u/sneshny

hiya! as my flair suggest i'm 1900+ fide classical, recently i've played some 90|30 classical (i usually play 60|30) and i was afraid i might rush through games because i'm used to a faster time control but it appears that i actually have the opposite problem

my games have been going like this:

if the opening isn't in my territory, i will consistently spend more time than my opponent to try and figure things out and eventually get into time trouble

if the opening is in my territory, i will enjoy the first phase of the game where i can chill, then lose my time advantage, until eventually, you guessed it, i get into time trouble

it has been a revelation to me that my natural time-spending habits fit into a grischuk archetype, all my games have been very long and arduous, regardless of the result

if i had to think of a reason, i think my main issue is hesitancy when i have multiple ways to proceed AND when there are no obvious things to "calculate", i am generally aware of various positional ideas (knight outposts, weak squares, open files, etc.), i did the entire positional chess patterns manual course on chessable last year actually, but i guess i'm too eager to spend a lot of time thinking about these kinds of things when i have to make a decision about which way i want a game to go

so yeah, i'm curious about what exists out there to help, i recently went through azel chua's calculation course on chessable and the whole thing about scanning the board for hanging/unprotected pieces, looking for piece alignment and all that stuff has been helpful in select cases, but i don't have a similar formal method for when it's time to make a positional decisions and i was hoping someone could point me in the right direction

i THINK "how to reassess your chess" has some sort of formalized method i can go through like a checklist, but if someone has others i'm curious. i don't deny that maybe i should instead focus on things like pawn structures to help me guide my decision-making, i admit thinking in terms of pawn majorities on one side or another is something i don't understand very well

but yeah i'd love some recommendations from people who have been in the same boat, i just want to get over my habit of taking way too much time trying to figure out which direction i want to take a game in until my time usage no longer allows me to

i realized this yesterday and my mind was blown