Originally Posted by Fromper
So I've been trying to improve, and I think I'm making decent progress, but there's one aspect of the game that I still don't have a handle on - playing fast. Most of my tournament games are at G/75 or G/120, and I prefer the G/120, because the G/75 seems a little bit fast to me. Not a lot, and I'm usually ok, but I sometimes feel the time pressure at that speed.
But when I get down to less than half an hour on my clock, I start to move faster and often make dumb mistakes. And when I try to play blitz, I'm just awful at it. Even though my blitz games are never faster than 10 minutes, my blitz rating on FICS is about 600 points lower than my standard rating.
Now I know that theoretically, improving my slow game will make me a better blitz player. But I still feel that I really need to get better at playing in time trouble, since it does happen in tournaments when I get down to only a little time left on my clock in slow games. When I get in those situations, it's not just that I make poorer decisions overall, but I often just plain forget to blunder check my moves.
For instance, last night I played a 15 minute game on FICS. I managed to do well early and get an endgame where I had a rook, bishop, and pawns, while my opponent only had a bishop and pawns. So I moved my rook to a square where his bishop could take it for free. I still won the resulting even material endgame, but I felt pretty stupid for hanging the rook, especially since I had about 3 or 4 minutes left, so I did have time to take 5 seconds to blunder check every move.
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One strategy in such a situation is to purposely plant your pieces on squares of the opposite colour to that of your opponents bishop. That way you can't blunder a piece unless you let his king take it and usually you can see that one coming.
Until you get down to five minutes you should play as if you have all the time in the world. My plan in most games is just to stay at least a little ahead of my opponent on time. That is usually all it takes. Where you have to make an obvious move just make the move. Don't sit and analyse the position. Take the rook that is checking your king. Also don't waste time in the openings. Know what you are going to play for the first ten moves or so, so that you can play them within five or ten minutes of clock time.
The amusing side of this strategy is that occasionally this unnerves your opponent who fears that he is getting into some prepared opening trap and so plays a second-best move to get out of your preparation. As soon as something that I don't recognize gets played I slow down and take a close look at the position and ask myself, "What is wrong with my opponent's move?"
Originally Posted by Fromper
I know my time management skills when I have a ton of time left are fine. I don't move too fast and make dumb mistakes because of it like many people. But how do I get better in situations where I'm running low on time? I'm trying to play practice games every day, and I'm intentionally making some of those blitz games at 10-15 minute speeds to get used to speeding up my thinking.
This is part of why I think endgame study is so important for me at this point. Many of those situations where I'm running low on time are endgames, so the more I know about how to play them, the more instinctive it will be, and the less time I'll have to spend thinking.
But I suck at playing fast, and I'm not sure what to do about it. Practicing making the same mistakes over and over won't help prevent those mistakes, but besides playing blitz games to get used to it, I don't know what else I could do to make my practice more useful. Any suggestions for how to force myself to blunder check on every move, even in limited time situations?
--Fromper
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Play fast games with your computer. Maybe even ridiculous time limits like two minutes or one minute. Play one hundred games like that.
With endgames piece activity is more important than material in many cases. You need to know the winning themes especially for rook endings and maybe queen endings.
Personally I think that I may never play a blitz game again if I have my way. They introduce bad habits.
Crash