Simple(r) Chess: Use Your Time

Time management is a skill

Welcome back to Chess in Small Doses. Today we finish our series of Simple(r) Chess, with five things you can work on to play better chess. So far they have been:

• Take a Time Out

• Ask Questions

• Get Active

• and Safety First

Now we’re going to learn about using our time by talking about Goldilocks.

If you’re not familiar, Goldilocks is the central character in a children’s story. The key to the story is that she doesn’t like things too much one way or the other, but instead likes them just right. It’s taken me years to understand how powerful this concept is.

As a physician it has been my observation that people do not like the complexity of life. We often wish for simpler answers like “Is this good or bad?” Sometimes I can answer definitively but often I cannot. Humans seem to want to reduce the world to one of two options, to reduce complexity of decisions they face. I have to bring out Goldilocks often to help them understand that our bodies and our very existence depends on things being just right. We cannot shade too far one way or the other without being harmed. You might wonder what any of that has to do with chess, but we chess players play a game that requires a clock.

Dilemma vs Problem

Time is a dilemma, not a problem. Problems are finite and solvable whereas dilemmas are endless and always exist. Dilemmas abound in this world and drive people crazy when they try to “solve” them like a problem. The example I often use is “hungry” vs “hunger”. Being hungry is a problem that can be solved by eating foot. However hunger will always return as long as you’re alive. You can never solve hunger, only manage it for a brief time. This is the nature of dilemmas, they always return and require trade offs to manage them. You can only make those trade offs by knowing what you value most. If you value speed you’ll eat fast and for convenience. If you value health, you’ll eat slowly and with an eye towards quality. What’s maddening about dilemmas is no matter how many times you figure out what you want, eventually you’ll need to do it again. Back to chess.

Time in chess is a dilemma because until the game ends we’re always having to make another time-based decisions about what to play next. There is always a clock staring at you, counting down as you consider what to do next. When you move, your clock stops and your opponent’s begins until they decide and it starts all over again.

I believe the popularity of Bullet and Blitz is partly because you don’t really face this dilemma, you just try to move quickly. You don’t have time to think for long, so you just get to play chess (sorta). Longer games where you can evaluate two different moves demand you to think ahead…but that’s hard and taxing on the brain. It’s also not how humans are built. We’re built to survive the moment, to address the challenge we face right now. As we see the clock tick down people generally have one of two responses: Go fast or go slow. We’re again trying to reduce the complexity of life to one of two options.

I am very much the rabbit in this example, playing too quickly. Famously Ben Johnson of Perpetual Chess describes himself as too slow, eventually getting into time trouble often. Both ends are harmful. I cannot tell you how many “won” games I’ve lost by moving too quickly in a critical position. It’s really a chess crime. However, playing too slowly leads inevitably to a time crunch where the quality of your play goes down right when you need it most.

Too Slow or Too Fast

There’s more going on here than just chess of course. Dealing with time is something our brains are built to do, but not always rationally and not always the same way. There’s a wide variety of ways people deal with time and how to use it. It all depends on something called the discount rate, which is an economic term for the expected return on an investment. Each of us will have an internal discount rate where our minds will estimate the expected return from time and effort invested in anything. This powerful concept determines much of our behavior and motivation. For example, I meet many people who would invest significant time to make food for others. However, when it comes for making food for themselves they’re looking for the quickest, easiest food-like substance they can find. It’s just our brains discounting the time invested vs. the expected return on that time.

I believe this is why we’re all a little different when it comes to time in chess. Some of us feel that spending more time on a position would be too painful and not rewarding. Others feel that the pain of a mistake would be too great, so we procrastinate the decision. It’s just human nature, or more specifically your particular human nature. Your internal discount rate is yours and up to you to manage. You can and should try to develop the skill of managing your time in chess, but knowing where you’re starting from will allow you to develop some tactics or strategies (more on that later).

So what is “just right” time usage? Has anyone ever tried to explain it to you in regard to chess? How would anyone know? We find ourselves right back with Goldilocks looking for “just right.”

Two Move Triggers

If time is a dilemma, then we need to clarify what we’re trying to get from our time. If we’re just out to have fun, then enjoy your bullet or blitz marathon. However, if we value improvement then we have some work to do. We will need to find the best move we can in the time we have. We will have to think… but not for too long… about a position. This isn’t a post about thought process but suffice to say, we’ll need to understand what the last move did, what we can do next, and what our opponent will do in response. This means we need to not move until we’re sure that either a) it’s the best move or, b) we’ve taken too much time. This idea is called the “Two Move Triggers” and I again fully credit NM Dan Heisman for it.

The first trigger is when you have found the best move possible. That’s the easy part. If you see mate in 3 it doesn’t really matter if you missed mate in 2. If you’ve found a mate you play it. The second trigger is when “X” time has passed. This is harder. You stop thinking when you have spent more time than you can afford on a single move.

The “X” time per move is just arithmetic. Take the time of the game, divide by 40 moves (most games end at or before that) and then add the increment. My training games are typically 15min+10sec games so let’s see how that would work out.

(15 minutes / 40 moves) + 10 seconds = 32.5 seconds per move.

I also play in the Lichess 4545 League where the games are 45 min + 45 sec

(45 minutes/ 40 moves) + 45 seconds = 112.5 seconds a move (or nearly 2 minutes!)

Trigger 2 is about knowing how much time you can spend per move before you start hurting your chances later in the game. It’s also about being aware of how much time has passed as you think through your options. Keeping clock time in mind is a skill… and one that needs to be practiced.

We only have so much time we can dedicate to a single position. We can spend less than “X” in the opening to save time for later. Once the opening ends, we slow down. On critical positions or complex positions we can spend much more time, multiples of “X”. The time per move is just a guide but will help you recognize if you’re going too fast or too slow.

Let’s look at some examples from my 15+10 training games to see it in action.

Just Right

Here’s an example of Trigger 1.

My opponent just played Rc7?? and I took all of 8.8 seconds to play Qa1+ winning the game. All I really need to do is make sure the move is safe but not much more than that. Trigger 1 was met and I moved. (Notice how they were in time trouble and blundered.)

Here’s an example of Trigger 2.

My opponent just played f4? and I was surprised. I had time on the clock but spent over 3 minutes trying to work out any crazy sacrifices after I played Bxf4. It seemed winning but I wanted to know what I’d do after Bxf4 Bxf6. That seemed critical to me and I had the time to calculate all the lines. I saw that if Bxf4 Bxf6 gxf Rxe6 fxe Qxg6+ I had Qg7 stopping the checks.

Its Not That Easy

OK a moment of honesty here. I still play too fast. It’s not that easy to change your nature. If you play fast you’ll always have the tendency to want to move. If you play slow, you’ll always have the urge to check one more time. These tendencies can be changed by trying to be intentional about what we want to get from our chess. That deep work however takes practice and time. In the mean time I have a few suggested tactics.

For the fast players, there are several things you can do. I’ll call these the Rabbit Rules:

• Just sit there for 10-15 seconds before every move. Don’t move at all. Just sit there and do nothing. We’re trying to break the stimulus-response loop and allow the thinking brain to take over.

• Use a scoresheet to write down the move (and the time if you want). Obviously this works better in slower games, but it’s another way to put a pause between their move and your move.

• Name what’s changed in the position. It can be as simple as “Knight developed to f3.” But noting how the position has changed allows the brain to bring it into awareness and your mind to process it.

For the slow players, there are also several things you can do. The Tortoise Rules are:

• In the opening just move. Seriously, just move. Yes, you might get it wrong but that’s a great way to learn what not to do.

• Give yourself permission to be wrong. This is how we learn. There’s a quote I like. “Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement.” Being wrong is the first step in getting better.

• Set a maximum time per move. Maybe it’s 5 minutes, maybe it’s 10. But whatever it is you decide upon, stick with it. Once the time is up just play the best move you’ve found by then and move on. You’ll need the remaining time for the rest of the game.

It’s Not About Time

Managing our time is perhaps one of the hardest parts of chess. There are so many books and articles written on tactics and strategy, but so few on optimal time management. Maybe that’s because it’s not really up to others to define. It’s up to us.

Turns out that using our time in chess isn’t about time at all. It’s really about what we value most from chess. We need to clarify our relationship with chess. The sooner you can clarify this for yourself, the better. If we want improvement then we must ask more from ourselves with each move. We need to give ourselves permission to make mistakes, but also hold ourselves to a higher standard with every move. As my previous coach told me “Growth occurs when we leave our comfort zone.”

Thank you for reading Chess in Small Doses. I appreciate your time and hope you find the posts helpful. I would love to hear your thoughts. This concludes the Simple(r) Series which I hope you’ve either enjoyed or gotten something from. Until the next time, good luck with your chess.