Forums

How are people not spending any time on thinking?

Sort:
djompara

Hi, 

I've started playing chess actively in the last couple of months and I play both here and on Lichess (but more here). I always play Rapid 15/10.

One bizarre pattern that I'm noticing when playing on both sites is that my opponents barely spend any time thinking and that causes me to lose some games because I go down on 2 minutes, 1 minute, or even below and I have to play fast while they have like 8 or 9+ minutes easily without ever blundering. For clarification, I don't spend 3 or 4 minutes on a single move but I do tend to analyze, do the calculations, and then play. 

This happens really often and it's starting to become annoying. I mean if they're better how come they're playing in the beginner rank with me? If they're not better how come they can play that fast? 

All help/advice is appreciated!

P. S. I'm 500+ on Chess.com and 1150 on Lichess. 

Kind regards,
Djordje 

Yao_Wang
Some people plan their moves while you are taking yours so they do not need to spend their own time thinking about a plan.
ChessMasteryOfficial

As you gain experience and confidence, your play will naturally become faster and more intuitive.

Fr3nchToastCrunch
Yao_Wang wrote:
Some people plan their moves while you are taking yours so they do not need to spend their own time thinking about a plan.

That's right.

My problem is that I plan what to do in response to a few things, and then my opponent does something completely different 💀

wers_than_my_rating
Try playing even longer time controls like 60 minutes
wep08a
This is why I stopped playing 15/10 and moved to 30-minute games instead. There is still the exact same problem, but at least it’s less intimidating to see a little time going off there clock, instead of it staying the same or going up.

Every single person who does this and answers when asked about it also parrots the line above about thinking during your time, as if they’ve figured out a secret no gm knows lol. Unfortunately, it’s just reality that the majority of online players are underrated entirely because they enjoy playing too quickly, so if you are serious about improving and reaching your best possible rating, you will forever have to deal with this. I’ve asked this question a number of different places, and turns out it never stops no matter how good you get.
GodDoesntExistSoJustRelax

The brain is like a muscle, stronger more you exercise it, the stronger it gets.

GodDoesntExistSoJustRelax

If you want to get used to playing fast but accurate, play short time controls like 3 minutes or 2 minutes per game. You will get used, and then 10 minutes will start to seem like too much time.