Time control problems

I am new to Chess. Com and had high hopes for success in live games. Until now I have been playing on the shredder chess program which adjusts to my strength and gives me an indicated rating. It suggests I have a strength of around 1300.

I play 30 minute games on live chess and seem to either get flustered by the time limit, not think deep enough and blunder or think too long, set up a good position and then run into time trouble then either blunder again or lose on time!

Hence I keep losing and have seen my rating drop rapidly to around 800. Very disappointing.

Anyone have any good advice on how to deal with time control please? Or is it just a case of practice, practice, practise and be prepared to take the losses in the meantime?

Hmm, time issues , what is your average game time with your program ?

I would recommend if 30 minutes is not long enough, play longer games. Especially when learning, speed at least to some degree will improve for most players, I still do not like playing short games.

You need to play what you are comfortable with, if you are getting flustered, you aren't having fun. So play longer games. In the tactics trainer they have a timer, you can try beating it, if you want to practice your speed skill. There is a feature you can select so you don't know how much time is there.

Thats the one I use, just try to solve the problem as quickly as you can. 

You will get faster over time, so don't worry about it. I hope this helps, and others will probably even give you better advice. Good luck.

One strategy would be to travel away from your opponent at a speed approaching the speed of light to make maximum use of time dilation.  

You'd, of course, need to have finished the game before turning around and coming back, otherwise you'd lose all of the relative time you gained.

For a much less beneficial version of this, you might try playing only opponents who are on the opposite side of the planet.

In answer to your question, I guess my average game time on the computer is around 1 hour. I suppose this kind of might balance out as the computer only takes a second or so to move so I can't think in my opponents time. ..

Anyway, seems like sound advice and thank you so much for taking the time to answer me, CrimsonKinght.

Pete

The Grobe - that is RELATIVELY good advice. Thanks.

No problem Zoony, You definitely need to play longer games, if you play 1 hour games on your computer, and thats what you are comfortable with. Otherwise you aren't allowing yourself enough time to think and calculate properly. Good Luck.

or, you could play some five min games to see how solid youre tactics sense is.

When playing on time, more so true the shorter the game, time has to be considered another source of material. If you have a a time gain of 20 - 30 %  there is only to defend and try to confuse your opponent whilst simplifying the game,; reducing opponents chance of mate.

You may look for some ways to improve your time management. Generally you'll need to spend much time thinking only at certain moments in the game, such as the end of the opening (as soon as you no longer know what's good to play in the position, according to your pre-game preparation), when you think you can gain or lose an advantage (when your opponent surprizes you with a move, be it good or bad), or when you want to reconsider your overall game strategy (when you feel the game is slowly going to an unfavorable outcome). Also you should spend enough time thinking in tactical positions (where there are many captures/checks/attacks/etc. available), but not get bogged into in-depth variation analysis, and rather look for short but more exact combination predictions. In the rest of the situations you should try to save time.

Try looking through a game you've lost on time, but this time try to analyze your move options in this way. Don't worry that you may come up with different moves, simply analyze all the positions where it was your turn, and sum up the time quantities you spend on each position. You'll see whether it will help you manage your time more efficiently. There are also articles, books and other material about time management on the internet, you may look for some that you find interesting.

Good luck!

Thanks to all for the replies. Seems like some really good advice here and I will try to take it all on board.

Pete