1, 2, and 3 seem to be related. Slow careful calculation of forcing moves is important (obviously). I also have problems with 2 and 3, and try to remind myself to actually visualize and not do the blitz/bullet type calculation where you calculate without really visualizing the future positions (I'm sure you know what I mean). But it's hard to mix with good time management.
What's helped me is to solve tactics untimed, and make a point to very firmly see the final position. Also following notation as far as I can, and again, burning the future position into my mind's eye. Stokyo exercises too.
No idea how to combine this will good time management, other than experience.
Thanks for the advice. I know it's important, obviously, but it can be a hard habit to break it seems..
One game I played tonight illistrates four of the bad habits I feel I've developed as a chess player, and I really need to break them.
The following positions come from the same game, where I lost to a 2300 player as black.
1. "Blunder from helplessness"
I had black in this position. ...Bd6 is forced, after which white is better, but it's really not so clear at all how to break through.
I dismissed ...Bd6 out of hand, thinking that with the two minors against the rook, the correct plan "must" involve play on the dark squares and play against f2. I tried to sit there and calculate for 3-4 minutes or so, but my brain "refused" to even consider any move besides ...Nfg4 without even bothering to calculate the ramifications of d6, which of course, wins the game for white. I only saw that d6 was winning after pressing my clock.
This seems to happen to my quite a bit; a horrific blunder in a bad, but not indefensible, position - no matter how often I tell myself not to let it.
2. "Retained image"
In this position, I played the rather forced ...cxb3 (ep). The move is correct, but somehow I had thoughts that after Bxb3, a timely ...Nd7-e5-d3 would secure an advantage for black! Of course, taking with the c-pawn loses control of the d3 outpost.
3. Poor Calculation
For an expert-rated player, I don't feel at all confident in my calculation at all. I feel like the calculation that is trained with "Tactics trainer" and other such tools is very different from the majority of calculation used in games, such as the type in this example.
The best move here for black is likely ...Ne5. I wanted to play it, of course, and even spend a while calculating it, but thought it didn't work due to Nxe6. Of course, this is nonsense - I can throw
in ...Rxd1, and white is compelled to make a speculative exchange sacrifice (if I misevaluated the exchange sac, fine, but I didn't even see ...Rxd1!) This is another case of the "retained image" as well, I think...this resource didn't exist until white played his last move, Rad1.
4. Playing too fast.
There are so many books which give advice to low-rated players to slow down, and so many other books telling higher-rated players how to be more pragmatic and stop being time-trouble addicts! I'm the reverse; Though many categorize my playing style as "sharp and aggresive," and they may be right, I've never liked calculating more than I have to (see #3) and am pragmatic to a fault during the game, hand-waving many of my decisions, relying on my intuition, and saving my time to calculate at a few critical moments. In fact, my "goal" this tournament was to allow myself to get in time trouble for once in most of my games, and maybe I wouldn't miss as much on the way there!
Yet, when I made the decisive blunder of this game (see #1), I still had 36 minutes remaining on my clock out of 110 to begin with (CCA time control). Not bad, but not great...
Any thoughts? Please share! For annotated games that might explain my thinking process fuller, I'd strongly suggest this thread. I put quite a bit of time into annotating these, so please take a look! http://www.chess.com/forum/view/game-analysis/a-disasterous-tournament