The Ultimate Time Management Guide for Tournament Players, Part II
Part II: Critical Turns
In last week's article, we looked at ways to save time at other points in the game. This week, we will discuss the moments when we need to use significant time: the critical turns.
Identifying the critical turns
Before we discuss how to think about a critical turn, we must know what it is and how to spot one. Missing a critical moment when it arises and allocating the wrong amount of time for it can be a game-losing error.
A critical turn is one where you must choose between two or more seemingly plausible options, but one is significantly better than the rest. The evaluation of the position could swing wildly depending on whether or not you can make the right decision. This idea is a bit abstract, and is best illustrated through concrete examples.
Let's start with this game I played against IM Alex Ostrovskiy at the National Open a few years ago:
In this position, the a4 pawn has become overextended, and Black can no longer defend it. However, my opponent had already foreseen this and had played Nc4, planning to meet Nxa4 with b5, driving the knight from the defense of the b2 pawn.
At this point, I realized this was a critical move. White has a few options: capturing the knight and then throwing d5, defending the b2 pawn, or going ahead with Nxa4 anyway. It's not immediately obvious which one of these is the best choice, but it's clear that if we make the wrong one, Black could easily gain the initiative on the queenside and start taking over the game, or we could miss our chance to take a free pawn. This is a big decision, so it's the moment to use up some of that time we banked earlier, using the strategies from part I.
Here is another game from the same tournament, against the streamer and internet personality IM Eric Rosen (you can find video coverage of the game on his channel here):
Black's kingside is loose, and his position is full of holes. However, Black is also gaining space with tempo and starting to pick up steam. White can try to curtail Black's initiative in a few ways: Ng5 was the most obvious candidate, but there are also others, such as Bxc6 and d5. Here, it's vital that I find the right way to respond or else I risk being pushed off the board if I allowed Black to consolidate his gains.
Finally, here's a more recent game from last weekend's tournament:
Here, I can go for the simple axb2, after which I am guaranteed to be slightly better; not much calculation needed there. However, I also have the move Bf5, which removes the defender of the b2 pawn. If White has nothing special there, we simply go up an entire exchange, which is a much bigger advantage than if we just trade the pawns. So if Bf5 works, we should play it. The question is: what does White have planned if we go ahead with Bf5?
Before moving on to the next section, take up to 15-20 minutes and try to figure out what decision you would make in the above 3 positions. If you reached these positions in a 90+30 game, this is how much time you can afford to safely spend. Once you're done, reflect on your calculation. How did you organize your thought process? What moves did you prioritize?
What to consider during a critical turn
Building a narrative
Beginners are often told that 'chess positions have no memory' - while this can be true in some cases (I might go into more detail about this in a separate article), reflecting on what's happened to reach this point can be helpful. I'll show you how this can help in the example games.
Baseline moves
The first thing you can do is to find a move or variation that you can quickly determine is satisfactory, so you have a backup option in case the other moves you consider don't work, you can't evaluate the lines clearly, or you're running low on time. The most obvious example is a perpetual check. It could also be a simple move that simply develops a piece, or creates a flight square for the king. These moves aren't spectacular and won't give you an enormous advantage, but having one in the pocket ensures that you won't be forced to make a move you can't figure out if you are taking too long.
Critical moves
Now that you have something to fall back on, it's time to go into the tank and try and find the best move. Start off by making a list of candidate moves. You can use GM Jacob Aagard's three questions (What's the worst-placed piece, where are the weakness, what's my opponent's idea?) as a starting point if none come to mind immediately. Among the candidate moves you have come up with, there should be one or two that really stand out - your intuition tells you they are the right moves. These are the critical moves.
So what is a critical move? The quickest way I can explain it is: it's a move that if it works as intended, is powerful. Emphasis on "as intended". Now here's the problem: it's now your job to figure out if those moves work as intended, or not.
Applying the Shankland Rule
Now this last item is absolutely essential. The Shankland Rule, a method pioneered by its eponymous GM Sam Shankland, states that if you really want to make a move, but your opponent stopped it, the first thing to check is if you can make that move anyways. The problem many players have is that they trust their opponents too much: when their opponents 'stop' their idea, they immediately assume it cannot be done anymore. But more often than not, the idea has not actually been prevented! Your opponent could have been bluffing, or miscalculated. You should not give up on your move so easily and instead try your hardest to find a way to make it work under new circumstances.
Sam Doesn't want you to give up so easily!
Now let's apply these ideas to solve the examples above.
Let's talk about building a narrative first. I had gotten an edge in the opening, and Alex at some point played the move f5?!, which, based on my knowledge of the French, I knew must have been inaccurate. From f5 onwards, neither side has made an obvious mistake, and the game has been trending in White's direction: White is slowly squeezing the position. From this I was able to conclude that White must be moderately to significantly better here, based on what has happened up until this point.
With this information, I can logically conclude that the best move for White should result in a position where I am clearly better. Any moves where I am not much better, I will know is wrong. This immediately rules out moves like Qc2, which just defends the pawn. This kind of move we would only make if we were on the back foot, but we know that's unlikely the case - there is something wrong with Nc4.
From here, I went straight to the point: the most obvious move in this position is Nxa4, which captures the a4 pawn while simultaneously defending the b2 pawn. Is this a critical move? Well, if Black does not have anything to destabilize our setup after Nxa4, we will go b3 next and consolidate the extra pawn, leaving White in a winning position. So if the move works as intended, it's the best move. But can Black do something? Well, Black has b5, removing the defender. After Nc3 Nxb2, Black regains the pawn and might be doing OK. You might have discarded this variation after seeing b5, thinking Black has successfully prevented Nxa4, but wait! Don't give up yet, and apply Shankland Rule.
What's the problem after b5? The knight and pawn are both under attack. But what if there was a way to save the pawn and the knight at the same time? Well, we can't move two pieces at once, but we can move one of them to create a counter attack. After b3!, White gets to trade the knights, and it turns out that Black is not regaining the pawn after all!
Let's play the storytelling game again. Eric, like me, is an aggressive player. In this game, he's been playing true to his style, launching a pawn storm against me on the Kingside. But I know that in the Ruy Lopez, this plan usually does not work for Black. Furthermore, Black's pieces aren't in the best position to support this break: earlier, the queen had to go to c8 to dodge a bishop attack on the diagonal. The h5 knight is loose. I haven't done anything radically incorrect; my moves are all very standard Ruy Lopez moves. All of this indicates that I must have a big advantage here, and that advantage is connected to the fact that Black's play on the kingside is in some way unsound.
Unfortunately, in the game, I failed to even consider the best move. If I had asked the three questions, I would have known that the weakness is the f4 pawn, the worst-placed pieces are the knight on h5 and bishop on a4. Therefore I could have pieced together that the best move is the unintuitive but perfectly logical Bd1!!, targeting the vulnerable knight, bringing another piece to the kingside, and causing a catastrophe on f4. After bxc4 Bxh5, all of Black's overextended pawns are falling.
What about this move d5?? that I played? Well, this move could have immediately been ruled out. The variation that was played in the game was what I had calculated to be the best-case scenario, and I had to find the only move Qd5! to reach an unclear but equal endgame. Black had the immediate Bxh3 there, but even if that did not exist, I cannot settle for d5, since even if it worked as intended reaches an equal position from a position that I should be much better! The only possibility is that d5 is a bad move in the first place.
My opponent played the opening poorly, and as a result I obtained a clearly better position. Last move, I threatened the pawn break a3, which my opponent did not prevent. After this, I knew that I should be winning because my opponent didn't address my idea.
Very quickly, I identified that axb2 was an uncomplicated move that would guarantee me some advantage. If I could not find anything within the time I allotted for myself this turn, I could just play that and avoid a disaster.
With axb2 in the pocket, I began scanning for candidates. The b2 pawn is the weakness, and it's protected in a very unstable way. The move Bf5, attacking one of the key defenders of the pawn, will either win me the b2 pawn or an exchange if the rook does not move, if it works as intended. But I saw the idea my opponent had prepared with the move Qe2: c4!, exploiting the weakened diagonal created by the bishop moving away. All that remains to be determined is if c4 actually prevents Bf5. Shankland Rule applies here once again: after the queen is lost, White still hasn't solved their main issue: the rook and b2 pawn are still forked! But it's not over yet - white can try Qc4, trying to draw the bishop back to e6 so the rook does not hang. But after the calm Rbd8! Rd1 axb2, the pawn promotes.
So how did you do? Were you tempted to give up on your main idea because you faced resistance from your opponent?
What is the maximum time I should spend on a critical move?
You do want to be concentrating your efforts at these moments, but be careful not to overdo it! I spent half my time against GM Gabor Nagy, and quickly lost the game afterwards because I failed to find anything and did not have enough time to calculate for the rest of the game!
The common wisdom is to under no circumstances not spend more than a third of your starting time on any given move if there's increment, and no more than a quarter if it's delay or neither. For the most common tournament time control, G/90+30, that means you should spend no more than 30 minutes on one single move.
I'd take it one step further: in a typical game, there are likely going to be more than 1 critical move. In a typical game, you can probably allocate two thirds of your time to all the critical moves combined. Doing the math, if you have 4 critical moves in game, you can afford to spend at most 15 minutes per critical move, on average.
The exception to this rule are the cases where you are at a high risk of losing on the spot. In this case, how much time you have left doesn't matter if you get checkmated in the near future by making the wrong choice. Then, you have no option but to think until you can clearly see a path to survival. Try to avoid these situations where you are put in serious danger as much as possible, as even with lots of time, you will probably still miss something.
Conclusion
That was a lot to digest! You won't become a master at identifying and calculating critical turns by reading this one article; this skill can only be developed by playing lots of long games, where you have the chance to think deeply about positions. When you're done with your games, try to pick out the points in the game where there was a turning point. Did you make the right decision? How could you have allocated your time better, or approached the position differently?
The good news is that articles I and II are all you need to build the foundations of good classical time management - save time when you can by doing work beforehand, so you can focus on the few turns that really decide the game. The rest of this series will be some of the more specific details and tips that can help you refine your time management.
Next time, we will go over the common issues tournament players have. These can broadly be divided into people who play too fast, and people who play too slow, with multiple reasons for each.
See you then! 
