQ v KB
- KBB v K
- KBN v K
- K+1 v K (Win and Draw)
- The Square of the Pawn
- The Lucena Position
- The Philidor Position
- The Vancura Position
Here is a list of endgames that get a bit more into the weeds in terms of understanding them. So, they can feel mechanical at times, and principled at other times. The better you are at chess, the more mechanical many "difficult" endgames will be:
- KQ v KR
- KRB v KR (win and draw)
- Trebuchet Positions
- KNN v K+1 (Troitsky Line)
- Mined Squares
- Corresponding Squares
Here are some endgames that are principled, and less mechanical for most people:
- K+1 edge pawn on the 7th rank vs K+R
- Pawnless endgames with 6 - 8 total pieces (3 or 4 per side)
- Domination in the Endgame
- Creating and maintaining fortresses (some are easy, and some are more nuanced)
- Mixed endgames (eg: KRN+2 vs KB+4)
There are tons of endgames that can be listed, and players of different strengths will categorize them all differently. But a good rule of thumb is the longer the description is of the endgame you are learning, the more nuanced it is (and often requires principles to understand it instead of just a basic pattern to learn).
Chess is a Never Ending Pursuit
Just remember chess is never ending, even for the best players. Chess is a game of errors. Chess forces introspection. If you cannot reconcile the frustrations chess brings you, then it will be tough to improve. Chess, at its core, is frustrating. Learning to deal with that frustration is a hurdle most chess players never jump over because they never think about it. Don't give in to the anger and rage when losing. Replace your anger and rage with curiosity. Approach your losses with curiosity, and try to uncover what your opponent knew that you didn't - and I guarantee that if you think the answer is "He saw a tactic I missed" then you are wrong. "Why did you miss that tactic?" is curious. "I missed a tactic" is self-critical, and unhelpful if you leave it at that.
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