I haven't played chess for a while but I have been doing a lot of thinking regarding time management and analysis. As Dan has noted, the two are closely linked. Today I wondered, "If I had this position as white and I had 15 minutes (with a 5 sec delay) remaining on the clock, how would I play this and how much time do I have to devote?" It seems to me that whenever it is complicated and there doesn't seem to be a forced mate and if it is likely you will still be in the middlegame, then a lot of time is needed for the rest of the game. So it may be necessary to limit the time to within 2-5 minutes at the most or you may get diminishing returns. But if it goes into an endgame, then a lot more time can be devoted since endgames are theoretically "near the end". There are exceptions about endgames but they are usually much easier to play quickly.

You are so right! And most of these <non-critical decisions> are decisions about positional play, because for tactical play you have a fixed rule-set, so to say, it's about maintaining material balance or, if you want to achieve the advantage, winning a piece by deflection, sewer, fork, discovered attack and so on and so on, as there are the ready-made tools for tactical play.

Positional play is harder, although there can be whole games without any decisive tactical motifs.

Looking for examples? See here:

DcGentle chessforum

Rubinstein vs S Takacs, 1926

Such a game can hardly be found on today's chess scene, because the youngsters are too much fiddling around with their chess engines which have no clue about it.

< A SHAME >.

This kind of play is threatened to become extinct. It's high time to get my engine up and running, because tactical play is only half of the game.

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White.

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White to move played <26. h4?> losing the game. As much as Caruana showed his prowess in the rook ending against Carlsen, here you can see that he overlooked a positional move by his opponent. He confirmed my opinion that contemporary players maybe are a bit spoiled by chess engines.

In fact you can guess Black's answer or look it up.

Lasker vs Steinitz, 1894

So striking, Black does essentially <nothing> but take away <all good moves> from White. Unbelievable, in the end White was so fed up and frustrated that he resigned rather early, not too early of course.

It's an art to be able to play like this, and I am afraid the young generation of Caruana, Nakamura, Giri etc. will never be able to play like this. With Carlsen, I am not so sure, because he demonstrated positional prowess, but he has his own style, which might be able to evolve, lets hope for the best.

Enjoy,
<DC>

BTW, all these games:
Lasker vs Steinitz, 1894
Rubinstein vs S Takacs, 1926
The World vs Akobian, 2012

(1) 1...Rxg6 2.Qxf7+ and mate next move

(2) 1...Kh8 2.Qf6#

He is a great player, and only too often it happens that he has got the advantage in the game and cannot convert it. *hmmm*

White.

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(1) 1...fxe6 2.Rxe4 and White wins a piece due to the pin on the d-file