Awareness

I had been playing chess intensely last year but I could'nt play over the summer. I started playing chess again last week, and I started noticing that I had a few problems. One of that is my fear of the clock, it seem that I am more conserned with how fast I move a piece rather than how effective the piece will be in the new position. Also I have noticed that sometimes I concentrate so much on implementing my strategy against my opponent that I not properly aware of the piceces (the oponents or mine) that don't invovle my strategy, and this costs me a lot. I was wondering if anyone else experiences this and if they can give me tips to bounce back to playing chess like I did before.

1. Sit on your hands

2. Every couple of moves snap out of it, play with a yo-yo for about 10 seconds, and think of your position with a fresh mind.

3. Play longer time controls if my first two suggestions result in the clock running out.

Thanks NM I'll try that

i have once played a tournament game on ritalin. it was a grunfeld defense, i had black. i won a pawn early in the game through a tactic. i spent the next two hours grinding down to a rook and pawn vs rook ending which i converted with some difficulty. ritalin sucks!

I used to have a problem with angst and getting quite an adrenaline rush whenever I played a chess game, especially when it was a close game. The way I got over it was to play as many games as quickly as possible, back to back, after playing over a thousand games, I'm much calmer now, it's much easier for me to concentrate on the game.