Tonight, Tonight

I have black vs. Laroy O'Doan; our previous game was an exciting draw. I mentioned in my last post "what's working and what isn't," and what I had in mind that isn't is that in both the draw against O'Doan and my loss to S. Kesti last week I blew a couple of possible half points by getting into time pressure and playing rather weakly, or at least shallowly, for the last few moves before the control.

The Reno CC plays a lot of 30/90, G/60 time controls, which is certainly long enough for quality chess. In both the cited games I took 15-20 minutes on two separate occasions in relatively complicated tactical positions, but both times I could have played the move I actually chose much sooner. In both I had to play quickly for 8-10 moves to make the time control at move 30.

The fact is, I'm not especially good in time pressure, and zeitnot by my standards is around one minute per move. So one specific thing I will keep in mind tonight is not to re-re-recheck my calculations except in extraordinary circumstances. With fairly quick opening play, I want to have at least a half-hour left at move 20.

I'll let you know how it went in my next post.