Temposchlucker

I worked my way through the first 5 chapters of Silmans complete endgame course. The scheme of this course is brilliant. It gives a logical order in studying the subjects. Unlike most endgame books, which mix material that you will never need in a lifetime with common used stuff. And Silman has resisted the temptation to straw with composed curiosities from Grigoriev indiscriminately. No distraction of differential calculations when you still strugle with the tables of multiplication. No exceptions before the common path is clear. The material from the first four chapters I knew already very well, except for one or two minor topics. Chapter five consists of material that was either new to me or long forgotten. Silmans claims that with mastering the first five chapters you can make do for the rest of your life. If you really don't want to spend any more time on it. Of course I'm going to do the next chapters too. But his claim gives me the assurance that I can take a break ...

Yesterday we had our third session. We talked about trading pieces. There is a difference between the opening and the endgame when it comes to trading pieces. In the opening it is often usefull to keep the tension between pawns as long as possible, and trade only when you can do it at a favourable moment or when you have no other choice. In the transition to the endgame you have to determine which endgame you want to play before you can trade pieces. We both (the pupils) noticed a tendency to trade too mechanically without reason. Thus compromising our position. Another issue that became clear is that my performance declines steeply at the moment that the transition to an endgame needs to take place. I usually protect myself by offering an early draw when that happens. The past 14 years my time trouble problem has protected me against this phase of the game, but now I have taken rigorous measures, that is no longer an issue. This means that I now have to learn to play the endgame. ...

Yesterday we had the second game analysis session with my coach. The first session was a revelation in the sense that I never was aware of how big the role of time trouble was in the results of my games. I thought I had overcome this problem by changing my repertoire from solely gambits to a positional repertoire a few years ago. What I effectively did by then was that I changed my time trouble from extreme++ to beyond average. That felt as an improvement, which it was, but it made me unaware of the fact that my time trouble was far from over. Apparently my bias that the time trouble problem was solved created a blind spot. I was already aware of the fact that a lot of time was spilled by irrelevant thoughts , so when the conclusion was that I spilled much points because of time trouble and my coach encouraged me to get rid of it rigorously, I decided to simply drop the irrelevant thoughts. By every move where I have to decide between two candidates I ask myself "can I decide th...