2300+ rated bullet chess player can't stay out of time trouble in 30 min rapid chess. Advice?

Hello. Over the past year or so I have been transitioning to playing longer time controls more often (instead of bullet and blitz). I thought since my highest ratings are bullet and blitz I should not have to worry about time trouble in rapid chess (especially since when I play bullet and blitz, if somebody runs out of time it is normally my opponent), but this is just not the case. I wonder if anyone has advice on this? Just this past week I have played 8 games of >10 min time control and in 3 of them I ran into significant time trouble. While I did not flag in any of these games, in 2 games I made bad blunders because of the time trouble leading to me losing, and in the other I played generally inaccurate with under a minute to go in the 15|10 game (so this time trouble is even costing me games in incremented chess), losing from an even position. 

I'm not sure how to fix the time management issues I've been having lately. It never used to be like this before the last 1-2 years when I used to play rapid chess before that. I do still play blitz and bullet, just less often, and when I do, I generally maintain my rating.

Does anyone have any advice on this? 

Do the RAR!

Make mini goals time related and stick with them, play with increment

It takes time to adapt. You are probably facing opponents of different playing levels. Or you might have "overestimated" the extra time you have by playing a longer time control.

I'd go look over the games where I run into time trouble, find out what moves I'm spending more time than I should, and then examine why I'm spending more time on those moves.

So, for example: https://www.chess.com/game/live/30287382783?username=ralral3333

Maybe you're OK with spending a lot of time on 23. g4 (because you're trying to calculate whose attack will land first, and that kind of calculation takes time), and maybe you're OK with spending time on 29. Rhh2 (again, trying to calculate whose attack will land first). But maybe you're less OK with spending a lot of time on 15. Kb1. And then maybe when you're looking over those games, you can ask yourself, Why did it take more time for me to play Kb1? Is it because I don't understand something about these kinds of structures? Is it because I don't understand when I should play Kb1 and when I don't need to? Is it because I don't really have some sort of general plan for when I'm in ambiguous positions?

Or here: https://www.chess.com/game/live/30113375197?username=ralral3333

You take a while with 10... h6 and 11... Nh7. You also take a long time with 15... Re8. Maybe it's because you're unfamiliar with general plans in KID structures? Or maybe it's because you're not sure how to find, create, and exploit weaknesses in your opponent's position?

I think once you figure out the reason why you're taking so long with some moves, then you can move on and work on those specific parts of your game. So, for me, I take way too long on positions that are sharp, where each side has attacking chances. So, eventually, I'm going to work on understanding attacking and defending plans. And I have my eye on a couple books that might help me -- Soltis's New Art of Defense, Vukovic's Art of Attack. So maybe I'll study those when I'm feeling ready. Or maybe I'll study some games by Korchnoi (for defense) and Tal (for attack) and find out why their defenses/attacks succeed. Or maybe I'll just try to get better at avoiding sharp games, so that I start playing to my strengths a little more.

Also -- I'm lower Elo than you, so if this advice sounds like total bunk, feel free to scrap it.

Thanks for the suggestion. I don't have a time goal for games longer than 10 mins actually though I find for some openings and positions it is easier to make moves quickly than others. I should probably also consider time goals in relation to my opponent's time too then

@eric022 thanks for the input. I'm not sure if this would be a factor but a lot of the opponents I am playing are higher rated than me. Maybe I have overestimated the more time I have. As for adapting, I don't think that's the main issue since I have been playing rapid chess for years

RAR!

Try 10 mins first. Then move to 15 mins. Then 25. I used to play a lot of bullet in my old deleted account. Else, i would get really dull and bored.

@busterlark thanks for that lengthy analysis was not expecting such an in depth analysis!

so game 1: 23. g4 actually in my opinion was not an attacking move. I was trying to dislodge my opponent's knight on f6 so that I can bring my knight to e4 without it getting traded off. But before I played that move I was also looking at how to attack which was seemingly not easy. Perhaps this is because I do not play a lot of opposite side castling crazy stuff or perhaps it is just a tough position as I thought.

Rhh2 actually I think this was a waste of time by me, should not have spent that much time there because I had to defend the b2 pawn some way. I was trying to figure out the best way to do it and maybe I should have spent less since defending it with rook and with queen are very similar. But at the end of the game when I blundered 47. Qc2 I thought Qc2 and Qc3 were really similar, only turns out Qc2 was a bad blunder.

15. Kb1 yes spent too much time there. That move is actually theory too, I just was trying too see if I needed to play it right away or if I can try to attack first but maybe Bf5 would be annoying for the future if I didn't play it, cutting off b1 for my king. But yes, that move should have been instant

game 2: I have been playing KID for a long time. I think I was a bit thrown off this game because this was a KID structure without d4 played and also I do not have much experience using the Panno setup against this type of setup. Wasn't sure if I should try to expand queenside, play e5 f5 like I probably should, or do something new which I tried in the game. I think I have only tried g5 before f5 once before

15. Re8 I spent extra time on because with that move I am saying I am not going to play f5 like a traditional KID. I spent time calculating f5 instead but thought I will have too many weaknesses on light squares. 

In general, I take too long when I am trying to think of a plan in the game. Perhaps I should study the middlegame more as this seems to be when I lose the majority of my time. Yes, in the second game also that happened in the opening because I was faced with something I was not comfortable with. However, in that second game I don't think time trouble was the reason I lost - I just got outplayed. But first game for sure. I think actually for moves 32 through 37 I spent way too much time trying to find something because I had a strong feeling I was winning especially if I could get d6 in, and I was completely right. On move 31 I spent so much time calculating d6 and concluded to just play Rf2 but in my calculations I missed that at some point I have Qc4 forking king and rook on b3 after black's queen and rook move to deal with my advancing d-pawn. So maybe also tactics/calculation

Thanks again for the advice!

incremental increases are good though I already play 10 min as well. I'd say I play a wide variety of time controls: 1|0, 3|0 10|0 15|10, 30|0, daily chess, etc.

Write on a notecard the cases in which cases you will take extra time for a move and times when you will move quickly. If you are a perfectionist then playing moves that take extra time can occur. Noticing this and accepting you might make mistakes during your play is okay if you move faster than normal. Good luck!

Interesting point you bring up with the perfectionist part - I have become more of a perfectionist in the past couple of years, so maybe this is the case. I often spend a lot of time on moves when there are a couple of moves that look equally good to me but I keep calculating to try and find which is better. I'm interested about the notecard part though. If you use this yourself, can you give an example? 

Thanks for the advice!

Magnus Carlsen said he picks three of the best options of moves. Then he calculates them out. 

A note card for keeping time control is basically what I said in my post, but I'll break it down further. Also you want to keep it to 1-3 notes per card. I think it helps keep you focused and able to master with practice.

Nore card contents below

• play opening move theory without much thought
• is my next move super critical or can I develop or make a threat
• my opponent made a weird move; pause and think why they made that move

Cheers!

#1

"I have played 8 games of >10 min time control and in 3 of them I ran into significant time trouble." ++ If you are good at blitz and bullet, then you should not fear time trouble. If you can play at a pace of 1 second/move then you are not in time trouble.

"I played generally inaccurate with under a minute to go in the 15|10 game (so this time trouble is even costing me games in incremented chess), losing from an even position." ++ In 15|10 you cannot really lose on time you always have 10 seconds to move, akin to playing 10|0. I guess it is fatigue: you have to stay concentrated longer than in blitz.

"I'm not sure how to fix the time management issues I've been having lately." ++ Your problem is not time management, it is play against stiffer opposition. What works in blitz and bullet does not work in rapid. People have time to find a defence. People have time to avoid blunders. You cannot flag the opponent with increment.

I have the same problem. I assume it's pretty common... when all you do is speed chess you don't know how to structure your thinking during a long game... so you'll either play too quickly (not me), or you'll think a long time but very inefficiently so you get low on time (me).

So you just have to practice playing long games, and solving puzzles (including positional and endgame puzzles) that are difficult enough that you need 5-10 minutes to solve them (and if you fail and have to look up the answer after 10 minutes that's fine... try not to spend longer than that because that becomes more like visualization training).

During your practice long games and long puzzle solving, really think about your thought process. What conditions need to be met that make you very satisfied with playing a move? One obvious difference between speed chess calculation and long games is in speed chess you usually just calculate 1 move, and if it's not terrible, then you play it right away. In long games you should almost always calculate more than 1 candidate move, render an evaluation for each, and then compare the two to see which is better... a very different process from bullet games for sure.

Another difference is in speed games you can be satisfied when you determine a move is not terrible. That satisfaction is your signal to stop calculating. In long games that's not enough, so it's hard to know when to stop. Again you'll have to think about it on your own, but basically if you reach a position in your calculation that has no more forcing moves, and your chances of winning vs drawing vs losing are acceptable, then you need to stop calculating there, render your evaluation, and move on.

Oh, and for 30 minute games, that's a bit fast for a "long" game, so you should probably also consider the efficiency of your thinking time... that's important for long games too, but even more in 30 minute games.

By that I mean... this is what some people call getting a feel for when a position is critical, meaning the best move wins (or saves a draw) while the 2nd best move loses. Imagine having the engine show you the top 5 moves. Is it the sort of position where the difference between #1 and #5 is just half a pawn? In that case you shouldn't waste time calculating, choose a move that leads to a position that seems appealing... basically the only thing you need to do is a basic blunder check.

One post mentioned setting a pace and sticking to it, for example 1 minute per move (or whatever). Keep in mind you'll want to schedule 1 or 2 long thinks per game where you might spend 20% of your time for a single move. Obviously this is a waste of time unless the difference between the best move and 2nd best move is huge.

Thanks for the advice. I think this would be particularily useful when I have many moves that seem equal and I need to pick the best one. Trying to calculate far into every possible line is not ideal for 15|10 and 30 min chess as this is rapid chess not classical

To your first point: It is true that I can play fast, although in blitz and bullet my opponent must also play fast. During time scrambles, both me and my opponent play inaccurately. In a rapid game where I have very little time and my opponent has much more, I get outplayed when I have no time to think. 

To your second point: When I am mentioning losing because of time trouble, I don't mean losing because I flag. I mean that when in time trouble I end up blundering and losing that way because I didn't have enough time to calculate properly

To your third point: Yes, perhaps that is the case. I have been playing against competition stronger than me a lot of times and we can reach difficult positons sometimes. In bullet and blitz, the positions tend to be less difficult to calculate because people are sticking to the most natural moves in the position since there is not enough time to calculate. In rapid, some of the games can get extremely complicated and yes, you are right, in blitz and bullet I can flag my opponent but rarely is this the case in rapid. Looking at my stats, I win a lot of my blitz and bullet chess games on time compared to by resignation or checkmate while I lose a lot of games by resignation or checkmate but not by losing on the clock

Thanks for your input!

@llama47 some very interesting advice. especially 2 related things stand out that are spot on in my opinion. The first is this that you said: "One obvious difference between speed chess calculation and long games is in speed chess you usually just calculate 1 move, and if it's not terrible, then you play it right away". Yes, this is exactly correct. In blitz in bullet you only calculate 1 or 2 moves and also play a lot of natural moves without calculation. I find that in rapid chess games in positions where a lot of moves could work I spend too much time calculating - in blitz and bullet there is no time to do this. This brings me to the second really interesting thing you said: "Another difference is in speed games you can be satisfied when you determine a move is not terrible. That satisfaction is your signal to stop calculating. In long games that's not enough, so it's hard to know when to stop". Related to the first point but this exactly sums up my thinking process. Hard to know when to stop calculating for rapid. 

And it is this that brings me to what I think is the only unanswered question left: why I used to not have time trouble when I played rapid chess years before, but now I do. And I think the reason for that is the whole thing about the signal to stop calculating. I used to have a better signal of when to stop calculating, but in the past couple of years which is where I have started to have time trouble in rapid chess, I have made one big change to my chess: I spend a lot more time thinking of my moves when I am playing correspondence chess: Because there is essentially no time limit on those games, I stop calculating when I have calculated everything I want to calculate. There is no time management on individual moves in correspondence chess. Because I have been spending lots of time on correspondence chess, it has probably made it harder for me to manage time in rapid chess because I try to analyze lots of moves and variations like in correspondence chess, only I don't have unlimited time. 

Thanks once again!