A few months ago, I played the Eastern Chess Congress, where I suffered a particularly brutal loss - hanging mate-in-1 in a winning position after 3.5 hours of grueling play - and with a full hour left on my clock vs. my opponent's 12 minutes of sudden death time(!).
One of my takeaways from that experience was:
"When you have move than 20 minutes on the clock and it's late in the game, always ALWAYS take at least 1 minute per move."
Well, I'm here to tell you...I apparently learned nothing from that as it happened again in my first round game of the Lichess 4545 LoneWolf league:
https://lichess.org/study/TLLCpZfB/Ww2u7MIR#0
Back when I was improving at fencing, a major thing I had to work on was my mental game. I had to do a lot of meditation and autogenic training, rehearsing key moments and situations in bouts so that, when they occurred, I would be mentally ready to have the correct reaction.
Time to start working on that diligently again - but for chess. This needs to be as important as my daily puzzle regime!
(Some perspective - I realize that playing tournament chess means understanding that you will never be free of these disappointing results after hours of investment - just the scale of the blunder will change. Instead of hanging mate-in-1 it will become a 1-move blunder that weakens a square or loses a pawn. Accept that outcomes like this will always be part of this game, and the challenge - which I enjoy - is the work to minimize them and move to the next level of blunders, so to speak)
