Be it known (in the interest of full transparency), that the changes made in December (see post #196) are still in effect: The server is preferring tactics in a range from 60 points higher to 40 points lower than your current rating.

To date, although we have not changed the scoring logic, this change to tactics selection alone would generally reduce the size of ratings swing, whether you get a given problem correct or incorrect. (In other words, you're not going to see many ratings changes of +/- 22 if the problem's rating is proximate to your own.)

So that's where we are today...

However, with the advent of V3 later this year, we will be making another change to tactics logic (scoring this time) that we think most people will like (based on a recent survey). Here's what that will entail:

- Percentile score remains at 100% until the player uses up half of the problem's average time-to-solve. (This is an extension.)

- From that point on, the score drops steadily, reaching 50% at twice the average time-to-solve. At that point (a theoretical "draw" vs the tactic), the score stops dropping based on time. (It currently does this only after reaching 20%.)

- Any time after that, if the player solves the tactic correctly, the server will assess whether the player should get any points for a 50% score (i.e. if the tactic is rated higher than the player). If that's the case, then the player gets those rating points. In all other cases, the player's rating does not change. A player's rating will never drop as a result of correctly solving a tactic.

Thank you very much for this update. I'm looking forward to the changes you announced being implemented!

Thank you. Losing points for a correctly solved problem does not promote good chess. And it's annoying as heck.

That sounds like a really good update. Then the only thing I can complain about is that I think you should get 0% score when you don't get all moves correct.

Agreed. Getting 2/3 for dropping your queen on the final move is nonsensical.

. A player's rating will never drop as a result of correctly solving a tactic.

Can't wait! thanks.

Too late

Dear Admins

I took a timeout from TT for about 2 months now because of the bug I am going to write about again. I come back and see that if you set TT to a rating range of say 900 to 1300 and "unrated", TT will only give you problems at the high end of the range. Which is totally not what you want, in this case.

This used to work correctly in the past. Why is it not working anymore?? Has this feature essentially been scrapped? This I find actually much more annoying than dropping points for being slow solving a problem.

It was so nice, in the past you could set it to unrated at a range of say 800 to 2500 which would effectively give you just random puzzles. But this in my opinion was the best training because this is how it happens in real games. You never know the rating of a given position. Anyways, please kindly make that working again. It was there in the past.

Thank you for some answers.

Could you specifiy "later this year"?

Thanks.

I like these changes alot. it will discourage blitzing out quick guesses, and greatly encourage accuracy.