I finally broke 3200!
Finally, after months of endless gruel and torture trying to break my rating barrier, I finally did it!
On 12/22/2020, I reset my puzzles rating, with the goal of breaking 3000. My rating before resetting was around 2600~2700. After about a month of practice, I was finally able to break 3000. That was a great achievement at the time, but my hunger for achieving never died down. I then ventured on the same process, with a few bumps and steep hills along the way. (At one point, I dropped to 2800!) This was much different from getting over 3000. The tactics were harder, in an essence that they were intuitively harder to feel. Likewise, I continued, and everyday, if I had free time, I'd do some tactics. Finally, on 9/19/2021, around 270 days after initially resetting my puzzles rating, I reached 3200 in tactics! Younger me would have never anticipated this. Actually, around a year and a half ago, I was around 2300! So how could I improve my puzzles rating so fast in this time period?
Well, the process was pretty straightforward. I'd attempt to solve a tactic, if I'd get it right, I'd move on, and if I got it wrong, I would retry the problem until I get the question correct. Now, here's the twist. When I didn't understand why I got something wrong, I analyzed the position with the engine and see the engine's explanation for the answer. Doing this exact process repeatedly thousands of times can do wonders for your intuition. After a while, I started to subconsciously divide tactic problems into four different categories upon seeing them. First is "easy," meaning this pattern I have seen many times before, and the solution should not be difficult to calculate. Second is "medium," I have seen this tactic pattern before, but I may have to calculate for 30 seconds to three minutes upon viewing the problem. Third is "hard," meaning that I have seen the tactic pattern maybe once or twice before, but I may have to calculate for three minutes or more to be sure. Fourth is the "Timewaster," meaning that I have likely not seen the tactic pattern before, the problem may be extremely strenuous, and hard on the eyes. (Like seeing a chess960 board, you haven't seen any familiar positions.) In the Timewaster category, I would rely almost entirely on brute force calculation and blind intuition. I could spend from 2 minutes to 30 minutes on these types of questions.
Now, I basically cracked the code of tactics. If you think about it, every single tactic has a counterpart with the exact same type of pattern or position. So, if I encounter a Timewaster or Hard problem, I would make sure to memorize the pattern to save it for future problems. There's likely hundreds of thousands of relatively plausible tactic patterns that could happen in games, but, you wouldn't need to know all of that. Tactic patterns usually go under a category. Chess.com does a good job of demonstrating this knowledge, it allows you to filter tactics under certain categories. So, tactic patterns usually are different to some extent, but in the end, always relate to one another. This can make your job much easier. It's just about seeing the pattern enough to apply it in-game.
After absorbing this knowledge, all that was really left was to implement it. The rest was just maintaining a consistent schedule and practicing, which, unsurprisingly, is the hardest part. It may be hard to juggle with your school, or your work, or any activities you have in your daily life. But, if you can just set aside 20 minutes a day to practice, you should see lots of results quickly. 20 minutes has the potential for a lot. Don't believe me? Try and do a plank for 20 minutes.
This is how I went from 2300 in tactics to 3200 in tactics. Cheers! 🥳🎉
