I played black in this OTB game yesterday. Time-control was 90min+30sec for the whole game.
Thought I played a solid game but was shocked when my good friend Stockfish told me that we both missed several winning tactics for white.
lichess.org/study/1wwikVOb/NnMy7Mv6What do you think of the game and any suggestion on how to improve ones tactical awareness?
It is a tense game. Mistakes were made in attack as well as in defence. We do not know how much time was spent on the moves. In a 90+30 time control you should spend all your time by move 30 and then finish just on increment. By using more time you can improve defence as well as attack.
Interesting idea to have spend all time at move 30, never heard that one before. For me personally its not a good idea as I play relatively very bad in time pressure
30 seconds per move is no time pressure. There are people here who play a whole game in 30 seconds. Many chess games are decided by move 30. So the idea is to use more time to get a winning position by move 30 and then finish on increment. If two equal players play, the one that uses more time wins.
Couldn't disagree more
That sounds totally stupid. I play otb in a league with a timecontrol 100 minutes for 40 moves with 30 second increment. We have some players - sometimes myself - who get down on the clock as you suggest (and opponents who do it similarly) and very often the moves up to move 40 seriously lack in quality with pretty large oversights. So no, better try to spend your time on the moves where it matters more and less on the easier or not that relevant moves. Sometimes its too difficult from an early point but then hopfeully your opponent plays as bad as you.
We have someone like Grischuk who can do it (and not even he is always getting away with it, look for example the Candidates game against Aronian which he basically loses because of too little time) but not everybody can do it.
Missing tactics is all about bad luck. So, good luck!
These were difficult tactics to spot so don't be too harsh on yourself. As for improvement - one of the most effective ideas I've found is to create a study for myself where I keep all the tactics that I encountered during my own games and then reviewing it periodically. Certain openings lead to certain type of tactics, and getting familiar with them will help you spot them next time.
Using an FEN to get the board position, and then annotating the example with arrows etc. is very good for first retention, and then later review. Here is an example in case you are interested to see what I'm talking about.
Although off topic, , my reactions to various topics discussed.
My opinion--just like everyone else who comments on time management--is to use what time is comfortable for you. I'm a fast thinker and would be completely bored is I had to use 90 minutes for my first 30 moves. I do play worse moves when I spend more time.
Most games, below master level, are decided by the 19th move. More accurate would be to say that the game is decided a couple of moves after book is expended.
