Shorter time controls : Should anything change about one's chess preparation?

philidor_position wrote: I also find it a little hard to believe you can calculate/visualize 20 moves with ease, I mean, wouldn't you struggle just a little bit? 

Glad to know I'm not the only one who finds that really impressive/unbelievable. I guess he's talking about simplified Endgames? 

I think what he meant was 20 half moves = 10 moves, and not necessarily meaningful ones (like a3 h6 b4 a6 Kh1 etc), but still it should be difficult. Visualization is an important part of general chess strength imo, and is built to a moderate level with tears and blood in my case. Even 2~3 moves would start getting blurry 3 years ago, and I couldn't make progress from where I reached. Today still 3 moves would take up a lot of time in tactical positions, if we don't ignore accuracy.

First, I disagree with the comment that a good player should be able to play well at all time controls.  Many good players are much better at one, and a lot of it has to do with your style of play. As for how to prepare, I suggest the followng:

1. Develop a solid opening repertoire so you know exactly how to respond early on.  Others have said this and I agree.  If you're thinking a lot in the first 5-10 moves, you need to work on your opening phase.

2. Don't let your clock run looking for the "perfect" move as you would in a slower control.  Look for a solid "acceptable" move that conforms to the position.

3. Try to play as simply and stright forward as possible and try to avoid complications.

Before a OTB SD/30 tournament.

A. One day before i do puzzles and review my lines (especially if i am playing gambits.)

B. Get a good nights rest and eat decent foods (no sugar..ect)

C. The day of the event, i do some 1 move (sometimes 2 move) puzzles. Just to warm up and play half a dozen 1min games on chess website.

D. At the board, Tactics/sharp lines will take on a greater importance (it puts pressure on them and clock time will become an issue for them). Adhere to the time per move concept (Dan Hiesman)

To answer a previous post, A expert and a master see very simular lines. The difference is typically the value in which they both reward the line... i might see it as a +0.3 (tempo advantage) while it is actually -0.2 because i yeilded important squares.

If it's a must win, play openings that you have the most experiece with. This will save time in the opening and middle game. During the game, take both your time and his time into account with decision making. For example, if things are about even and you have 5 minutes more than him and you're not sure whether to trade queens or not, don't! The queens on will make it harder on him to calculate possiblities increasing the likelihood of him blundering down the road due to his time disadvatage. It's also important that you maintain your time advantage by not letting him catch up on the clock if you can help it. You should be integrating the clock into your decision making at all times and giving it equal attention to the pieces on the board.

Like tonydal said in a different topic, if you removed from Karpov the part of the brain that made calculation possible he [tonydal] would still get crushed and lose.  He also said that he looks about 5 moves deep in his games, but if playing over one of Kasparov's he may need a board to look 2 moves ahead.

We may be using the word calculate differently.  Visualizing 20 full moves is easy, visualizing 20 full and meaningful moves is almost impossible.  Obviously the two (visualization and evaluation) have to go hand in hand.  So if you think the GM is pouring over lines at the board you're wrong, his calculation level is very very high because the quality (evaluations) are very very high.  This is how evaluation beat visualization (Kasparov vs Deep Blue).  To visualize 10 moves is nothing, from some random position I could go 10 full moves deep without repeating the same position in 30 seconds or less and set up the new position without walking through the moves one by one (but the moves I used to get there would make no sense).  But in most positions in my 15-20 minute games I am usually trying to do 2-3 moves, and I often get into time trouble because this is hard for me.

Experts and masters (when there's ~200 point difference) do often see the same moves and same lines, I'm not making that up, but the expert may discard the correct move because he's afraid of _____ or think a different move (also considered by the master) is better but he fails to realize why it's not.  This is why amateurs say "why not this" or "what about that move" and they're pointing out moves the GM didn't even look at.  He knew they were bad without having to look at them.

Trying to decide of a rook on the 7th is worth giving up castling in a given position may be tricky, but even trickier is judging that position vs your other option(s).  Maybe the rook on 7th but no castling is a 2 move deep variation, but if I had another interesting try (also 2 moves deep) I may want to spend 10+ minutes figuring out which is better.

i guess im just a online blitz junkie