The other nice thing about writing down the time as you go is that you can easily see how long you've been thinking about your current move.  Once it gets up near 5 minutes I make myself explicitly decide whether I'm going to just give myself another minute or two to come up with a reasonable move or whether this is one of the few times per game that I'm going to allow myself to take a long think (I usually play 40/90 G/30).

If you can easily do the math in your head it's also worth it to regularly compute how many minutes per move you have to make before the time control.  It can make it more brutally clear just how fast you have to keep moving.

winawer77 wrote on 10/25/07 at 20:02:53:

I don't understand this. Looks to me like there is a lot to win here. If you play the KID, why spend more than 2 minutes on the first 5 moves? Especially if you can decide before the game which ones to play?
If the positions in the late opening are still familiar, then it cannot be necessary to dive deep-sea at this stage either. You will know within a few seconds what the candidate moves are and should be able to develop an efficient routine to make a decision.
Like Thibdb I use Kotov's scheme. In addition, especially at a quite early stage, there is another method: before thinking of moves/plans or whatever, set yourself a limit. This is what Fischer did. You are out of theory, so say to yourself that you will decide within a few minutes.
The only exception is, when you feel that there is some decisive combination in the position. Twice I used almost 30 minutes (from one hour) to figure out a strong sac as far as possible. Of course I could play the next couple of moves almost a tempo. This exception is obvious.

Hi,
I had similar problems and found some very sound advice by Dan Heisman at his column "Novice Nook" at chesscafe.com. Look at # 10,40,52 and 61 from the archives.

I don´t mean to offend you by referring to a "novice" column regardless of your strength, as your rating is so much higher than mine. But I found the advice sound and managed to improve following his guidelines. A lot of his advice has been mentioned by other folks. The basics seem to be:

1. Writing down the time you spent each move
- because only that way you can analyze where you spent too much time later on.
2. Playing simple moves and opening quickly
- because that gives you more time for the critical moves.
3. Checking how much time is left per move until the next time control
- because then you can decide wether it is worth to spend some extra time on one move. Don´t go "all in" with your time budget, if it is likely that more critical decisions have to be made later in the game.
I (and Mr. Heisman, i hope) don´t think that you should follow Kotows method too strictly by allotting an identical time budget to every 10 moves or so. If you know your opening, why not playing the first 10 moves within 5 minutes? Furthermore, if an early endgame arises it is likely that the game can be longer than average. If you spend the full time for the first 40 moves the remaining 30 or 60 minutes for the rest of the game may not be enough. On the other hand, if you can spot an instantly winning tactic, you can take all the time left calculating the move, for if it works the game is finished shortly after.
4. and hardest:
Finding out which moves are critical, and deciding fast on non-critical moves. If Bd2 and Be3 both are sound and of about the average value, it´s not worth your precious time to decide between these moves.

Regards, Lou

winawer77 wrote on 10/26/07 at 16:54:03:

In addition to the times per move I would also add the evaluation (computerguided or not and if possible with the evaluation after the best alternative). What I noticed with a couple of games where I got into time trouble was that it wasnt caused by having to calculate much or anything, but that I had some minor advantage and couldnt find a way to cash in on it (or alternatively how to keep the opponent from cashing in on his advantage). One further worrying thing was that with the moves that took the longest think I was actually worsening my position
I cured that part by going through a lot of tense middle games (eg Karpov and Petrosjan) and a course I took for work about decision making and time management (the latter was way more helpfull though). Now all that remains for a total cure is a more effective way of calculating and some real insight in the endgame

Btw time trouble in itself isnt bad and can even be used to your advantage. It forces you to completely focus on the game and a direct reply in a complicated game can upset your opponent entirely.

Alias wrote on 10/26/07 at 14:30:08:

You are right - of course 

Excellent advice guys, I've never really understood the true value of writing the move times down. Just seems like an extra hassle to me.
There are some players local to me that really move fast, rarely using more than 75% of their alloted time by the time the control is reached. I always wonder how such players move as fast as they do. Do they have it all worked out? Or do they just rely on making simple moves almost instantly and thinking on their opponents time? I realise this is a good blitz tactic, I regularly do this when I play online, however, in a classical time control surely this is stretching it a bit far? 

My aim is to be able to play like these guys, however I delve into the position so much (indeed this is why I enjoy chess) that I do not feel that I would be playing to my maximum if I didnt play this way. Something has go to give I suppose.

As Mikhail Tal once told a young Garry Kasparov:  First you sacrifice, then you calculate!