Difference between puzzle rating and live chess

That's good.

1647 rapid - 3188 puzzles. And what I have trouble understanding is that most of my recent losses in rapid games have been caused by tactical oversights. I tend to get out of the opening pretty decently but I often overestimate an opponent's tactical threat or sometimes just blatantly overlook or miss basic tactical patterns (like forks etc). Im not entirely sure how I should better myself at this point. Like in puzzle battle I can compete with 2000 players and occasionally masters but in actual chess I've felt stuck at 1600 - 1700 for some time. Everytime I lose a chess game because I missed a elementary 1500 level tactic it just demotivates me, what am I doing wrong

It may come down to using your time properly in real games. Never start a game with a time control that you don't intend to use. (Dan Heisman) Also, as I said above, disregard tactics rating and focus on some easy thematic tactics, like the knight forks you are missing. On Chess Tempo you can solve tactics in so many ways, by theme/motif.

I guess the main problem is that puzzles are usually connected to attacking, not defending. Check in Chessable “Learn Chess the Right Way: Book 3, Defensive Technique”, by Susan Polgar. I highly recommend it!

It will certainly improve your defensive skills.

Yeah, that's a good point, but indeed there are some combinations where you have to pay attention to what the opponent can do, because the position is double edged. In fact, @Hatter_11 wrote that sometimes he even overestimates the opponent's threats.

I have the same problem. They say it's because in puzzles you know that there is a tactical shot, while in real games you don't, so the first thing to do is to decide whether to search and calculate or not. Some players are more intuitive and they seem to know by instinct that there is "something to do", for them or the opponent. The others have to switch perpetually between "tactical mode" and "positional mode", I guess, because they find confusing to plan and search for tactics at the same time. In longer time control you can decide to plan on the opponent's time
and to think tactically on your time, but in rapid and blitz that's not easy and I think there is a tendency to devote too much time to planning, because most of the time there is nothing else to do. As a consequence, when actually there is a tactic, we likely miss it. Some other times, instead, we search for something that does not exist...

I do not have an easy recipe but to force ourselves to dedicate at least 50% of the time to search for tactics, especially in the second part of the middlegame, when usually pieces are more exposed.

It took me a long time, but I finally reach 2500 puzzle rating.

My current/top ratings so far :

- Bullet : 917/944

- Blitz : 1160/1291

- Rapid: 1384/1424

- Daily : 1637/1637

- Puzzle : 2514/2514

Reviving a really, really old thread. Just reached over 2700 in puzzles, but I've an account where I can do as many as I wish. However, I rarely reach the time controls with most puzzles taking me between 3-5 minutes and *never* the 30-50 seconds.

My bullet rating is about 950; blitz is about 1250; rapid is 1700+, although only played a couple of games; and in the 3 crown games against the bots I've beaten Ahmen (2200) and Sakura (2200); and have worked my way through all the advanced bots up to Wally (1800) before I got bored.

My live Australian Chess rating (still FIDE unrated at the moment) is 1470; although that's nearly a 40 year old rating and only started playing again this month - so see what happens. My old UK rating in 2001 was between 1700-1800 once converted.

So... take away is I love the 2/1 games, but I'm hopeless at 'thinking quickly' despite the dopamine rush the bullet games give you. I find over the board with time controls like 60+30, I tend to weed out most of my rubbish candidate moves. That aside, there is some really strong play at the 2/1 game level. So many Mikhail Tals...

1700+ in rapid is good!

Thank you - but it's not from too many games. For the longer games, so far enjoying the bots. Despite a mouse slip that denied me early victory, got a 3 crown win against Julia. I swear the 1800 bots can play 2000+ games on a dime.

I should back my judgement and play more rapid, and not be so 'precious' over the rating. My goal in playing in chess.com was to improve my over the board performance, not the other way around :-)

Are you also using Chessable? There is good material there on all aspects of the game.

In the context of online chess platforms like Chess.com or Lichess, "Puzzle Rating" and "Live Chess Rating" refer to two different types of ratings that measure different aspects of a player's skill.

1. **Puzzle Rating**: This rating is derived from a player's performance in chess puzzles. These puzzles typically present a player with a specific board setup and a goal, such as checkmating the opponent or gaining a material advantage. The rating changes based on whether the player solves the puzzle correctly and sometimes how quickly they do so. Puzzles increase in difficulty as a player's rating goes up. The puzzle rating is a measure of a player's tactical skill and ability to recognize patterns.

2. **Live Chess Rating**: This rating is based on playing actual games of chess against other players in real-time ("live"). It's more comprehensive as it reflects a player's overall chess skill in a variety of situations, including opening knowledge, tactical and strategic understanding, endgame skills, and time management. The rating changes based on the outcome of these games and the ratings of the opponents.

The key difference is that puzzle rating focuses solely on tactical ability in set situations, while live chess rating encompasses the full range of chess skills in dynamic, real-game scenarios. It's common for players to have different strengths in these areas, which is reflected in the difference in their ratings. For example, a player might be very good at solving puzzles (high puzzle rating) but struggle in actual games due to weaker strategy or time management (lower live chess rating), or vice versa.

This has been written about to a surprising level of depth in this reddit thread, https://www.reddit.com/r/chessbeginners/comments/l4z6mw/correlation_between_your_best_puzzle_rating_and/

though on any case-by-case assessment, i'm not convinced there is a general theme of "if you're puzzle rating is x, your USCF rating or otherwise should be y." puzzle ratings are a measurement of your ability to hard-calculate in specific positions. i recently got my puzzle rating above 3400, of which there are like 3000 other people globally, according to chess.com's data - i certainly don't think i'm within the top 3000 chess players globally. this would put me in league with actual grandmasters and my rating is a paltry 1744 USCF. i'm not that good at chess: i'm just good at solving puzzles and finding tactics. i get outplayed by woodpushing london system people who just keep the position boring for 40 turns, and then i make a silly mistake and lose.

it really is part of a broader discussion of how you actually achieve your rating. some people win games by out calculating their opponent. some people avoid calculation altogether, and aim for dry positions where they can just find small improving moves and avoid big mistakes.

Puzzles have basically no connection to chess ability.

I'm about 2000 in puzzles, and about 790 in rapid.

If the discrepancy is huge, the problem is certainly the opening phase, so you get bad positions already in the first 5 to 10 moves. Is this your case?

does anyone know how to add and save new and more annotations to a game you have already added some annotations too please

1300 rapid 2300 puzzle

I know this hasn't been commented on for a while, but my rapid is 700, bullet 600, and my puzzle rating is 1700. Does anyone maybe have any ideas or tips as to what I'm doing wrong? Many thanks in advance!

But my rapid rating is ~1100, and my puzzle rating ~2500

It means that you are perhaps performing badly at the opening, or not able to see threats (meaning you have to work more on your defensive skills) or you are not able to build up positions where you can use your attacking abilities. To find out what is your case you should make a list of your most common mistakes, like after analysing 50 to 100 of your losses. With this list you will be able to set priorities on your practice. Just by making the list you should improve 100 or more points because you will begin to make less of those common mistakes.

Thanks, this is really great advice! Sorry to be an inconvenience, but could you please suggest how I should approach identifying and naming mistakes; this should be obvious but I'm a bit slow regarding such things! Once again, thank you so much for the help!