lichess.org
Donate

Time Management is one thing I hate

I've been playing pretty good chess lately and I've been ending up with better positions in most of the games. But somehow I manage to turn it around and end up losing in the endgame in low time. Almost all of my last few games are pretty funny. Any way to work on that? I meant 10+5 rapid games, btw
I know the feeling (loosing for seconds or to be in a better position but blundering because of the time pressure) and that's why I was considering these days to follow the advice of the experienced players and just play games with longer time formats. I will switch from 10/0 to 15/10 and again if the time is the problem, I will continue study* even more and play 30/0 or 30/20, but this means that I need other people who would like to improve their chess skills and dedicate 30/40+ minutes of their time for a game.

* playing on my board to explore certain openings, going through the masters' games and solving puzzles. :)

Once I become good in the openings and the middle game (without overthinking the first 5-10 moves, then I will switch to rapid and after years to blitz meeting better players and once again - our enemy - time constraint. :)

If you want, we can play together in 15/10 format these days. Today I can't because I didn't sleep enough and my performance will be poor. I have other duties too, but I can write you a personal message and we can see when is the appropriate time for both of us during the days/nights. Even if you don't want to play with me, I hope that my post is useful to you (and the others) and to continue play, enjoy and learn from that beautiful game that develops so many abilities and virtues eventually. Making friends in the process is another benefit. :)
Hey! First of all keep playing rapid, it's the best recipe for online improvement. Also, you will naturally get better in time scrambles as you get better and more experienced in chess, so you shouldn't focus on it too much at this point.

In case you want to specifically work on time management, I'd recommend playing casual games with the time control you want to get good at, in this case 5 sec increment. Start with very low time (something like 1 minute), so that you will have to live on the increment for longer. After a certain point, you will start to feel the time, and ideally you won't even have to look at the clock after every move.

The most important thing is to always have a plan in mind. You must have a safe move in mind that you can play very quickly if your opponent makes no threats. Speaking of threats, predicting your opponents moves is very important, so that they won't catch you by surprise. And vice versa, you should try to find annoying moves too that might make your opponent panic and lose on time or blunder. These are harder to practice, but you will get better at them as you get better at chess in general.

Cheers!
Thanks, @Quggai and @Selqncheto for the response. I found the idea of playing 1+5 games so as to live on increment very useful and I'll be trying it out. I've also started playing some 3+2 games and also doing more of the puzzle storm to improve my performance in time trouble. Usually what happens is when I study chess, I like spending 15 to 20 minutes on positions and this transferred onto my games. So yea trying to fix and thnx again
I always had the same problem. Turned out I just incredibly suck at endgames XD

This topic has been archived and can no longer be replied to.