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How To Incorporate Time Management Into Your Chess Games
A 101 on chess clocks and timed games
For some people chess is simply a game. A pastime they maybe learned when they were younger or a board game to play as a family where the winner or loser doesn’t matter — and sometimes the game is concluded in a long drawn out time period over various days.
For me it’s a fast paced, perfectly tempoed game full of excitement and panic. The reason for this is chess clocks. Adding a chess clock will instantly improve the drama of your games, irrespective of your standard. Suddenly you can win not just by checkmate, but also by your opponent’s clock running out of time.
I remember very vividly when I first used a chess clock. It was as a junior playing my first tournament as a 9 year old having very rapidly attained a level way beyond my school chess club peers. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing — the etiquette on when to press my clock, what the little flag with 5 minutes to go meant, or how to incorporate writing my moves down alongside a ticking time clock. It was all very scary — and yet now I couldn’t dream of playing chess without a clock.
Recently I’ve been forced to revisit the notion of chess clocks as I teach a chess club at my daughter’s school. Although…
