Making Tactics More Fun (and better for you)!
Chess is 99% tactics. ~ Richard Teichmann
Chess is life. ~ Bobby Fischer
Life is like a box of chocolates... You never know what you're gonna get. ~ Forrest Gump
Coming today to a BETA site near you: a significant change to how we choose which Tactics puzzles to serve up in the Chess.com Tactics trainer (at www.chess.com/tactics ). This new “box of chocolates” approach provides a more powerful learning experience that should be more fun and help boost your chess vision (and ratings!) even more.
Wider variety of skill level. Instead of grinding through puzzles in a narrow band that closely hugs your rating, you'll now see more puzzles that are quite a bit higher rated than you, and a lot of tactics that should be easier too. This is much more realistic to what you will find in your actual chess games - and we think it’s more enjoyable too! Plus, you’ll have access to a much larger pool of puzzles with a lower chance of repeat.
More "personalized" scoring logic. Given the increased variety, we don't want people's ratings to be dramatically affected by an occasional miss on a lower-rated tactic, or a longer think on a harder one. We are introducing the concept of "100% Time", which you will now see after every puzzle you attempt. 100% Time is personal: it's the maximum time you can take to solve the problem and still score 100%. Your score will start to fall slowly after that. 100% Time is determined by several factors, including your current rating and the number of moves required to solve the puzzle. (It’s about half the time we would expect a similarly-rated player to take to solve the puzzle, so to score the full 100%, you do have to think fast!)
So gather your wits, sharpen your brain, and give it a try! Tactics training just got a whole lot more interesting...
At least, that's our hope. Please train with all your might to try it out, and let us know what you think in the comments!
Not actually a beta user? You can fix that right here: https://www.chess.com/settings/beta
