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.

Is there a new bug in tactics trainer and is this related to the change of the problem rating distribution?

I have a rating of 1600 but the problems become easier and easier...

Three days ago the average problem rating for me was 1550

Two days ago the average problem rating for me was 1400

Yesterday the average problem rating for me was below 1100 (lowest 777, highest 1182).

I have a total of 1800 attempts and this should be far from a point where there are no problems left for me in that rating region. However, the distribution of the problem ratings changed from almost discrete with Gaussian envelope and average of about 1400 to a continuous distribution with an average of slightly below 1000 and a maximum at 600...

What happened? 

Could be that it's an old bug that came back? We have had this problem for several weeks if not months last autumn.

I've had most of the puzzles within a very narrow range around my rating recently. I'd still like to know when the changes the staff announced here will take place.

@Josimar73 - Does it seem like things have returned somewhat to normal recently? Well... if I look at your recent history, it seems like your rating has averaged around 1633 throughout the last 25 puzzles. During that time, the average rating of the puzzles you faced was ~1515. I would certainly agree that's lower than would be expected. But the *really* low puzzles have not shown up for a day or two. Anyway, I'll look into it.

@benkku52 - I'd love to see the changes delivered prior to the website overhaul for v3, but so far, it doesn't look like that's going to happen. At this point, I don't have a good ETA to give you. When I know something more specific, I'll post it here.

@DeepGreene

have you got any information on the issue/feature to set the TT to "completely random" by setting a very wide range and do "unrated" training? This used to work in the old days.

Even setting a narrow range say 1200 to 1400 and "unrated" does not work properly. TT keeps bringing only puzzles at the high end of the range. In the old days he would select puzzles from the whole range.

Or maybe setting a range manually and doing "unrated" will be abandoned entirely in the new version?

Thank you if have any information on this.

Hi DeepGreene,

Thanks for your feedback. Indeed the problems I get are in a "normal" rating range again. 

Best regards and thanks again,

Josimar

@TomHaegin Agreed something is wrong with Unrated mode when you enter an explicit range. Looking into it now.

And also agreed that something might be fishy with no defined range too, although that case is more interesting. Right now, it seems to be serving puzzles that hug the user's current rating. Technically, if there's no min or max it could serve puzzles rated 500 or 2200, etc., but would that really be a good experience? I think we need to randomize within a "sane" range based on user rating... like anything +/- 250 (i.e. a 500-point range).

Hi DeepGreene, sorry I'm reading your post only today.

Yeah thank you for looking into this. I'm glad you acknowledge some weirdness.

Just for clarification, now we are talking only about any features / behavior in "unrated" mode because "rated" looks definitely very good with the proposed changes for v3 as outlined earlier in the thread (I was basically happy with the old rated as well, was not upset to lose some points for slowness)

Anyways, about "unrated":

There are two scenarios: User has defined a range, or not. If defined, well, just let TT serve puzzles at random from the available pool of puzzles. Easy.

If no range is defined, yes, it would make sense to somewhat limit the range automatically as you say. However, even total random is in order. Because if the user wanted a range, he can just define it.

What I like about unrated and "total random" is simply that it kinda simulates a live game situation where you may not really know if you are looking at a difficult or easy position. Just work on the position and see what you can come up with.

I agree that "rated" training is probably better to actually train the eye and the various motives gradually at about your ability.

"rated","unrated + random within range" and "unrated - total random (or very wide range)" are just different types of training. It's great that the TT allows for all of them.

So again, thank you for looking into it. It would be cool if you could post some kind of follow-up once the team has looked into it a bit .Thanks once again!

*thumbs-up*

I am a little off topic, but TT may be useful for premium members. For "free" members like me it's not that useful, 3 problems per day is nothing. Therefore I stopped using it and I practice tactics on other websites.

About the main subject here: sure there is a problem, and sure it needs to be fixed.