Distracted by opponent's time control

At a recent tournament in Cleveland in which I lost two clearly winning positions while having somewhat low, but significantly more time than my opponent. It became clear I am often distracted by my opponent's time pressure, e.g. tending to play much differently than I would otherwise; sometimes faster, more erratically, or trying to introduce complications often sacrificing accuracy. I think I can improve on this without too much trouble (now that I've realised I have this problem; it's popped up occasionally in other situations), but I'm just curious as to whether anyone else has had this problem. I've never heard of others having this issue.

I think that's quite normal. I played in the same tournament (I assume you mean the CWRU one) and completely threw away a win in my third round because I starting blitzing my opponent, who had about 1/4 of my time. Of course, when you blitz in those situations, you rob yourself of the advantage of having more time, thereby helping your opponents.

Wow. Small world out there :P

I would play my normal game regardless of my opponent's remaining time. Blitzing can kill out your advantage. Spending some time on each move can help to get a good advantage on the board which combined with the time advantage can have a crushing effect on the opponent.

I tend to play really fast if my opponent is low on time in order to make him panic and have to move even faster. However, my blitz skills are much poorer than my slow chess (1200 to 1500 on chess.com lol) so this is normally a bad strategy. I normally still win if I have a big advantage but it tends to be much closer than needed.

i blitz even faster until i get a winning position

if the opponent is low on time

thats how i won grade nationals back in 2010 anyways