By NM Dan Heisman

Suppose I told you that your chess thinking could become almost twice as efficient. I think (no pun intended) that most Thinking Cap readers would be very interested in how this could be accomplished. For players who waste their opponent’s thinking time such an increase might be possible. Let’s consider the most efficient ways to use the half of the game when your opponent’s clock is running.

First, your opponent’s time is, of course, the best time to drink, eat, go to the bathroom, and stretch your legs. And indeed you should eat and drink during long games, and stretch your legs once in a while to keep your blood circulating and your body limber. Let’s assume these activities take a certain percentage of your opponent’s thinking time. Even so, you should keep these extraneous activities down to a moderate amount. For example, suppose you get up and stroll around after every move, checking to see how your buddies’ games are going, etc. and only return to your table after you notice that your opponent has punched the clock. Even if you could be perfectly efficient and catch your opponent immediately as he punches the clock (in practice virtually impossible), then you still might waste 10 seconds or so each move getting back to your board and seeing what move was made. In a 40 move game, this would amount to about 400 seconds, or almost 7 minutes! And even if you walk around on only half your moves, that still amounts to over three minutes of wasted time, time that might be needed to save the game later. So that wasted time can add up, in addition to the lost opportunities to use the opponent’s thinking time more wisely. Therefore, the remainder of this article assumes you are both willing and able to use most of your opponent’s thinking time to augment yours – what should you be doing?

The classic suggestion is to think specifics and tactics during your move and generalities and strategy during your opponent’s move – and this indeed is good advice. For example, on your move you might analyze specific lines such as “If I make move A, will he reply move B, and what is my evaluation of the position if he does?”, while on his turn you might consider ideas such as “With this pawn structure, should I push my queenside pawns and if so, which ones first” or “What would be the ideal square on which to maneuver this knight, and should it be the next piece that I need to reposition?” If you learn to do this efficiently, you will be making good use of your opponent’s time, and that in turn should result in better performances.

Another part of general strategy that can be performed while your opponent’s clock is ticking is time management. For example, you can get a feel on whether you are playing too fast or too slow, based on considerations such as the complexity of the position, how many moves the game is likely to last, the time control, the current move number, and how much time is remaining on your clock. A periodic adjustment is necessary early in the time control, but that adjustment may become more frequent as time becomes more of a factor.

However, while considering general strategy is the most common practice that occurs on your opponent’s time, it is not the only one. There are ways to spend that time, and deciding which is the most efficient often depends on factors such as how much time is left on the clock and how efficiently you can predict your opponent’s next move. As was discussed in a prior Thinking Cap, suppose your opponent only has one legal move, but for some reason he (erroneously) is not making it. In this case you can predict your opponent’ move with perfect efficiency and, instead of thinking in generalities, you can assume that move will be made and start to decide on your reply, just as if it were already your turn.

With regards to your opponent’s likely move, there is an enormous grey area in-between “forced” and “wide open”, where his move is neither forced nor completely discretionary. In this grey area, the more you can anticipate your opponent’s move, the more you can think concretely on his time. For example, suppose your opponent has two crucial replies and is taking some time to decide between them. You should also figure out that he has two choices, assume the one you deem more dangerous and, while he is deciding, analyze what you would do if he made that move. If it turns out he makes the other move, you have lost very little – especially if you were correct that the one you were analyzing was better!

A very common practice among stronger players is to assume your principal variation (PV – the sequence you thought was most likely to happen when you were deciding your move) is going to be played. Since knowing the PV usually involves finding your opponent’s best move, you can assume that move – at least initially – and see if your intended reply still holds. Of course, if you don’t have a PV this may not be helpful advice, but you may find that even if you do not have a PV that you can find one while your opponent is thinking.

Quite often when you use your PV it turns out that although your opponent’s next move may be optimum, your originally intended reply to it may only be sufficient. For example, you might say to yourself, I will play X, which is clearly the best move, and if he plays move Y, then I can reply with move Z. But all that logic usually proves is that your intended next move Z is sufficient to meet his expected move Y, not that Z is necessarily your best reply to Y. Therefore, while finding such a sufficient Z is usually necessary to play X, it does not mean that Z is what you should play if Y is actually made. So while your opponent’s clock is running you can think to yourself, “Alright, I planned Z if he plays Y, but suppose he does plays Y – can I both verify that Z is sufficient and possibly find a move better than Z?”

By cleverly using your opponent’s time to determine if move Z would truly be best then, if your opponent does play Y as expected, you won’t have to rely on Z as simply a basis for new analysis, but will have much more information to start your turn. In fact, while you are thinking during your opponent’s turn, you may – unhappily – refute your intended move Z, and need to find another move that is even playable. Hopefully that scenario won’t happen too often, but when it does – especially when you are short on time and those type of analysis errors occur more frequently – starting your search for a sufficient move on your opponent’s time rather than just waiting and then finding out Z is inadequate on your time may be the difference between winning or losing a game! It has happened to me more than once.

Of course, sometimes when you are considering his reply Y, you realize Y is not best (your PV was not correct) and he would be making a mistake to play it. Then you should no longer worry about Z, but can spend your energies seeing which replies are more likely than Y and what you can do about them.

Worse, sometimes when you are in time trouble you don’t have time to find a PV. So in those cases it is especially important to make optimum use of your opponent’s time to calculate concrete variations in case they are played. Sometimes your opponent, even if he has quite a bit more time, may move quickly to stop you from doing so but, ironically, this is usually a big mistake on his part, because then he is negating his extra time advantage. The reason is that during your opponent’s thinking time you can’t think as efficiently about what the opponent is going to do as your opponent can, and so it is usually a better strategy for the opponent to take his time – and for you to use it as best possible. (Note: the major exception is when you are clearly winning, when it may indeed be correct for your opponent to play quickly in your time trouble even if he has adequate time!)

I read that world-class Grandmaster Michael Adams formerly took a stroll after almost every move, but became an even better player once he mastered the art of using his opponent’s thinking time efficiently. So next time you play a slow game, see if you can implement some of the strategies suggested above to improve your results, too. Good luck!

This completes the 10 part series of The Thinking Cap. I hope you have enjoyed the series and that reading it has been instructive. I would very much like to thank IM Jeremy Silman for giving me the opportunity to write for his website, and I hope to meet each and every one of you some day at the World Open or another tournament we both visit. If you have any feedback, I can be contacted at danheisman@comcast.net.