I’ve been casually enjoying chess off and on for the past year, and while I can tell that I’m improving, I think I need to get faster at calculating. I play mostly Daily games (1300-something currently) and am a puzzle fiend, but I find myself getting into time-trouble constantly when I play games with actual time controls.
I want to get comfortable with blitz, but I feel like I’m not learning as much because I’m just scrambling to get (often terrible) moves out in time. I tried puzzle battle for the first time recently too, and even though my regular puzzle rating is 2500, I’m frequently losing on time once the puzzles get to 1000+ (my avg time per puzzle is usually 0:06-0:08 at the end).
I suspect the answer is just going to be to play more with time controls, but I’m curious if anyone here has found any practice tips that have helped them personally.
The answer is not going to be to play more with time controls but playing long time controls and spending time (maybe years) thinking deeper in lots and lots of different positions until you can calculate well then you will be able to speed it up as you have a lot more knowledge of the positions you get into.
This sounds like good advice. I guess I need to learn my openings well enough to play them quicker and quicker. Reminds me of learning to play something complicated on a musical instrument: you don’t start at full speed, your learn it at a slow tempo first and then speed it up.