I attended the RJ Shield Tournament at Doncaster Gardens Primary School last Sunday and had the opportunity to watch about 40 young players compete over 7 rounds in 15 minute games.

It’s a pity that these days players don’t have an opportunity to play in more events that require them to use a clock and consequently learn how to manage their time.

You will generally find that there are four categories of chess players when it comes to using chess clocks.

Category A players are inexperienced and do not know what to think about so they see a move they like and just play it quickly. They are the ones who end up on the wrong end of a four move checkmate!

Category B players are the “seekers after truth.” They want to find the best move in every position. They know it’s there somewhere, and if the think long enough and hard enough they hope to find it. Unfortunately, having spent all that time, the usually end up with 30 seconds to play the rest of the game and consequently lose on time.

Category C players are the ditherers of the chess world. They analyse a number of moves but just can’t make up their mind as to which is the best one, so they go over their analysis again and again. They too run out of time or blunder horribly in time trouble.

Category D players are the pragmatists. They know that they have a limited amount of time and that the game is a battle between two players, not a search for perfection. They play good moves quickly rather than great moves slowly and they end up winning.

I like to think that I fall into this last category. I my chess career, which must have covered thousands of games, I lost on time on only three occasions. One of my rivals, three times Australian Champion Doug Hamilton, was a Category B player, always seeking perfection and often losing on time in the search. Of course he played some nice games, but his results suffered because of poor time management.

There are, however, a rare few players who seem to deliberately get into time trouble and still do quite well. Perhaps they have become used to the pressure of a time scramble. I sometimes wonder whether or not the effect of a time scramble may cause the body to release some hormones which people then become addicted to and so they continue to waste their time irrationally to get into time trouble.

At the RJ Shield Tournament David Cordover lectured the players to take their time on their moves rather than rush moves out quickly.

This was good advice but young minds are not easily persuaded. The coaches still had to go up to players after their games and suggest that, had they perhaps thought a little more before moving, they would not again have fallen for the 4 move checkmate!