I see many people say "quality over quantity" but why is 15min better than 1 hour? It's as if quality drops after 15min... Can someone explain this please?
As long as you understand why a move is the best move and analyse it properly, you are ready to move on to the next puzzle. If you do that 10 times a day or 100 times a day, the quality will not drop... Or am I missing something?
Passero82 is correct. When you miss a puzzle, you need to take time to look at what is wrong with your answer. The more you do that, the more you will improve. However, you need a certain level of openings knowledge and endgame knowledge and understanding of positional play. So the answer depends on where you are now. Folks on the forum can't answer that.
And by the way, we all want to improve our game ASAP.
As a player hoping to improve as well, I think the lessons and the tactics work hand in hand. The lessons have helped me to figure out the most tactical move in the scenarios given. At the same time, I think it is important not to rush through them and try to go through both lessons and tactics with a focussed mind.
It depends upon how much time you spend here in chess.com
If you spend only 1 hour, then you shouldn't spend all that time on Tactics Trainer, on the other hand, if you spend, say 5 hours, spending an hour on Tactics Trainer is worthy...
I struggle with the quality over quantity and am trying both.
I am doing one hour of tactics (here) blistering through them, 47% successrate.
Now, I am backing up, slowing down, and doing less, but getting a higher percentage of success.
My goal is to imprint my brain with the patterns of tactics. I have read good arguments for both methods, even as some say "this is why timers are used!"
In my tactics training, I am adding books. These have no timers, so while I am waiting at a doctor's office, I will solve tactics.
I am growing. I can feel my understanding improving.
I reset it back to zero and view it after a few hundred tactics.
my "average" has been consistently 1200-1300 and after a few months of more than 10 hours a week of tactics, it is now, after each reset 1400 to 1500.
*Does anyone find that there are some days where the mind is just not focused enough?
Then, there are times where I can run it up past 1600 and see it all.
Then after that, there are times where, after 3 hours of tactics, I can fall 100 points in 15 minutes because of fatigue.
Anyone else have wild ratings swings?
I like using the reset feature, especially after, perhaps, 200 tactics completed. At high speed, it is often just under 50%.
Then I begin tactics going slowly, seeing them through and I can go over 60% success rate, though doing much less per hour.
Either way, it is fun and I am learning.
As always, I appreciate the advice of higher rated players.
In general I consider that in chess everything rests on tactics. If one thinks of strategy as a block of marble, then tactics are the chisel with which a master operates, in creating works of chess art. - Tigran Petrosian
I struggle with the quality over quantity and am trying both.
I am doing one hour of tactics (here) blistering through them, 47% successrate.
Now, I am backing up, slowing down, and doing less, but getting a higher percentage of success.
My goal is to imprint my brain with the patterns of tactics. I have read good arguments for both methods, even as some say "this is why timers are used!"
In my tactics training, I am adding books. These have no timers, so while I am waiting at a doctor's office, I will solve tactics.
I am growing. I can feel my understanding improving.
I reset it back to zero and view it after a few hundred tactics.
my "average" has been consistently 1200-1300 and after a few months of more than 10 hours a week of tactics, it is now, after each reset 1400 to 1500.
*Does anyone find that there are some days where the mind is just not focused enough?
Then, there are times where I can run it up past 1600 and see it all.
Then after that, there are times where, after 3 hours of tactics, I can fall 100 points in 15 minutes because of fatigue.
Anyone else have wild ratings swings?
I like using the reset feature, especially after, perhaps, 200 tactics completed. At high speed, it is often just under 50%.
Then I begin tactics going slowly, seeing them through and I can go over 60% success rate, though doing much less per hour.
Either way, it is fun and I am learning.
As always, I appreciate the advice of higher rated players.
I am definitely NOT a higher rated player but I have certainly experienced sessions of tactics where I seem to be brain dead and drop 75-100 points (recently in fact!). I did not realize we could reset. I'll keep on for a little while and then maybe I will try that. My success rate runs about 60% but I sometimes lose points even when correct because of the timer... And I also supplement with books so I can have more unpenalized time to solve. I am using the book "Tactics Trainer" right now.
don't focus on time, focus on quality (of your thought process).
If you cram 100 positions into 15 minutes making moves based on instinct (or something other than analysis), you're likely going to get most of them wrong and waste your time.
you could spend that same 15 minutes analyzing all variations of one highly tactical position and get a lot more out of it. Look up Stoyko exericses.
I had a wild rating drop a while back. BTW how do you reset?
In general I consider that in chess everything rests on tactics. If one thinks of strategy as a block of marble, then tactics are the chisel with which a master operates, in creating works of chess art. - Tigran Petrosian
Well then, tactics cannot be everything. Since, if you didn't have the block of marble, tactis would have nothing to chisel.
As to trends and things that happen with TT, I can say a few things.
As a premium member I can play an unlimited number of TT puzzles per day. I probably average about 20 per day, but some days are zero and others are 40 or 50.
I do have big swings of failure or success.
If I am tired I do poorly at solving TT puzzles, so I do lots better in the mornings than at night. I have seen my ratings fall 150-200 points in a day several times. Sometimes when I do real bad I just take a break for a couple of days and do better when I come back to it.
My pass rate is actually around 70%, but on about 1 in 4 that I get right, I lose points for being too slow. Right now my ratings is around 1450 but it usually stays between 1350 and 1400. In total I have done about 26,000 TT puzzles over a period of two years. It has helped my game some, but not a lot. I will write more abuot that later.
In a real game we need to concentrate and really focus. TT may cause one to develop the bad habit of just guessing rather than calculating. In a TT puzzle if you don't see the best move right away, it isn't going to cause you a lot of pain to just guess. If you get into that habit of just guessing you may do it in a game where it is much more serious.
However, TT can teach yout to see patterns and realize how many werid things can be hidden in a position. The bad part of that is that in TT puzzles, we know there is a good move hidden there somewhere. I a real game there may not be a good move there at all..........
I've been logging my performance of 100 successful tactics per day for the last remaining month (~1-2 hours per day):
Here is my blog related to it:
http://www.chess.com/blog/redgoo/30-day-spartan-tactic-challenge
So far, I have about 16 days out of 30 completed. Prior to the challenge I had a rating of 962 under the tactic trainer and at my peak spiked all the way to 1124. Even though it's been 2 weeks, I'm seeing vast improvement in my understanding of the game. I've never had formal training, and started taking the game more serious a month ago.
Here is my performance to date (the biggest issue with the challenge is fatigue, although I feel it will lower after I'm more conditioned at the end of my challenge):
or should I do maybe less and do some chess mentor courses or video lessons? I want to improve my game asap