Gorath wrote on 02/26/15 at 18:25:35:

I re-read Vera's article and it is indeed very good. I will make a list of my games time-habits and I am curious what that shows. I know from the past that I use(d) (very) much time between move 10-20.

Stigma wrote on 12/11/17 at 13:44:41:


Yes! This is the right approach for mere mortals. Trying to play on your opponent's time trouble is very risky--often, you just help him. People think mostly about tactics in time trouble, so complications will often play to his strength. Moving fast hurts yourself more than it hurts  him. And it's imperative not to let him impose his rhythm on you. I straighten my back, face straight ahead, relax my arms,  and look down at the board with my eyes only, like Capablanca, all to make my body feel like I'm deliberating with poise.

The one sneaky thing I sometimes do is play strategically sound neutral moves that make him make an open-ended, floating decision with no concrete threats to focus his mind. For example, I'll just centralize my queen in a heavy-piece endgame. Or I'll kick his queen if it's got lots of squares to go to and there's no great basis for deciding.

Botvinnik, however, played unorthodox move-orders against Reshevsky and said, "It is always useful to make a time-trouble addict start thinking early in the game."

Gorath wrote on 02/14/15 at 02:41:07:

I googled +EV, but I am still not sure what this means...

Since the introduction of the increment my time-trouble worries are (almost) completely over!

In the national league I play 90min+30sec inc. for 40 moves + 30 min+30sec inc. for the rest of the game. In the regional league and at my local club I play 90min+15sec inc. for the game.

That was more or less my point. If you're worried about the seconds saved by writing down the moves, there are probably bigger issues that are causing time trouble. 

Ever since the 30 second increment was added, I've not had any problems with time pressure. More importantly, when my opponents start running low on time, I no longer feel quite the same strain as I did before. I don't get caught up in their histrionics as much as I did with 40/2 types of time controls. 

Now, I don't worry too much if I burn half an hour or more on the first ten moves. If my opponent plays the opening very quickly, I wonder whether they had it all mapped out or if they're bluffing. But I no longer worry about the time deficit as much.

In my case it does help me to gather my thoughts and have a fresh look at the position afterwards.

But once I enter serious time trouble I use this trick (i.e. write down moves only when my opponent's clock is ticking) to save precious time. Once a teammate told me a useful trick when playing only on increment: you may try to play a couple of moves almost instantly if your position allows for it. Even if the moves turn out to be somewhat suboptimal, you still gain 1' on your clock (assuming a 30'' increment; which is what we get here for long OTB games). There are times when this makes sense (it certainly did when I got this advice as I had just lost a game 'cause my flag fell!).

But I may try Gorath's approach, could be interesting!

If writing on your opponent's time saves ~5 minutes per game, perhaps your problem is penmanship. Think about it for a moment. You're saying it takes 5 minutes to write maybe 100 words. 

I use the time to write the move down to gather my thoughts. It takes a few seconds, but it definitely helps. The writing down of a move should be able to be done in the span of the increment. 

Thanks for your reactions, especially Gorath!