Time & Decisions – Not just the time but the timing
“We like to think.” Gary Kasparov
It is not just applicable to Kasparov… all grandmasters play their chess with time control, yet no amount of experience excludes them from time trouble - the scenario where a player has little time to complete the required moves before a time limit. Away from the chessboard, our lives are equally set and beset by time limits and deadlines. All of us play the game of life with time control. We juggle tasks equally as we juggle time which can leave us exhilarated or exhausted, prepared or perplexed… Do we plan with the time we have or the time it takes? How do we set timeframes? How do we manage time? How does a deadline impact on the outcome?
In the game below Anatoly Karpov is in a desperate position; his king is exposed and his pieces are not well placed to defend the three remaining pawns, yet Victor Korchnoi, notorious for getting into time trouble, was way behind on the clock. It was the 1978 World Championships and the players were required to play the first 40 moves in two-and-half-hours each, then one hour each for every 16 moves after that. After 26 moves Korchnoi found himself needing to make another 14 moves in quick time to reach time control.
Whilst Korchnoi simplified the game and chased the black king with a series of checks to help tick off the moves until move 40, Karpov sacrificed the exchange and did everything he could to complicate it. After the 34th move Korchnoi had six minutes left on the clock to make the last six moves! The additional pressure saw him make a series of sub optimal decisions and he soon lost his strong positional advantage. As the poor decisions compounded, the game headed towards a draw until Korchnoi’s horrific blunder on move 39 – one move before reaching time control. His oversight gifted Karpov an embarrassing forced checkmate in three moves!
For the chess enthusiasts amongst us, the game continued with: 27 Rb5? Nc4. 28 Rb7+ Ke6. 29 Nxd4+ Kd5. 30 Nf3? Nxa3. 31 Nxe5 Kxe5. 32 Re7+ Kd4. 33 Rxg7 Nc4. 34 Rf4+ Ne4. 35 Rd7+ Ke3. 36 Rf3+ Ke2. 37 Rxh7 Ncd2! 38 Ra3 Rc6! 39 Ra1?? Nf3+! Korchnoi resigned.
Kasparov sums up time trouble perfectly: “the worst enemy of the strategist is the clock. Time trouble... It reduces us all to pure reflex and reaction, tactical play. Emotion and instinct cloud our strategic vision when there is no time for proper evaluation.”
Put simply: to make an informed decision we not only need the right information to make such a decision, but we also need the appropriate amount of time to process the situation. So, do we plan with the time we have or the time it takes? Too much time or too little time? How do we allocate an appropriate amount of time?
The rise of competitive chess during the 1800’s saw an unwritten rule giving players unlimited time for each move. Yet it soon became a question of fairness: why should a player be allowed to take enormous amounts of time? When the practice of recording time began, it was found that a game in the Staunton v Saint Amant match of 1843 averaged nine hours and that as much as two hours and 20 minutes was spent by one player on a single move. This was paralysis by analysis.
Clearly it is not practical to play chess without a time limit just as it is not practical to plan work without a deadline. Deadlines give us a target to aim at; they create a sense of urgency and they push our creativity to find a solution and a way forward. Without a deadline, a decision or task will simply occupy the time and space that is available.
On the flipside we encounter deadlines that are too tight and impractical, which give us little time to think and act. Without realising it we start making sub-optimal decisions that all add up. We invariably reach a point of no return where the quality of our decisions no longer matters… We may make some great decisions down the track, but when they are made on the back end of some not-so-great decisions, they make little difference.
In chess there are chess engines and web applications that evaluate moves and provide an aggregate calculation to show who is ahead in the game. Therefore, it is possible to see the impact of a move as soon as it’s played. In business we often don’t see the impact of sub-optimal decisions until well after the event and by that stage we are well and truly locked in. As the old saying goes: “If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”
Time trouble doesn’t just happen though, it creeps up on us one move, (or one day), at a time. In chess it could be a result of perfectionism and searching for a winning move that’s just not there, it could be analytical doubts and being unable to find a way forward in the game. Similarly, in a project we might spend too much time making a deliverable look perfect or we may get into too much detail trying to compensate for uncertainty. The other time killer for all is procrastination, the thief of time.
Ultimately, we need to strike a happy medium and think differently about the way we treat and use the time we have and the time it takes.
In chess, time trouble isn’t always a genuine problem. Complex positions will develop and you need time to calculate out the best sequence of moves, or there will be decisive moments in the game where you need to analyse a move very carefully. Good chess players treat the clock as another dimension of the game. The key is to establish a priority and work with time and not against it.
In the early 1990’s ex-World Chess Champion, Bobby Fischer, patented the increment method of time control whereby a specified amount of time is added to the player’s time limit after each move. The time is only added if the player still has time left on the clock and this method works best with a digital clock where the time can be added on automatically. There are other methods for time control, but the increment method, or Fischer Time, was adopted by the World Chess Federation (FIDE).
Nowadays there is a single time control for all major FIDE events: 90 minutes for the first 40 moves followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game with an addition of 30 seconds per move starting from move one. This means for the first 40 moves a player has the standard 110 minutes; 90 minutes of standard time plus an additional 20 minutes (40 lots of 30 second increments).
Although it is still possible to lose a game on Fischer Time, the concept not only helps players manage their time, but by bringing the time limit forward it speeds up the game. It effectively rewards players with a 30 second bonus each time they move whilst creating a sense of urgency… what a good way to balance the demands of time…
Could Fischer Time work with meetings, workshops and projects? For example, the agenda for a meeting is set to run for 45 minutes but one hour is booked. Think of a workshop with a three-hour agenda in a four-hour timeslot. Picture a three-month project within four months of elapsed time. We aim to finish the task in the allocated time, but at the same time we have “bonus” time should we encounter complexities.
When we plan our use of time, we plan ahead just far enough with what we know. Anything beyond that can be treated a milestone. Unlike chess where there is a strict time limit to plan and play a set number of moves, we can recalibrate and rollout the plan as we approach a new milestone. Here we use our experience to call out tight timeframes before they result in sub-optimal outcomes.
During time trouble the play is often frantic and chess enthusiasts will circle the board to watch the spectacle unfold. In turn, the players literally hammer the clock into the table to minimise the time they use each move; it’s as if they are stress testing a black box flight recorder. Invariably, one of the players self-destructs by blundering on the board or losing on time. All that good work is undone and the game is lost. For the enthusiast it’s a cathartic process to watch a player become the ultimate sacrifice as their game falls apart in front of the clock. For the player there is nothing worse than the feeling of dread knowing full well their time is up. Time stands as the ultimate leveller that strikes fear into the heart of all chess players.
Back in 1978 Karpov went on defend his title, winning 6-5, yet time and time again Korchnoi outplayed him only to lose the initiative on the clock (Games 5, 9 and 17). After the win in Game 17, a jubilant Karpov took a 4-1 lead and he returned to his accommodation at the Terraces Plaza Hotel where the staff presented him with a cake showing the final position of the game. The first thing Karpov did was eat the white king for he had time on his side.