@1
++ Play with increment: 15|10. Use all your time before move 30 and finish the game on increment. You always have 10 s / move to win a won position or draw a drwan position.
"By move 31 I was down to 8:30"
++ 8 minutes and 30 seconds is a lot of time. Bullet players play a whole game in 1 minute.
"I was basically in a hurry"
++ Never hurry, stay calm, focus on the board, do not look at the clock.
A recurrent problem for me has been this - I'm ahead, winning, there are queens on the board, I'm low on time (even while playing 30-minute rapid games) and then I gradually not only lose my advantage, but in the end lose. My brain just cannot grasp at all the possible lines when queens are still in the game, especially not when I am time constrained. For example - this game - if this had been the equivalent of classical format (or I had 30 minutes more), I would have won it. By move 31 I was down to 8:30 and given more time, I'd have seen Nc6, which I dismissed cuz I didn't see the discovered check which made Qxc1 impossible, nor the upcoming mate in case my opponent decided to capture the pawn. I was mostly focused on trying to calculate a way to lift my rook and make a battery on the 7th rank to checkmate since my knight was already there and helping with the attack, while also trying to see if I won't fall victim to a perpetual or my opponent collecting all my pawns and creating passers while defending successfully. I was basically in a hurry because I knew I would need minutes for each move with queens on the board, and if it got long (as it did), I'd just not be able to keep up. How can I deal with this? Just... permanently play 60 minutes format?