Hi,

I am posting the following game which I believe is typical of my issues on the board at the moment. Usually I fair quite well vs equal or stronger opponents and even get superior positions by outplaying them positionally. But then I cannot convert due to calculation troubles. Moreover, I spend quite a lot of time (probably for the same reason, not calculating fast enough) in the late opening - early middlegame and then have time management problems.

Is also the same story in the previous to this rapid game (30/0) which you can see in my profile. The story is almost always the same, superior position, then fails due to miscalulating usually when on the defence like here.

Any advice on how to improve on this stage of the game would be highly appreciated.

Hi Chesssol19. Its been awhile. For me I have problems with counting and calculations. Also understanding what my opponent is trying to do. I do have to play more live games however. Did you see what your opponent was doing after  move 15 Qe2 d5? Dan Heisman has some video's on playing and time. As I understand it take tine during critical moments. know what your going to do in the opening and don't take a lot of time on the opening move's. I will have to find the video again. not sure this is any help. 

I have the opposite problem, I am good at finding tactics and spotting my opponents tactics, but my positional game is weaker in comparison, which sometimes leads to me losing material, my problem is a bit easier to rectify, since My positional play has become much stronger after I learned the French defense, but really tactics are not something you can just learn to play, any fairly competent player can spot a tactic given they have enough time to understand the position, and improving at finding tactics is just optimizing what parts of the position you want to understand and being able to find a viable plan for the game

I am in the same boat, @Chesssol19 - decisive advantage squandered by time or lack of plan in the middlegame. What has helped me is doing some themed tactics (remove the defender, pins, forks, etc). I think this has helped because it solidifies the ideas behind common tactics whereas just doing a set of random tactics it is too easy to find the simple forcing move and beat the puzzle. The themed approach is helping me see the dynamics in a position that allow a fork or pin (or whatever). I have found Bain's Chess Tactics for Students to be good as well as Chess Tactics for Scholastic Players. Both have puzzle that take 2-3 moves to set up the tactic so it helps you identify how exchanges can lead to certain tactics. If money is an issue, you can also use the learning section on chess.com to select the puzzle range and theme (same goes for chess tempo). Good luck.

I do not believe white had an advantage at any part of this game, and was already worse by move 13.

 

same