The concept of time in chess

I am relatively new to the nuances of chess.  One thing I am struggling with is the concept of time in chess.  Not even just per single game, but for example, how ratings work, chess trainer, etc.  I posted previously about my opponent being timed out on a game where I had only a king left.  It was a draw.  I understand that now.  I played sloppily and was penalized for that.  My sloppy play was trumped by the lack of time by my opponent.  Now, I'm using Chess Trainer, and my rating goes down, even if I solve the puzzle, because I took too much time.  What does this say?  Does this say that the rating is not important?  Why would the rating go down if you solved the problem correctly.  The game is not supposed to be about time, right?  I learned that from my timed game when I drew when my opponent ran out of time.  What is the roll of time in chess?

by chess trainer, i'm assuming you mean tactics trainer. it works on a time limit also. if you solve the problem but use more than the average times it takes other's to solve it you will still lose rating points. my advice is to ignore your rating in tactics trainer and just focus on getting the correct move.

the reason tactics trainer uses time as a factor is because they needed a variable to construct the ratings for the questions. i agree that it's not ideal, but again, your rating shouldn't be your primary goal. learning tactics and being able to identify them is.

I think it is great that TT uses a timer, I don't worry about the time control I try to solve the puzzle.

but if I spot a solution fast that means I got something right.

the only time time control is really bothering me is if I only have 30 seconds this makes me almost nervous because I think I should see the solution without blinking.

In 2 hour OTB games if you can spot a winning combination within the timeframe on TT this is clearly an advantage.

you can also set it so you can't see the timer, if that helps.

The game is not supposed to be about time, right?

Well one way of looking at it is that they are calling this a tactical trainer and not a puzzle trainer.  By being successful with tactical themes under a time crisis, you will tend to exhibit excellent pattern recognition traits that good chess players have in real games.

In real games, you visualize/calculate lines and more often than not, you're not going to see a tactical motif emerge step-by-step ... it is more likely that the whole theme will jump out at you (even if it is 3-6+ ply deep).    The point of training with time is to sharpen this "quick recall" behavior and make sure you can be accurate.

I'd strongly disagree about saying the game is not about time. ...unless you bring in a crowbar and separate this notion of a "coffeehouse or correspondence" game of chess vs.  competitive live chess in a tournament hall or online. 

Time management is the most important aspect of competitive playing.  You win tournaments by not being the greatest thinker, but the most efficient one.  You are rewarded for budgeting your time, managing it such that you can invest heavily in critical positions to look into all the variations and little in trivial ones via opening preparation or excellent tactical skills.

Saying "I would have won, if I had more time on the clock" is one of the biggest cop-out excuses a player can give in this game! 

Heck, for that matter any competitive sport is judged by one's ability to deliver the goods under great duress and within a required window of time.  

So this notion of a  rating in this trainer is  more indicative of a "practical chess player who is capable of doing a lot of damage in tournament halls under ANY time control" and less of an armchair theorist who treats them as puzzles.

Qoute"So this notion of a  rating in this trainer is  more indicative of a "practical chess player who is capable of doing a lot of damage in tournament halls under ANY time control" and less of an armchair theorist who treats them as puzzles."

sorry Shivsky maybe something got wrong in the translation but what is wrong with saying the word puzzles instead of tactics. I understand 95% of all written here. the rest I look up in a english - danish dictionary.

I believe that I am going to do a lot of damage with the things I learned in Tactics Trainer. 

Chessmaster has a section called puzzles so I figured it was a word I could use as well 

@bobbyDK:  My post was directed to the OP's comment that the game was not about time.  It is perfectly fine to interchange the words in common parlance but I'd pay more attention to the "environment" you are training to solve them in.  One could be in a relaxed, casual setting and the other could be in a "win at all costs, even one mistake could mean you are finished" setting.

The rating in the "trainer" application in question seems to be more catered towards the latter.

"Saying "I would have won, if I had more time on the clock" is one of the biggest cop-out excuses a player can give in this game!"

lol, I do it . Seriously, I am SO, SO much better with classical time controls than in blitz or even say 40 min. Then there are the other players that don't come up with the best plan but can use their instincts and spot tactics quickly enough to do very well with only small amounts of time, and the people in between.

But yeah, I have said the very sentence you quoted many, many times, especially in endgames when in time pressure if you don't know the position by heart yo usually can't win it. I'm not saying the other guy's win was unfair (that would be rediculous lol), but there certainly were times where I thought I would win with larger time controls.

Of course I totally agree that time is extremely important and a huge part of the game.

My city thrives on sub-G/60 weekend tournaments so you're basically forced to adapt to managing your time to these quicker controls.   Plus, you're playing prodigy-brats who can't tell a Lucena from a lozenge but are still tactically sharp enough to wipe you off the board if you can't keep up with their pace.

Though I've realized this is the biggest reason a sub-2000 hack of a player like me can't just brush away openings and rely on outplaying opponents OTB ... I need to know them well just to get to the middlegame with time to spare :)

Well at least it's not blitz .

"Plus, you're playing prodigy-brats who can't tell a Lucena from a lozenge but are still tactically sharp enough to wipe you off the board if you can't keep up with their pace."

Yeah, these kinds of players can be frustrating for me too. I may outplay them for 30 moves but in time pressure you never know if he's going to find some random tactics to change everything. Honestly, there are some people I would crush in classical time controls when the same person would crush me in a much faster time control.