Taking more time

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I don’t know chess well enough to confirm or dispute that :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I learned a Chinese go adage from Pros that says: long thinking leads to bad moves. :stuck_out_tongue:

Evidently you are doing something right to be a 4D.

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Yeah but what I am doing right isn’t allowing me to go forward which means the things I am doing right I am not doing right enough to compensate for the areas I am not doing right so its time to figure them out.

But, I am already quite satisfied with my results the last 2 days I have slowed down a little bit and put more time into considering and taking more of my opponents seriously.

Still not 100% with it yet but I have won some games pretty decisively and solidly without having to mass kill something.

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I’m quite a slow player by nature, often faced with the opposite problem.
I regularly get run over by byo-yomi in blitz games, and I always make productive use of 1h+ in a tournament.

To a trigger-finger player I would give the same advice that was given to me and others as restless kids in chess club: Sit on your hands while thinking. Only when you have thoroughly thought through your next move and you know exactly where it goes, may you pick up the stone and place it.

When you have found “a good move”, don’t stop there.
I got this little trick from chess player kingscrusher on YouTube, who I used to watch a lot.
He will find “ok, ♘b5 achieves X. Is there anything stronger here?”, then consider other options. This can be so helpful just to broaden your horizon for ideas!

Especially when the next move is obvious, you should pause and look for questions such as:

  • how much territory does black/white have? what is the score?
  • what is the life&death status of various groups? (where) do you have sente moves against them?
  • what are the biggest vital points in the position?

You can always spend more time on these.

Also play longer games to actually train yourself in better time management.

Keep an eye on your clock and aim to use up all your main time by endgame. Don’t end with 10 minutes on the clock.

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Somehow I have both problems… I can sometimes reflex play without thinking at all, and when I do think I can happily consume 2h + 6x1m in serious games and still be wishing for a little more time :stuck_out_tongue: haha

Jerry from ChessNetwork is better #fightme

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Sadly having more time on the clock has no effect on how fast I decide to click. I tried this already in the past.

And, the sit on the hands thing I have heard of and can be a good idea similar to having your hand off your mouse.

The questions thing has been helping I can confirm ever since implementing ROSE and a few of the other questions suggested. My games have felt way nicer and smoother.

I also noticed that I take fights I don’t have to I try to kill something I don’t have to kill played about 3 games where I used ROSE to stop myself trying to kill something to take a larger point on the board with it benefiting me in the end.

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Jerry has better attitude, I have to admit at least that. :slight_smile:
He takes his losses better and is a more cheerful entertainer.

I like kingscrusher for his fresh opinions and ideas like “positional trump cards” and “exploiting the weakness of the last move”. He always comes up with some little thing to improve his thought process, and I can apply that too.

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What about tweaking the distribution of the time?

I’ve no idea what settings you usually use but
I’m thinking about the difference between say, byo yomi and fisher. I find it odd that people play games with byo yomi that effectively mean they have the same amount of time for each move (with an option of using a period or two in one go of course but you then can’t get those back).
With Fischer, you can have settings that are quite fast but you can “earn” a buffer to use more flexibly on particular moves/sequences where necessary. In byo yomi, if you play fast there is no benefit, you just lose that time.

Anyway, I’m rambling but my point is a small change to time settings, in combination with a conscious effort to sometimes spend a bit more time might be better than just thinking “I need to play slower” or by implication “I need to spend more time on each move”. I think the latter sounds so jarring to your natural inclinations that it’s too tough to stick to. An ambition of only spending extra time occasionally in a game might be more achievable at first and the time settings might help?

It’s not like you need me to tell you to think about whether or not a position is complex or not to work out when to think more. This is something I struggled with since I often can’t tell if it’s a simple or complex position!

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The time settings was not the issue. As I stated above tweaking the time has no effect on weather I click quickly or not. I have played games with 45:00 on the clock and spent 10 minutes total while my opponent spent there 45:00 :-). Trust me if I thought time was the issue this thread wouldn’t have been made.

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Even correspondance?

Oh man sometimes ESPECIALLY correspondence

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I just saw a post go up about the double click submit mode for moves. Unrelated of course but it made me think how that could also make you take more time for games. Having to double click can make you reconsider.

Sadly only works on OGS though.

Funny enough yes even correspondence. I am that one guy that sits on the correspondence board until my opponent enters the board and I say “can we finish it now?”.

Like I said time does not determine how fast I click it has nothing to do with the clock or an outer source. It is entirely a mental thing.

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tbh correspondence has always been the time control I spend the least amount of time on when I play it. Like, I would only occasionally work through long variations when things are really complicated but until then I would basically just click the big black button and blitz through moves in the 60 or so games I had going.

Ofc that’s also part of why I don’t do much corr anymore :stuck_out_tongue:

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To slow myself, i take my hand off my laptops touchpad, lean back, think till i’m sure about what move i wanna play, have a sip of beer or wine, and only then reach for my laptop and make my move. This also has the positive side-effect of getting me drunk, thus improving my visualisation skills and allowing me to find moves which i wouldnt even imagine if i were sober ^___^

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I did a quick search on that there internet, and the usual attribution apparently is to Emanuel Lasker.

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I actually have the opposite issue, but I think I have an easy solution to yours.
Before each move, hit “analyse game”, play the move there fast, see if you like it, click “back to game” and if looking at your move hasn’t changed your mind, play the move. That will take you quite a few seconds and show you the board with your move on it, but not yet confirmed.

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I know a few people have suggested time setting changes and the OP has said that is not the issue. But what about this idea…? (This might also help those like me who play too slow).

Use byo-yomi with zero main time and then your target playing time as the period and then play to the period.

Like if you’re trying to slow down, start with 10 second period but use the whole 10 seconds. The point is, you get into a kind of a rhythm because every move is 10 seconds. Then increase the period to 12 seconds, 15 seconds, 20 seconds, etc. You will find ways to use the time productively such as reading sequences, finding alternatives, counting points, etc.

Same applies to those trying to speed up but decrease the periods obviously.

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Fischer might be better for this (I love fischer). For someone trying to slow down, the goal would be to never have the clock reach max.

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I agree that Fischer is great (single point of information about time, much easier to manage) but the point of zero main time byoyomi is that it’s like a metronome because every move takes X seconds (where X is the byoyomi period)

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