time pressure
Time shortage is a term used in the game of chess and describes the distress of a player when, in a game played with a chess clock , there is little time left to make a certain number of moves or to finish the game before the maximum allowed time has elapsed .
Lack of time in (family) everyday life or in professional life is synonymous with (performance) pressure and excessive demands, to which people are often exposed, so that (planned) projects cannot be implemented or only with difficulty. Time management can be a coping strategy .
The term Zeitnot was adopted as Germanism in many languages, including Russian .
Definition of time constraint
Chess players experience time constraints differently. Especially good blitz chess players usually have no difficulty in making several moves within a few seconds.
In general, in the last five minutes before a time control, there is a lack of time if less than 30 seconds are available for each move to be made. The FIDE rules of chess (Article 8.3) allow a player who is short of time to dispense with noting his moves during this phase. This is then done by a chess referee , who may also intervene if the reflection time is exceeded.
Causes of time constraints in chess
There can be several reasons why a player is often short of time. Purely chess-based reasons, such as the surprise caused by a strong opening treatment by the opponent and lack of familiarity with the resulting position, make up only a minority of the cases. According to Mark Dworezki, there is a chess psychological problem in many cases . The time-pressed player is often indecisive, spends time on obvious moves and does not trust his intuition . He has been occupied with unimportant positional nuances for too long. Some players also run out of time because they are subconsciously looking for an excuse for losing games. In order to avoid time constraints, it is recommended to regularly note the time spent thinking about a game and to analyze afterwards whether it was appropriate.
Behavior when there is little time to think about it
"Time management" as well as behaviors and strategies to avoid shortage of time or excessive consumption of the available reflection time are part of the chess training that belongs to the field of practical chess psychology. There are often positions in which the search for the optimal move has to be interrupted in good time in order to make a choice between several good moves and to have enough time left for later decisions.
Nonetheless, many well-known masters often struggled with time constraints, such as Samuel Reshevsky and Friedrich Sämisch . Even at world championships , time constraints were crucial in important games. Mikhail Botvinnik worked systematically to avoid running out of time by playing training competitions in which he was mainly concerned with improving his time management.
Conversely, there are specialists who use the game as a psychological trick with little time to think about it. In a difficult situation, according to Alexei Suetin , certain masters, who are used to "time emergency affairs", sometimes intentionally cause a short period of reflection and thus set a "psychological trap" for the opponent.
swell
- ↑ Mark Dworezki: For friends and colleagues . Jussupow Schachakademie Verlag 2011. S. 240 f.
- ↑ Alexei Suetin: Typical mistakes . Berlin 1981, p. 146.
