Does the tactics trainer teach intiuitive chess?

I have used the chess.com tactics trainer for quite a bit, but have stopped doing so because the rigid clock is ticking me off. I am more successful with tactics trainers from other sources where there is less time pressure. 

I get the feeling that the chess.com tactics trainer rewards people for making intuitive, rather than calculated moves. People do not get rewarded if they take their (reasonable) time calculating and then coming up with the right conclusion. Instead, they are encouraged to make an intuitive move. If they get it right, points for them. If they calculate it out, get it right, much fewer points. I feel it teaches bad habits. 

I do know that stronger players need less time for calculation. I understand that strong players also need training. 

I just feel that people who are not that strong yet should not be lured into making hit-and-miss intuitive moves. 

Not everybody is a blitz player and needs to make very fast calculation. I think the clock has its place in chess, but the tt clock is a bit exaggerated. 

I feel your pain Bartleby.  The idea behind the tactics trainer is to test your pattern recognition skills; so no, it's not quite the same as intuition.  The problem of course is that while good players have absorbed these patterns, the rest of us are screwed.  And yes, I agree, that "guess and click" seems to be the only thing it's teaching lower rated players.

V3 will supposedly partially address this issue by no longer penalizing correct answers.  You may not gain any points, but you will never again lose points for a correct answer.  We'll see if that actually makes the final cut.  I have my doubts, given that really good players love the TT just the way it is.

You can of course play it unrated (unless that's a premium feature ?), and I do that periodically.  It doesn't feel the same though and I usually tire of it.  Coach Heisman is a strong believer that mastery of basic tactical patterns is key to advancing your skill and has his students use Bain's Chess Tactics for Students.  It's a relatively easy book of tactics but Coach wants you to be able to immediately recognize those simple patterns.  It seems like a logical approach and I've had some success with it.

So what I do is periodically reset the TT.  I usually deliberately lose the first question which kicks the problems down to below the 1000 level and then claw my way back up to my level of incompetence, which seems to be around the 1500 mark.  Many of course have simply given up on the TT and train elsewhere.  A simple Google search for "chess tactics training" or somesuch will show other sites.  Good luck and rest assured your dislike and distrust of the TT is shared by many.

I also play a lot of Tactics Trainer. I agree that it teaches you to guess and not think.

What's probably worse than that is those TT problems that have a pass rate of less than 40%. I can't see how it is supposed to help me to give me a problem that has a pass rate of 19% or even 5%. 

Your problem is that you care too much about your rating. Its better when you try to calculate a problem as long as you have the right solution. So please dont guess, try to calculate! Dont look at your rating, it might fall down at the beginning because you think to long, but over the time you will get better and faster and then you will be able to solve those puzzles much faster. So just try to find the right solution, calculate lines and dont guess and over the time your calculation skill will become much better and faster. Of course tactical patterns are also nessecary.

I know you're right, but I still find myself watching the clock and feeling time pressure when using TT. But I definitely have noticed that when I take my time and calculate the problems my chess is better in regular play (which probably goes without saying). I prefer to do the training problems on 365chess.com; I pretty much only use the TT here when I'm on my phone.

Agree with till.  If you can't solve them in enough time, then don't worry about it.  Make your best guess and move on.  You should calculate and not guess, but lets say you're taking 10+ minutes.  Admit this one is a bit too hard and just guess.  It's a better use of your time to look at the solution for 10+ minutes and learn it really well than to try and force your way to a solution.

Not that taking 10+ isn't useful for, say, analysis or calculation training.

I'm of the belief that playing by intuitive feel for what to do is the better way to go.  The game flows better for reason of not contradicting my inner sense or grasp, my belief is that "intuitive feel" is actually the sum of my experience and knowledge.  I think my creativity stems from that.

I also think it's beneficial to calculate at the point in the game where I sense the game balance is at stake.  I'll take the time to weigh the outcome of my moves.  If I lose either (game or TT points) on time, it's very likely that will also get blended into my intuitive feel or grasp of the situation, honing it further.

Interesting topic, thank-you.

I usually try to calculate the entire line before playing my move. Although I agree it's annoying to fail a problem where you're meant to sac your queen and win 10 moves later, but because you didn't calculate all those moves you didn't play it, even though the sac 'intuitively' looked good.

And as other people said, there's no reason at all to care about your tactics rating, it correlates so weakly to your 'actual' rating. Just use it as a resource to help you improve.

Even I found TT here is bit annoying. In the sense, you calculate variations n different move order by that time I consume abt 1:30 mins n even if my solution is correct, often time gets negative rating.

Therefore I prefer to practice TT @ other websites.

I agree.

Even though I have pretty much abandoned the TT here, I still have this ambition to increase my rating, as silly as it is. Elsewhere my rating is higher, but does that matter? I guess not.

Someti mes I am way faster than the average simply because I happened to look at the winning line first. Then I solve a problem which only about 38% of people solve, but I get -2 points because it took me 3 seconds too long. I often waste precious time just looking at the board understanding what is going on. Something I dont have to do in a game obviously.

I got a lot better at chess by doing lots of tactic excercises. Pattern recognition is key to chess success, but patterns sink in better if you spend a bit of time with them.

I strongly believe in the concept of tactic training, but not in this blitz attitude. Yes, people should learn to deal with time pressure. Most people perform worse when under pressure. I believe that players should take their time with tt and their games and speed up as their skill progresses. 

It's true that the TT can encourage more intution than calculation. If I recognize the tactical pattern, I'll go ahead and play it quickly--though sometimes I'm wrong. If I don't recongize the pattern, I ignore the clock and work it out. Takes a bit of willpower to do it this way, I tend to want to rush even though I'm not sure to max out the points, since when I take my time, you can lose points even when you're right. But I keep telling myself to play the position, not the clock. I'll get wild swings where I'll drop over a hundred points and then climb back up again. I just work at playing each problem and try to ignore the score. I want the stress of the clock, as I will face that kind of stress in a real game.

When i recognize the pattern I still have to work out whether the combination still works in this very situation and in which move order. Recognizing patterns helps a lot to achieve goals in chess, but often you can only achieve other, lesser objectives.  E.g. you can win a piece which the opponent cannot defend due to the checkmating pattern you have recognized. 

"It's a better use of your time to look at the solution for 10+ minutes and learn it really well than to try and force your way to a solution."

Yet ironically I used to do the former and now I've been doing the latter and have gotten excellent training from it :) But I'm a strange case. There are positives to either approach. I think pushing yourself to find a solution can help your creativity, because when you think all options are gone, you push yourself to find something deeper. Sure, you can find out through looking at the solution, but you learn a lot more finding it yourself, even if (or perhaps because) it takes so much time/thought to do so. It also helps your patience, to be able to stay motivated to keep solving a tough situation despite the fact that you have felt aimless in thought for a long time. It helps you insist on finding a solution to your problems if you're in a game, rather than just playing a desperate move and giving up on finding a reasonable way out of your mess. Sometimes you get a position like that, where there are very few good ways to continue and you just have to get to the heart of the position to find a way out. You need to be willing to persevere.

You talk about learning the solution really well. But you can learn the solution really well by taking a ton of energy trying to find the solution in the first place :) Learning by doing :)

Just from experience, it has indeed happened many times that I would go for extremely long amounts of time without finding anything close to a solution, and yet in the end I found it, as if through an epiphany. Remember that logic is available to everyone, not just grandmasters :) If you relentlessly look at what's wrong about your logic/assumptions in approaching the position, it should come out eventually.

nah, there are websites and apps with better tactic trainers.

Very funny that this post of mine is still up - I have not been on chess.com for years! Recently returned for some daily games and thus also tried the tactics again. Maybe i just got better or the timer is less brutal. 

true, but accuracy comes before time. 

I came to the conclusion that the way the scoring works has been changed. i just solved a puzzle in several minutes where the target was 46 seconds and i still got 1 point. I think that is fine. I remember solving puzzles several years ago and still getting minus points because I was a minute too slow or something. Not everybody is a blitz player. 

My turn based (3 Days) rating hovers around 1600. I mention this to give an idea of my skill level. I enjoy playing the game and working with Lessons and the Tactical Trainer. I also search to try to find a solution rather than guess if too much time is passing. One area that I have a problem with is pattern recognition. In the simpler puzzles, I can see the pattern I am to be learning but when the puzzle is more than two or three moves deep, I rarely, if ever, can recognize any pattern (even after walking thru the solution). What am I missing and any ideas on how I can improve in this area?

Thanks.

Anyone?

Well there’s puzzle solving too.  Practice and/or upgrading your cpu are about it.

Well you can play TT just for the fun of it and not spend any time doing analysis. Like that you won't learn much.

But if you take time to analyze and work at it, it will help you. All just my opinion of course.