I just realized yesterday that I can do unlimited Tactics Trainer here with any membership.  That is cool!

Is it necessarily a good thing to do tactics training with time pressure? 

As far as I can tell there isn’t any way to adjust time settings.  Taking too long on a puzzle and getting it right gives me a negative adjustment to my rating, the same as if I got it wrong.  So I can’t move up to harder puzzles until I can solve them fast. 

I have mixed feelings about this.  On the one hand, time pressure may somehow improve focus and learning.  On the other hand, it may encourage me to move before I’m sure.  Same issue as playing blitz vs long time control.

What do you think?  Can you explain the value of time pressure in tactics training?

well I guess time pressure may help to replicate the feeling in OTB when you are down to time pressure or allegro finish.  I agree with you I just play by instinct w/o being positive I know all the moves and so get moves wrong, my blitz chess is also erratic for the same reason (rating there is 400 less).  Further, in a real game you know the lead up to the position so you have effectively more time on the position.  Given all that speed and ability are mostly linked, no surprise that a GM is highest in the list here.  Having said that the trainer listing also shows that tactical ablility is not enough by itself as there are a few people with very high tactic trainer ratings who are relatively poor in turn based.

 

You do know that you can adjust your settings to play unrated/untimed and then set the level of problem you want to work on?

 

In OTB tournaments, even in long games, there is a clock. So I think there is value in learning to think in limited time.

 

More important is the educational aspect. Many people have studied and have personal experience with the best way to learn tactics. Many people believe that sitting and thinking about a problem for a long time (5-10 minutes) is not as efficient a learning tool as thinking about it a shorter amount of time (1-2 minutes) and then being shown how to solve it.

 

If you're not on the right track in the first 1-2 minutes, all your brain will do for your long think is ponder wrong ways to go about playing the position. What do you think this does for your ability to play tactical positions well? It's much better to fill your brain with the right way to play.

could just be trying to force you to find the solutions quiker?

i suppose in theory the better you are with tactics the quiker you will solve the puzzles

PerfectGent wrote:

...we should be able to disable the clock and still get a rating.

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 the problem is, then there is no real way to get an accurate rating. somebody who takes 3 seconds to solve a tactic vs. 30 minutes to solve the tactic isn't rated the same. it would make ratings for tactics totally useless. :(

A clock is necessary for a more accurate rating. This rating would reflect on how well a person plays during an OTB tournament since tournament games are also played with a clock.

A fair rating could not be assessed without the clock. Should a person that finished a puzzle in 10 minutes be rated the same as a person that finished in 2 hours? 

The tactics trainer simulates OTB tournament play by putting pressure as in a real game. By practicing with a clock, a person is conditioned to find the correct play within a given time limit. 

Thanks for your thoughts, everyone. 

Yesterday I tried selecting unrated training mode and entering a rating range for the puzzles.  Somehow I screwed it up and it didn't work as expected, so I went back to rated.  I probably just didn't click "save preferences." Just now I tried it again and it worked fine. 

So this is good.  I get to do both.  I can go unrated and input a rating range if I want to work some more difficult puzzles without time pressure, and I can go back to rated when I want to use time pressure and rating to assess and drive my  skill that way.

The time allotted for the puzzles in the 1000-1200 range seems like about 30-60 seconds.  I think I could use about 2 or 3 minutes, before there would be diminishing returns on my thought process.  And 2-3 minutes would be allowed in the games I play. 

The time scale change I'm suggesting is increase from 30-60 sec to 2-3 min.  I'm not talking about increasing to 10-20 min.  I'm just clarifying the time scale I was thinking of, not lobbying for a change.

I do see a valuable compontent to time preasure.  I think it's a ballance.  The optimum for learning probably depends on the person.  Too much time and you're under stimulated.  To little time and you're over pressured.

I use another site, which has a "standard" and "blitz" set for questions.  The ratings are seperate (standard questions are also harder at lower ratings). ADMINS!  PAY ATTENTION!  DO BOTH WITH SEPERATE RATINGS FOR MAXIMUM HAPPINESS

"Standard" questions give ratings with no bearing on how long it took you to answer the question.  The lack of time pressure encourages proper form. However, the ratings are useless for bragging, and the lack of time pressure can mean you think about the wrong moves, or think about a move for too long, or continue trying a question you have no idea how to solve (If you don't do this, on the flipside, you can end up with too easy questions).

"Blitz" (default) questions are the standard ones that adjust for time.  The problem with them is due to the fact that tactical questions always have a clearly winning answer people tend to try things likely to succeed in a tactical puzzle, but foolish in a real game.  So people that do this would get more value out of standard questions or blitz chess.  If you make a conscious effort NOT to do this, your rating will be lower then it should be, and blitz chess would help you with your thought process more. 

I think the only arguable advantage of blitz questions is that quite simply your pattern recognition gets better faster, since you will see more questions.

 

Of the two, I prefer Standard questions with no time pressure.  I also like how I can transfer them to a real chessboard. Most people also prefer to spend too short on a question, then people prefer to look at them for 10 minutes, so if you do the questions like in a real game your rating is better reflective of you with long time controls.

No, I'm not sore that I have a low tactical puzzle rating, I can bump it up 200 points by doing the questions in a differant way.

The problem with the short time is that you only get to test your recognition skills. You have to recognize what sort of tactic you are looking at right away or you lose on time. No time to calculate and really think it out. I guess I wish there was untimed rated  as well so both skills could be worked on and a player could measure his progress by the rating he or she has in both. I doubt it would be difficult to add an untimed rating section with the same problems.

eric says it would make ratings for tactics totally useless by having an untimed rating section as well. I disagree.  That is exactly how CT Art works and that is one of most utilized software training program for tactics.   Rating is solely based on the success rate of problems solved and how fast you solve them has nothing to do with it. Also the rating you get in CT art has zero to do with ratings other players have gotten solving the same problem. It's only purpose is to measure individual progesss because it is set up as study tool, not just a testing tool. Big difference. As far as I am concerned you could keep the ratings private on an untimed rating section. I only want to see a rating to measure my own progress with the program not to just test and compare myself to other players. It seems Eric has a hard time seeing how an untimed rating section would tremendously help ones individual developmet in chess.  It would be much more useful as a study tool that way. Do one rated timed section and one rated untimed section and where the only purpose is to work hard and spend the necessary time to work on our calculation skills. And if bothered by some sense of fairness(like we can actually do anything with our rating in the tactics trainer) keep the ratings on the untimed section private. 

 

I STRONGLY agree that untimed tactics should be rated. There could simply be two ratings - one for timed and one without time. Under the best conditions I still play slow. And I don't play OTB because I enjoy taking my time. I'll never be a champion - but I think I still deserve a rating boost if I get it right regardless of how long it takes. When I'm playing the tactics trainer *timed* I find that I spend a lot of energy trying to beat the clock instead of looking for the right solution. So as soon as I see a pattern that looks like it might work I make the move because I MIGHT get it right. I don't think that's the way to get good at chess. I don't play Tactics Trainer to compete with other people. It's a tool. I'm competing with myself to improve. The rating is secondary - but without it - how can I tell how I'm doing?

Wormrose, your points can be clearly made without assorted fonts, capital letters and bright colors. There is a good reason for timed tactics. If you read any tactics book it will tell you to answer each question in a small time period and if you don't to move on. Why is that? Well because there is little to gain from this. While you may do better with unlimited time, you are really cheating yourself. Timed tactics require knowledge of the situation at a level of mastery. If you have not mastered a tactic, then you will either miss it or take an unusually long amount of time to solve it in which you obviously have not "mastered it." This is how mastery of something is measured. If you truely have mastered a tactic, then you should be able to easily solve within the time limit and move on. Answer me this, have you ever known a test in school where you've had infinite time? Of course not. Why? Because if the student has mastered a subject he/she should be able to identify and solve the problem in time.<

Continuing on, remember that tactics trainer is not about right answers but learning. If you don't get a good answer thats okay. It's just one more thing to improve on. And if learning's what you're after, then wrong answers should if anything push you to try harder next time. Geez im only 18 and I know that! :p

that's because when you are 18 you know everything :-)

wormrose wrote: that's because when you are 18 you know everything :-)

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;D

This is a great site.  The tactics trainer is great.  But I would agree with those that would like to have seperate ratings for timed & untimed.  Especially, someone earlier noted that another site uses harder tactics for untimed.  It would be great to work on both as others have mentioned, we all have our weak areas.  But, it would be nice to have the option to work on what you like to play best.

PerfectGent wrote:

anthonycg

you say that if you know a tactic you will solve it quickly. of course you will.

BUT

we dont use tactic trainer to practice what we know, we use it to solve new problems and learn.

and that can be done at any appropriate speed

but then you are only 18 so plenty time to learn

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Yeah, but u should mess up sooner or later and thats how you know you gotta work on it. I should know cuz tactics arent exactly my strong point hehe. Nf9! Checkmate! :s

AquaMan wrote:

The time allotted for the puzzles in the 1000-1200 range seems like about 30-60 seconds.  I think I could use about 2 or 3 minutes, before there would be diminishing returns on my thought process.  And 2-3 minutes would be allowed in the games I play.

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 I seem to remember that Erik once mentioned, in a similar discussion, that the time alloted for a problem is based on the average solution time for that problem. So, if a problem allows you 45 seconds - that's because most people have solved it in under 45 seconds.

Having said that, I do have the same difficulty myself. I find that with the clock ticking, I either solve the whole problem in under 30 seconds or else (more often) sit there scratching my head; and then when I see I'm almost out of time, I panic and say "oh no! I have to do something! Sacrifice my queen somewhere! Maybe this will work!" 

"when I see I'm almost out of time, I panic and say "oh no! I have to do something!"

This is simply a failure in logic. You don't lose any more points per second used at the end of the clock than at the beginning. And once the clock gets to the end, your score stays at 20%. So, in fact, the time pressure doesn't get worse at the end it goes away at the end!