I already replied on youtube how I liked the part on time management, because I now realize how much sense it makes in my games too. I am blundering and making less inaccuracies because I am taking my time more in hard positions. I am pretty sure I would be a better player if I just learn to convert in a more efficient way than trying to rush the middlegame. However, I had never tried to do as Nate suggest in the video and look at my times spent per move. I found in my last few games I was spending way too much times on certain bishop moves (to e2 or d3 ?) so it is definitely something I will add to my game analysis now. Thank you Nate !
The video is very interesting. I agree that the automated graphs/stats that these sites give are not that useful to most people. The way you looked at time management makes sense to me intuitively. I wonder if the fact that you are looking at averages over many games might make the graph skewed somehow. Might be you want to visualize how far from the “perfect” time graph each game is (or calculate a number for how much they deviate from the optimal time usage. ). Kind of like the accuracy score but only for time usage.
Very curious about the next videos, really hoping for a strong player (titled player/2200+ fide)!
The approach to time analysis is pretty good, but could still be improved. The general direction with time left chart is very good, but just how much should we spend/leave at each stage? How much should we accumulate?
One way to check that would be to plot similar graphs for strong players and see. I did some data exploration and basically GMs spend almost all their time on middlegames. My interpretation is that this is because they can afford it due to their great endgame technique and opening knowledge. Still, my analysis is not perfect either - it's not like all GMs are great at time management! Moreover, whatever "optimal" strategy might be (and who knows, it might even be a mixed strategy?), it is bound to be defendant on how strong we are in each phase - aka personal to some extent.
Personally, when I try to stick to the formula in my OTB games, I find myself (re)calculating constantly my time allocation, which adds to the stress and tiredness. Then again, when I spent a summer doing that I had great success in a few tournaments right after... only to revert to my time-trouble ways later! So following Dvoretsky, I would call that a great training method, but not something you want to actually do during your games.
Wrt openings/early middlegames I think your analysis is perfect for the typical online player - they're supposed to just get their stuff out and know the resulting structures. For OTB and higher level, the possibilities are so much richer. Am I too predictable? (Mixed strategies again! Although personally I find that opponents and their reasonings are usually predictable to the point that pure strategies dominate). How is my learning curve when picking up new openings? How am I doing in the typical structures?
Analyzing moves that one spent a lot of time on is a nice coach touch, something that aimchess/chess.com can't really copy/steal from you easily :)
The article is a bit loosely connected to the video, but interesting nonetheless.
Just my thoughts, please take it as exploration not critique, I really want this trend to catch up and techniques improved significantly.
Loved this post. The biases related to one-game analysis are huge and, in my experience, little gain can be extracted from those exercises.
The poker analogy was masterfully explained. As fellow data scientist/poker enthusiast/chess player, I'm grateful for this post, because brought me joy and an opportunity to reflexion on my own chess games.
I already replied on youtube how I liked the part on time management, because I now realize how much sense it makes in my games too. I am blundering and making less inaccuracies because I am taking my time more in hard positions. I am pretty sure I would be a better player if I just learn to convert in a more efficient way than trying to rush the middlegame. However, I had never tried to do as Nate suggest in the video and look at my times spent per move. I found in my last few games I was spending way too much times on certain bishop moves (to e2 or d3 ?) so it is definitely something I will add to my game analysis now. Thank you Nate !
The video is very interesting. I agree that the automated graphs/stats that these sites give are not that useful to most people. The way you looked at time management makes sense to me intuitively. I wonder if the fact that you are looking at averages over many games might make the graph skewed somehow. Might be you want to visualize how far from the “perfect” time graph each game is (or calculate a number for how much they deviate from the optimal time usage. ). Kind of like the accuracy score but only for time usage.
Very curious about the next videos, really hoping for a strong player (titled player/2200+ fide)!
The approach to time analysis is pretty good, but could still be improved. The general direction with time left chart is very good, but just how much should we spend/leave at each stage? How much should we accumulate?
One way to check that would be to plot similar graphs for strong players and see. I did some data exploration and basically GMs spend almost all their time on middlegames. My interpretation is that this is because they can afford it due to their great endgame technique and opening knowledge. Still, my analysis is not perfect either - it's not like all GMs are great at time management! Moreover, whatever "optimal" strategy might be (and who knows, it might even be a mixed strategy?), it is bound to be defendant on how strong we are in each phase - aka personal to some extent.
Personally, when I try to stick to the formula in my OTB games, I find myself (re)calculating constantly my time allocation, which adds to the stress and tiredness. Then again, when I spent a summer doing that I had great success in a few tournaments right after... only to revert to my time-trouble ways later! So following Dvoretsky, I would call that a great training method, but not something you want to actually do during your games.
Wrt openings/early middlegames I think your analysis is perfect for the typical online player - they're supposed to just get their stuff out and know the resulting structures. For OTB and higher level, the possibilities are so much richer. Am I too predictable? (Mixed strategies again! Although personally I find that opponents and their reasonings are usually predictable to the point that pure strategies dominate). How is my learning curve when picking up new openings? How am I doing in the typical structures?
Analyzing moves that one spent a lot of time on is a nice coach touch, something that aimchess/chess.com can't really copy/steal from you easily :)
The article is a bit loosely connected to the video, but interesting nonetheless.
Just my thoughts, please take it as exploration not critique, I really want this trend to catch up and techniques improved significantly.
Loved this post. The biases related to one-game analysis are huge and, in my experience, little gain can be extracted from those exercises.
The poker analogy was masterfully explained. As fellow data scientist/poker enthusiast/chess player, I'm grateful for this post, because brought me joy and an opportunity to reflexion on my own chess games.