GM Grigoryan on the "Myth" of Solving Puzzles

RE: the value of puzzles being mainly training for pattern recognition

I wouldn't say mainly. That's one use of puzzles, but they can be used to train many different skills in chess, provided they are well selected for the skill being trained, e.g. pattern, depth (look-ahead), breadth (short-term memory), imagination, etc. In fact pattern and imagination are at odds with one another, pattern is something you have seen before, and imagination is thinking outside the box.

Yes, it's common. What is also common is some of these youngsters go on to become GMs, whereas we do not. So we should take whatever points we can get now, while the taking is good.

3600 puzzles pb, 30/40/72 rush pbs.

my game stats are all 1600+ average & climbing:  i believe the 11,000 puzzles i've attempted have certainly helped these scores to improve.

training with attempting to find a tricky solution in a position that you KNOW is there increases pattern-recognition, planning, determination, creative-thinking, calculation & evaluation skills, while reinforcing the excellent habit of patiently searching for the best move every time it's your turn to play.

i'm down to 8 achievements left to get so when only 'puzzle addict' (solve 10,000 puzzles correctly) is left i'll probably drop off the radar for another year.

the problem i see with a lot of these conversations is a 'level' issue... you can't properly understand the value of solving puzzles until you really start trying to pass about 60+ survival or 3500+ rated ones.

it stands to reason:  if you can find the correct sequence of moves in a position that 99% of other people can't, wouldn't that translate well to real tactical chess skill in actual games?

just some observations from my experience.

To be fair, one person did say (and says the same thing every chance they get) that studying openings was useless, which is a form of training. I have been hard on puzzles, but I never said they are useless, just that the time invested vs. the expected gain in number of wins is small. I still think analyzing games, or even studying openings is more useful. By studying openings, I don't mean memorizing lines, I mean studying openings: "why is this a good move? what does it accomplish? what plan does it further? what are possible responses? why are those responses good? why are they bad?" You can learn a lot from studying long lines and reading the annotations.

Should you do some puzzles? Sure, but don't expect them to turn you into a tactical wizard or radically improve your rating. Most people are good at puzzles because they are good at tactics, they didn't magically become good at tactics because they did a bunch of puzzles.

That one person is me and yes, studying openings is 100% useless before a certain level(which i think is the master level). So far in slow games i know exactly 0 openings and have reached 1800 so for atleast 1800 studying openings is completely useless. Will it be useless even for 2000 rating? i don't know, if i am able to reach there then i can answer that better

There are people who get to almost 2 000 chess.com rating just by playing games. Does that mean that everything but playing games is useless below 2 000 rating?

eh what? this comparison doesn't make any sense. I am saying is that if i can reach 1800 by not knowing literally ANYTHING about openings then so can anybody and it just shows how useless openings really are. I would have been higher if only my tactics weren't so horrible. Every game i lose is because of a missed tactic, never once have i felt that "oh man i wish i knew this opening line"

Chess isn't 100% tactics. "Tactics" refers to specific types of move combinations (forks, skewers, pins etc) which win material or checkmate by force. Calling everything in chess "tactics" just makes the word meaningless. 

As for openings, of course it's valuable to study how to play the first third of the game at any rating level, although some people focus too much on it. Every type of study whether it's openings or tactics puzzles is useful as long as you don't overdo it and ignore other elements of the game. I think a good rule of thumb is to make sure you're studying at least 3 different aspects of chess (e.g openings, endgames and tactics puzzles) so you don't get too focused on one.

As I've said, then by that logic if someone gets to 2 000 just by playing games, he could say that everything but playing games is useless because anybody can get to 2 000 just by playing games. This is just to show you the flaw in logic.

But to be a bit less extreme. I've never touched master games before getting to 1 600. Does it mean that checking them out is totally useless?

I don't think so. I am sure there are many people out there that got to certain rating (say 1 500) without game analysis. It still doesn't mean that game analysis is useless before 1 500 rating.

There are probably even people who got to some respectable rating without doing anything related to tactics. It doesn't make tactical vision useless.

So the fact that you didn't do something up to certain rating doesn't make it useless, it just means that you personally didn't have to do it before getting to 1 800 rating, nothing more.

It's just false that studying openings is useless. In another thread I explained in great detail how my best win ever was because of the opening I chose and my prep. I've won so many games because I know way too much theory, knew without having to think that an opponent made a mistake, and punished it immediately. Had I had to calculate it I may have come up with it, but maybe not. I still can't believe that people are saying that it's useless. It's just straight-up not borne out by the facts. Besides, I'll ride with Daniel Naroditsky, who is in the top five leaderboard on chesscom and is a beloved educator over some guy who just can't understand the logic of if you know something and your opponent doesn't, you're at an advantage.

There is not one person on the planet who got to a respectable rating by not knowing tactics at all lol

There many chess teachers who claim the exact opposite, that openings are 100% useless. People like ben finegold who have been teaching for decades and even started their own chess clubs are among those. IM lawrence trent also said that to reach 2000 u just do tactics. That's just how it works.

So far i have  not seen this supposed "strength" as far as openings are concerned, if and when i see it, i will agree

And again in case you missed it, because you apparently did, studying openings yields the same kinds of benefits as analyzing games. I'm not talking about memorizing line, I'm talking about *studying* an opening, which means reading annotation and understanding plans and why some moves are good and some are bad. Unbelievable that people say it's useless.

I've repeated the story far too many times in too many threads to explain it again. If you really wish, you can message me and I'll cut and paste you the story.

"Plans" are useless too if one keeps on missing stuff.  That's why studying openings has no value for weaker players... they are not good enough to take advantage of some inaccuracy and will probably hang a piece as soon as they are out of their prep

Oh but I didn't say they do not know tactics, I just said that they might get to a certain level without studying tactics.

Just like for instance you might not have studied openings, but you have some knowledge of the openings simply by experience. 

Here: https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/live/34667369383

you get some 9 move theoretical line.

Or here: https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/live/35688383351

Pretty good  Maroczy setup, and a main line position. So perhaps you did not really study openings, but you can't say that you know nothing about openings. 

I think this whole conversation is very interesting... It touches on the eternal question of luck in chess... Does it exist?

I've been doing some Tactics by Repitition lately and today I found a Mate in 3 from a losing position in a 15+10 game... first time ever! (I ussually just collapse and resign)...

The game was basically one of my worst games ever, I was -10 most of the game, but I stumbled upon this tactic... 

So maybe the importance of tactics is not only the ability to not miss these gifts when they are presented, but the very principle of "never resign".

If the position is dead lost, to hell with these ideals, I do resign... But if I'm down alot of material but I still have a rook and bishop... The very fact I am thinking for 5 whole minutes in a lost position sends a message to the opponent... "I can have a tactic here, you may still blunder"

So to me tactics is important for your mental capacity to believe you can come back, and of course in strategically winning positions, the importance of tactics has already been discussed on this thread alot

So my point is beyond this stupid game which I had no pleasure in winning, but it's a general concept of self belief, and the capacity to look for ways back in to lost games... And generally the Tactics by Repitition is widely considered to be effective and I think it's almost something mystical... Like if you see these patterns enough you actually sortof "invite" these situations to your games.. 

This is the first time i have ever heard about Marcozy setup so yes, i did not have any clue about the opening when i played the game. For example in the second game my move Qd2 was just because i had ideas of trading off my bishop for his good bishop and since i could not play my queen to b3 with tempo because of issues of losing my knight which would have become undefended, i played Qd2 instead. Had no idea that this was a book move.

I think that just goes to show how useless studying openings really is since u can basically figure out everything on your own if you just see threats and have good lookahead(which i don't but still played the "mainline").

I imagine openings are more important in blitz though since you don't have time to figure things out but in longer games it doesn't matter at all at below master level

Well yes... that is indeed my point... u can play c4 just based on logic without needing to learn the theory of it and memorizing it's lines.

"Collective experience" is 100% useless since at lower ratings you are not going to find people who play 15 lines deep in mainline ruy lopez(the only opening i know the name of lol. This is exactly how lower ratings are. I don't know any opening but one doesn't "need" to know the opening theory since he won't face any opening theory.

Games at sub master levels are won or lost based on tactics. They are completely based off of oversights, mistakes, calculation errors etc.

Let me give u an analogy. Let's say that u are teaching some guy calculus... he doesn't know how to add numbers but u are advising him to learn the equations of integration... would you do that? no right? you work off of "BASICS" first and till one has mastered the basics he won't need any higher level stuff.

Just funny to me that people who hang knights every move are being told to memorize opening theory.... doesn't make sense

Bro anyone below masters is basically like "cant add numbers"... 1000 rated players can't add 2+2 and 1800 players can't add 2.3e + 3.2e .. that's the only difference.

Point being, just because people who are very low rated make huge blunders and people who are slightly above at 1600+ make less obvious blunders, doesn't mean we they don't make stupid blunders. 

The games of 1600 players are also lost by calculation mistakes just like the games of 1000 rated players, it doesn't matter if they miss a 3 move combination or just hang their knight. The "CAUSE" of defeat is the same.

A youtube channel "Chess Vibes" who is a titled player did this exercise. He looked at 100 games of players all the way from 800 to 2000.... he found out that the overwhelming majority of games had "tactical oversights" as their main cause of defeat. I believe blunders + tactical oversights made up more than 65% of the defeats of the games of 1800 players with bad endgames were the next in line with 20% of the games decided based off of that, next in line was time. Openings made up less than 5% of the reason for the loss.

So yes, this just proves that the main issue lies with calculation and tactics. From this study it became clear than 1 out of every 20 games a 1800 rated player loses is due to bad opening and 13 out of 20 are lost due to tactical mistakes / blunders.

Guess how many games were lost in openings by 1200 rated players? 0