How To Deal With Time Trouble?

Recently, I received a couple e-mails from students who are having a hard time dealing
with time trouble. And if you are one of those chess players who succumb to this
dilemma often, then you are in for a treat. Right here, I will lay down certain tips and
tricks that will help you combat this OTB problem.
Very often, we see the following situation: a player plays a good game, gets an
advantage, but then appears in time trouble! Under time pressure, he makes an
annoying mistake and even loses in the end!
Such a situation is certainly frustrating. And the recommendations Im about to give will
help set yourself free from the chains of time trouble.

First and foremost, there is a great difference between thinking and having
doubts.

In most cases, a chess player THINKS only during the first few minutes after the
opponent makes his move. After that, he starts to check the SAME variations again and
again. Not contented, he starts to worry about the consequences, and try to find 100%
ideal move, and the cycle goes on and on.
Guess what? This cycle doesnt help at all! This only creates chaos in his head and
totally mixes things up. Finally, after going through the same variations, worrying about
the consequences, and vainly searching for the perfect move, he does something
ridiculous and you should know what happens next.
To avoid this typical, VERY frustrating, and game-breaking scenario, keep these in
mind:
> Do NOT calculate 1 variation 2 times. You may not be the BEST calculator
around but when you sit at the board, you only have yourself to trust.
> In most cases you should NOT spend more than 3 minutes on 1 move. You
may need to spend more time on crucial and highly tactical positions, but 3 minutes is
the average for every move.
This also brings us to the next advice:

Use your intuition.

Look, even a computer whether its Rybka, Fritz, or even that supercomputer Hydra,
CANNOT calculate all of the lines until the end and come to a 100 percent correct
conclusion. That said, trying to judge the outcome of the game for MANY moves ahead
is a wasted effort.
Oftentimes, you will find yourself in a situation where you have 2 or 3 logical moves
and theres no way you can calculate the lines until the end or come to a certain
conclusion.
What to do?
Use your intuition! This means you should choose a move, which came to your
mind FIRST (which seemed good for you at first sight on a position) and then do only
the needed calculation to verify that the move is tactically sound. This is a very
powerful advice! Check it in your practice, and youll see that it works great!
And another piece of advice: Make normal moves.

Most often, a game is decided by a mistake of one player (NOT by a brilliant play of his
opponent). That said, its more important to avoid mistakes, than to find 100%
perfect moves all the time.
Dont be too harsh on yourself. Dont try to make 100% correct moves all the time.
NORMAL move is good enough in most cases.
Even the greatest players like Karpov follow this advice! The former World Champion,
when faced with a branching point in one of his games, go for the sound, normal, and
generally good move the one that requires the least amount of calculation.
He didnt win ALL of his games, BUT he won MOST of them. Heck! He was a former
World Champion. Youd do great by following his footsteps.

Let me tell you 1 little story.

Recently I got a message from a chess player, a close follower of my blog to be precise.
He explained his chess problems, and one of them was constant time trouble. I
recommended one of my chess courses, which contains the answers to most of his
questions.
He answered: Yes, I was thinking about your courses since the last month, but
couldnt decide which one to start with!
I cant but smile and laugh a bit. Its not surprising that he has a time trouble in chess,
isnt it? He thought about 1 simple decision during more than a month!!!
In an old manual for Samurais, I found the following quote: (chess is a model of war by
the way, so samurais wisdom is suitable for chess)
Man should make a decision during 7 breathing in. If thinking takes too
long, the result will be lamentable.

So the 4th advice is: Decide and do it quickly!

If you have time troubles in chess, then you probably have problems when it
comes to making decisions in life. Procrastination is a habit you want to get rid of.
I know many people who spent tons of time to decide which of my courses to order.
Meanwhile, they lost the most important thing TIME. It was much better to make
ANY decision, but to make it quickly and to start going forward.
ANY decision moves you forward! If your decision was wrong, then you will know
that this thing does not work. You learn something from it, and its going to be useful in
the future. Then you will start finding another solution and you will always keep going
forward!
 On the other hand, the one who doesnt make a decision (or postpone it) will be stuck
on his current place. Hell have no progress whatsoever!
That person who goes forward (who makes a decision and learns from it), will easily
outrun him!
Another example: some people wait several months to get my course with a discount.
Again, they will save a few bucks, but lose TIME.
I strongly advice that you make decisions, and make them quickly! ANY decision is
better than nothing!

For example, if you think that my lessons dont help you reject them completely.
Unsubscribe from my mailing list and start searching for something else.
If you think that my lessons are useful then what are you waiting for?! Order the
complete chess courses (LINK) and start studying them NOW! If you only read these
blog-posts, you still get something useful, BUT its very little compared to what my
complete chess courses offer. Of course, I keep the better and BIGGER stuff in my
complete courses.
Make a decision!

The psychology of time trouble

Time trouble is one of the most common problems tournament chess players face, with
all of us at one time or another falling into the trap of using it as an excuse for games
we lose. Carlos Martnez, a Spanish psychologist specialising in chess, explains some of
the psychological factors behind it and how we can learn to combat them.

Introduction

Much has been written about the factor of time in chess and how it influences play or,
more specifically, decisions we take and the eventual outcome of the game. Amid all
the chess literature on this theme Id highlight Jonathan Rowsons book, The Seven
Deadly Chess Sins. In the chapter devoted to the sin of perfectionism, the author
analyses the causes that lead players to get low on time. He says something thats
highly worth keeping in mind:

My bottom line, however, is that it is not always sinful to run into time-trouble and we
shouldnt always blame ourselves for doing so. What is important is that you realize just
how important a part of the game the clock is [] It may be helpful to see it as one of
the four dimensions of the game, to be treated with as much attention as the other
three.

There are two issues to highlight from that quote:

1. Time trouble isnt always a genuine problem. There are extremely complicated
games where you need to carry out very concrete and exact calculation and that leads
 to consuming a lot of time. Similarly, you sometimes come to a decisive moment in a
game and have to analyse a move very carefully. That may, once again, require you to
use up a lot of time.
2. Look on the clock as a dimension of the game. On many occasions its just not
enough to understand, plan and calculate well in positions you also need to carry out
all those procedures relatively quickly. The clock is an inherent part of the game and
strongly influences it. Its therefore very important that if time trouble becomes a
constant feature in your games you should become aware of that and work on it.

The goal of the current article is to describe and reflect on some of the causes of time
trouble and to propose some strategies that will help you to work on improving that
aspect of your game.

Time trouble: a reassuring excuse

Regardless of the level its very common to encounter players who have difficulty
managing their time adequately. That handicap leads them to commit errors in a game
they had under control, or even won, and time is then often used as an excuse or
justification for the result. The process, to generalise and sum up, is as follows: a
player starts to consume more time that his opponent looking for better plans, ideas
and moves in a position. As the game goes on, he begins to get low on time but his
position is clearly better. He barely has any time left when the decisive moment comes
and overlooks a blow from his opponent for instance an intermezzo or makes a
miscalculation. He loses the game or, in the best case scenario, makes a draw. And,
from that point on, he uses the lack of time as a justification he played better than his
opponent and claims that if only it wasnt for time trouble he would undoubtedly have
gone on to win. As if time and managing it well wasnt a fundamental part of the game
and one required for success. This process, with myriad variations, occurs all the time.

I dont intend to demonise time trouble or argue it always represents a problem, but if
you get into constant time trouble you should ask yourself whether that highlights
factors you can recognise, train and improve. Those factors might be of two types:
technical and psychological. The technical factors have to do with chess itself, with
knowledge and how you apply it in practice in particular positions. There are chess
situations during a game that we can later look back on with some clarity. The
psychological factors, however, are much more silent and frequently occur without
our knowledge of them or without us recognising their importance. The first step is
therefore to identify them to become aware of our thought processes and
observe sincerely and honestly what goes on in our minds during a game,
and particularly at key moments. Only on that basis will we be able to generate
solutions and find specific areas we can work on and improve.
 Other psychological factors

Another frequently encountered psychological factor which causes or intensifies time

trouble is a players lack of confidence. In the classic book, The Psychology of Chess,
GM Yuri Averbakh writes:

My own experience shows that a lack of time isnt usually due to an inability to allocate
time sensibly but a character flaw linked to indecision; in practice its usually about
hesitation. A chess player doesnt get short on time because he doesnt know how to
allocate it, but because hes not sufficiently sure of himself, he doesnt trust his
calculation and, therefore, he checks the same variation again and again.

Although you could refine that statement a little, Averbakh clearly points to
psychological factors and not a mere inability to manage the clock. A lack of confidence
can usually be recognised in two different ways:

1. Ask a player directly to relate his thought processes during a game. The appearance of
doubts in analysis and/or taking decisions is one indicator of a lack of confidence.

2. Constant time consumption over a series of moves. This can be seen when a player
consumes minutes on each of a series of consecutive moves which, in essence, are not
critical to the outcome of the game.

Some characteristics of a lack of confidence are: doubts about the openings we play,
uncertainty over the evaluation of positions, overestimation of the possibilities of our
opponent and pessimistic or negative thoughts about the outcome of the
game. Training specific visualisation exercises or easy tactical/technical
exercises can help us increase our confidence during games.
Another important psychological factor that leads to time trouble is fear of your
opponent. This fear mainly arises when you play against a superior opponent, or
against a player you have a negative score against. You try to play a good game where
you commit no mistakes. You carefully and scrupulously analyse each of your moves,
trying not to miss anything. To put it another way: you adopt a more rigid process of
thought and play, losing a certain freedom and creativity in the analysis and evaluation
of positions. Maintaining a constant state of alertness involves an enormous
expenditure of energy (fatigue) and, moreover, uses up a lot of time (tension). But
what if you play chess without trying to demonstrate anything to anybody?
And you play chess to enjoy it? And you fully enjoy the game and the ideas
and calculations you carry out?

Finally, Id like to point out another key factor which was already referred to at the start
of this article: perfectionism. Jonathan Rowson writes:
Perfectionism manifests itself as the desire to find the best move on each and every
occasion [] Perfectionists thus strive to play chess not as the chess-player they are,
but as the chess-player that they assume themselves to be when they are most perfect.
In The Psychology of a Chess Player Krogius also refers to this. He mentions analytical
doubts and writes:

They occur when you insist on finding the best, unique and exclusive move in each
position. That causes a reasonable variation not to seem sufficiently effective; you want
to find something more convincing.

There are players who try to punish any move of their rival which strikes their eyes and
understanding as strange or extravagant. Thats what Rowson calls the moraliser.
This type of player, or what Id call mental strategy, inevitably ends up consuming
excessive time trying to find the opponents error and the fitting punishment. Such a
way of thinking generates tension while contemplating and taking decisions at the
board and will lead to the unproductive use of precious time. No perfect game exists
(although seeing some of Magnus Carlsens you might doubt that), and therefore you
shouldnt play to punish your opponent according to a perfect model. The game
consists of resolving problems that arise. Youre not a superior being with
supernatural powers but a player trying to show his best chess, giving
meaning to what happens in the game.
In conclusion

Although time trouble is a common phenomenon and generally results from only a few
factors, its still very much a personal matter. Realising which of your own character
traits cause or intensify it is the first step towards understanding and training to avoid
time trouble.