If you play too slowly in a chess game and your flag falls it doesn't matter how well you are doing on the board you lose.

All right now to convert the win with two minutes left oh no no no no okay.

In this article I'm going to share seven practical steps that I found helpful in improving my time management speeding up my play and avoiding time scrambles.

This is generally aimed at the Rapid or classical time controls. Blitz and bullet have their own separate set of strategies but I will also be talking about how you can use speed chess to improve your time management in longer games.

Number One — Set Up a Loose Time Schedule

Set up a loose schedule of how much time you want to use in each phase of the game before you sit down to play it.

A good place to start might be to spend:

• about 15 percent of your time in the opening

• about 45 percent of your time in the middle game

• about 40 percent of your time for the end game

This can obviously be adjusted for individual players and even can be adjusted mid game if your opponent is playing directly into your prep.

You might be able to blitz out your opening even faster and then you'll be able to spend more time later in the game.

The idea of thinking in terms of these larger chunks of time though is that the middle game and the end game are usually where critical positions are going to come up.

These are positions where the move that you make will change the entire course of the game. It will either win you the game or you will be completely lost after you make a particular move.

And you often have to calculate a lot of variations to make sure that you're going to make the right move in these critical positions.

Another way to think about this especially kind of like in the moment is:
“I will not be more than x minutes lower than my opponent.”

For example I play a lot of 10 minute games online and my mindset going into that especially if my opponent is really blitzing out their moves is that I will try not to be more than a minute down from my opponent's time.

Because at the end of the day if you have one minute on the clock and they have five minutes on the clock chances are unless you've got some kind of a mating net going you're probably not going to be able to salvage that game.

Chess is all about making the best moves that you can in the time that you have and so if you don't have one of those things then you're just not playing your best chess.

Number Two — Check the Clock After Every Move

After every single move check the clock.

For a while especially when I was playing over the board chess I would get so wrapped up in the position on the board that I would completely forget to look at the clock and then when I finally did I would find that I had about 30 seconds left.

So if you really want to hold yourself accountable for your time management skills it's really important to check the clock after every single move and then sort of make a plan for how much time you can spend on your next move.

I know people have also found it helpful especially in over the board chess where you might be playing a longer game where you are writing down your moves to write down the time on your clock after every single move.

This can also help you when you're analyzing your game afterwards to figure out what kind of moves you're spending the most time on and sort of tighten that up.

Number Three — Figure Out Where You Spend the Most Time

You need to figure out where in the game you are spending the most time and what kind of moves you might be wasting time on.

If you find you're spending a lot of time in the opening it might be time to consider a more solid repertoire where there aren't so many tricks and traps you need to worry about and you can just sort of get your pieces where they need to be and then go from there.

Really sharp and messy lines can be super fun to play but if they're causing you to have to think a lot in the first 10 to 15 moves of the game they might not be worth it for your overall chess improvement.

If you're spending more time than you should in the end game it's probably time to brush up on your super basic end games.

If you can recognize basic king pawn rook end game patterns you should be able to convert a win very easily and hold the draw without really thinking.

Studying the end game will also help if you often are struggling in the middle game because you will know and have the confidence to be able to trade down to a favorable end game and then convert the position from there.

You might also notice that there are just certain types of moves that you often spend way too much time on.

For example maybe the first move where you feel you're officially out of your opening prep and you're not sure what to do and so you just spend a crazy amount of time trying to figure out some kind of a plan.

A lot of times it just comes down to gaining more experience but if you know that this is an area where you're struggling it helps to at least be aware of that so that you can keep that in mind and force yourself to play just a little bit faster in those situations.

Number Four — Don’t Spend Too Much Time on Forced Moves

Don't spend more than a few seconds on forced moves.

For me this tends to happen if it was a move I wasn't expecting.

For example say you have this quiet looking position and suddenly we have Bishop F4 check. Well you have a few options right:

• you can block with the rook

• you can block with the queen

• or you can move your king

If you have a basically forced move it's important to just quickly take stock of the position and then just play the move. I mean why would you spend more time than you need to.

Another example is with the unexpected capture like if black were to give up their nice bishop here and capture over on C3.

Of course with a quick scan of the position we should see that we don't have any greater threats that we can create that would prevent us from recapturing this piece.

Even though it gives us doubled pawns it doesn't matter because material at this point in the game is much more important.

We would rather have the doubled pawns than be down three points of material and let this bishop escape.

A lot of times this is where the overthinking starts because you start to think a lot further ahead than you need to.

In the moment you just need to regain the material that you've just lost and then you can think in terms of the positional weakness this might have created and how you can maybe create plans to get around that.

But there's no use wasting your time here because at the end of the day you're just going to capture this piece back. There's no question about it.

Now of course there are positions where you don't want to capture back maybe you have some kind of a check or you have some bigger threat and those are more critical positions that you can spend more time on but that is just something that you learn with experience.

Number Five — Be Aware of Your Opponent’s Time

It's important to be aware of your opponent's time.

I talked earlier about how it might be helpful for you to think in terms of:
“I don't want to be down more than x minutes from my opponent's time.”

But this is of course the goal and sometimes you're going to be way further down on time and sometimes you're going to be up on time.

A lot of times with slower players like myself when you are up on time there's kind of a panic or a temptation to rush so that you can retain your time advantage.

It's not worth it to play a bad move and potentially lose material or lose the game just because you want to keep your time advantage.

You still have to play the position that's on the board but of course you should try to spend as much time as the position needs for you to make the best move.

A lot of times if I'm up on time I'll say:
“Okay I'm up five minutes on my opponent. I can spend up to five minutes on this move if it's a critical position.”

If you're down on time my best advice is to just keep it simple.

A lot of times improving moves are best but also practicing things like forcing moves:

• looking for checks

• looking for captures

• looking for threats

And keep your attacking pieces on the board so that when an opportunity arises for you to make some kind of quick attack that you are ready and you have all the pieces in place for you to potentially win the game.

Number Six — Practice Speed Chess

A lot of times speeding up your play comes down to improving moves and this is number six.

There are ways to practice making improving moves and coming up with ones that are natural to the kinds of positions that you tend to play.

This is kind of a debated topic but I have actually found in my personal experience that playing blitz and bullet can actually be very helpful for improving time management.

Getting a lot of these faster games under your belt can show you the value of making simple moves that just improve your overall position so that you can get your pieces into the perfect position to attack.

There's definitely this mantra that you kind of have to have going in your head when you're playing speed chess:
“Just move. Just make a move.”

That can actually be really helpful if you're down on time in even a longer game.

It doesn't have to be the perfect move it just has to be good enough to hold your position together.

Once you get down to:

• five minutes

• three minutes

• one minute

you can sort of switch your brain into speed chess mode and hopefully that will help you make these kinds of moves even faster.

Number Seven — Think on Your Opponent’s Time

You need to think on your opponent's time.

Your opponent's time is extremely valuable and you shouldn't be sitting at the board daydreaming while your opponent's clock is running.

Your opponent’s time is extremely valuable and you really shouldn’t just be sitting at the board, daydreaming while your opponent’s clock is running. Try to stay locked in on the position, and shift how you think… instead of trying to predict what your opponent might do, focus on your own game plan, and what you can actually aim for.

Of course if you're in the kind of position where it's more forced and there are only a couple possible responses your opponent could have to your last move then it might be worth thinking about what they could potentially play.

But that's not the majority of chess positions.

When your opponent makes their next move you can quickly evaluate whether that interferes with your plan:

• are they making a bigger threat

• do you need to defend first

• did they capture a piece

• did they leave anything undefended

• did they open tactical opportunities

Then you can kinda decide if you can keep going with your own plan,or if you need to tweak it a bit because of your opponent’s last move.

Final Thoughts

I really hope these ideas can help you with time management, like  actually doing it day by day, not just sitting there thinking about it.  

And also if you want, feel free to share your own thoughts for an even more effective schedule handling, or whatever word works best on your end.