Take Your Time

The point of playing longer time controls is to give yourself time to analyze candidate moves and calculate if you think there is a tactic.

There are a shocking amount of players that don't do this in classical. They still blitz out their moves, almost as if they're trying to finish with more time on their clock than what they started.

I just wrapped up a game that wasn't incredibly complicated. There were some trades that turned into a pretty equal pawn endgame. Here's the final clock:

This was a 15 + 15 game with 45 moves, yet my opponent gained time. Good for him/her! Maybe they'll use that 1:49 in the next game. Notice that even though I called it a pretty simple game, I still took my time.

My opponent's three longest thinks:

     80s
     57s
     55s

Mine:

     147s
     131s
     98s

It can be difficult to know when to sit for a few minutes and try to find a tactic or the best defense. That in itself is a decision to make! You shouldn't be blitzing out your moves as if you have GM-like intuition, but you can't get into time trouble by move 15 either! 

Balancing time is a skill to work on. Analyze how often you get into time trouble and how often you finish with more time than your opponent. Adjust your time-use accordingly. 

You might experience times when you have a 3-move combination worked out in your head so you play the first move in the sequence and then your opponent follows suit with what you had assumed they'd play. Even in these situations, it's okay to take 5 seconds to make sure your calculation is correct! It can be tempting to see an awesome combination and you want to blitz out the moves to intimidate your opponent but nothing is worse than having your calculation wrong and missing a simple in-between move in the middle of your combination. Yes that is a calculation error you'd want to work on, but you could also have avoided some trouble by taking slightly more time for every move!

Use your time to double-check tactical calculations, captures, even basic opening moves that you think you've seen before. 

The general takeaway is that in the lower-rated games, you will win a lot of games by sheer patience and simply trying harder than your opponent. Don't let someone's fast play throw you off. Play the best move you can find.