How to Think under Time Constraint

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I've been looking at how we think, in its many ways, but when practicing that in blitz chess it doesn't seem very efficient and effective. It's too left-brain sequential and not fluid enough or fast enough. The following e-msg and my response explains.


A friend writes and points me to a Dan Heisman article on chess.com. Heisman is a national master in America, noted for being a great teacher of weaker players.

I responded...

Yesterday at the club I tried to do the stuff I've been talking about and in blitz I couldn't focus well for a while and even when I did focus I found it impossible to go down the list of 'things to do'. It just seems too long and intricate. Perhaps in a slower game it could work, but it just doesn't work in blitz.

 

I had to adjust as the day went on and begin to rely more on my opening knowledge and general principles of positional play and all the standard things.

 

It seems to me we do have to be very familiar with the position before us and know its weaknesses (for both sides) and how we might try to exploit those without giving up the farm to do it. Thus, dividing the position into chunks and silently describing their weaknesses to ourselves just seems far too slow. However, knowing the weaknesses is crucial to focus our play. Likewise, "silently stating the goal" may be useful, but when considering various possibilities it's enough to realize which of them meets the broad general offensive goal best without destroying our own position. "Hurry slowly" as Kasparov and others have said is good advice. Where the biggest difference in blitz and tournament chess comes in is the time spent considering various plans or doing blunder-checking. I prefer these days to try to maintain a safe position rather than having to face unrelenting threats to my weak spots which I have to respond to. It's easier to have a safe stable base and be free to play offense. Considering a prototype plan and making alterations to improve it is probably very important, though the time spent on that would naturally vary as the clock allows.

 

In The Grandmaster's Mind Boris Gelfand said he just came up  with a tactical or strategic idea and then tried to find a way to make it work. I think that about says the same thing as I got from watching a ChessBase magazine video of Shirov describing his analytic work. There has to be a lot of focus on concrete ways to get positional or material advantages or eventually mate and one can do that abstractly or concretely (with variations) and finding the best strongest idea has to somehow come very naturally (like intuition it comes from careful study of master games).

 

Heisman advocates a lengthy process, much as I and others have described (including Daniel King) with something Gelfand himself couldn't manage. I think the time the top GMs are spending on various moves and variations and their evaluations simply precludes so much on these other things. Or perhaps, it's somewhat the same except the GMs have streamlined the execution of it.

 

Heisman is teaching weaker players and needs to describe a lot of fundamentals as he goes and the GMs already know the fundamentals and practice them regularly, so for them it's just a matter of keeping their high level of objectivity and being mentally in shape to do the work at top speed and of course producing opening novelties.

 

Nigel Short today said one of the biggest things that has changed in his play as he aged has been that he simply doesn't do opening research any more. I suspect a lot of the rest of his play is still excellent. His analysis of these World Cup games has been spot on most of the time. Interestingly Short also said he had a few opponents who just regularly drubbed him: Kasparov, Ivanchuk & Shirov. Well, we know about Kasparov, but his problems with Ivanchuk and Shirov probably indicates their calculation skills were finding holes in Short's positional play & plans or they were just interfering enough to throw him off. That certainly teaches a valuable lesson in itself. Still, it was Short who got to the world championship and not Ivanchuk or Shirov (though he earned it). I wonder if Ivanchuk or Shirov could've beaten Karpov or Timman in 1991?

 

We can use pattern recognition and creation (when creating a safe structure for ourselves or recognizing weaknesses in the opponent's position) and good evaluation of theoretical weaknesses to see if they are in fact weaknesses we might seriously seek to exploit and good move selection & planning to generate good plans (for both sides).

 

Nuts & bolts make the car work, not the owner's manual.

 

Somewhere in the process there still must be a way to emphasize left- & right-brain utilization using silent verbalization of the position or goals or evaluations while also using visualization of positions and variations or revisions. Making our brain work at its best also has to require good eating & sleeping & exercise habits and knowing when to focus & work and when to walk about & relax. Breathe deeply & slowly to calm the reptile inside and feed the body to keep blood sugar steady.

 

A finely-tuned chess player has a lot of parts working as a whole.