Happy Tactics Update

I reset my Tactics Trainer rating, zoomed upward, and am hanging in there at a new high - the 1400's!

I like to reset my tactics trainer history everytime before a training session. For some psychological reason, it is more motivating to start that way, then to keep my history.

At Chess Tempo, my history is saved, and I also do custom problems there, like remove the defender only problems, pin problems, etc. The software has a built in repetition feature, which has you repeat the puzzles that you missed, not right away, but at a certain time interval.

I use Tactics Trainer as a test, just to see if I am improving, not so much for pattern recognition, as there is no repetition feature. With that said, I do see reoccurring tactical themes, and that helps.

Chess Tactics for Students by John A. Bain has been a big help. Dan Heisman highly recommends this book, saying that it is the best book for covering most, maybe all of the kinds of tactics problems in the 800 - 1200 range, which he advises every chess player to nail down. He think's that this way of learning tactics, by really knowing all of the 800-1200 problems, solving them in 5 seconds, is the fastest way to improve one's tactical chess, and chess rating.

Comparing my Blitz rating of 900 to my Tactics Trainer rating in the 1400's, that speaks to a huge discrepancy.

My best guess for that gap has been best explained to me by a very strong chess.com player, hicetnunc. I simply don't know the 950-1200 problems well enough, and there's a certain percentage that I don't know at all. That's what the Chess Tactics for Students book is for, covering all of the basic tactics that I need to know within a certain rating range.

He gave me pretty much the same advice as Dan Heisman, and that is to do problems rated between 950-1200, both random and thematic (repetition), with the goal of solving them in about 5 seconds, so that I can spot them instantly in my games.

Once I have that homework assignment completed, I would expect my Blitz rating to shoot upwards towards 1200, since I will be seeing so many more tactics during my 10 0 blitz games. That's the plan.

Yesterday, I watched Danny Rensch interview Judit Polgar on chess.com TV.

Polgar spoke of the three phases of the game - opening, middle, and end - saying that the first things she wants to see her students learn are tactics and endgames. Tactics for the middlegame, and endgame studies for endgames. She says that one of the last things to study is the opening, which I've heard before, but it's always good to hear again.

Polgar mentioned that in the beginning of her chess career, her goal of the opening was just to survive it, even being a little worse off is o.k., because her tactical strength would often repair any damage she did to her position in the opening.

She also mentioned that it is more important to understand the ideas behind opening moves, then to just sit there and memorize line after line. I've heard that before, but again, it doesn't hurt to hear that from the best female chess player to have ever played the game, beating Bobby Fischer to become the youngest GM in her career. I'm not sure if she still holds the record for youngest GM, but she became one at age 15!

She was also ranked top 10 in the world at one time, and I would imagine that would include all the top men, otherwise it wouldn't make any sense to say that she was in the top 10, since she was the world number one female chess player for many years.

So, please share how you are learning tacitcs. What software do you use? What books do you use?

cool

I had used Seirawan's Winning Chess Tactics and now I am just using Tactics Trainer.

yea same

I have used Tactics Trainer a lot here in the past but less so now since the app is broken on my phone for that feature. Most recently I have been transcribing tactics from books to use in the iChess app for my tablet. I'm also trying to build up a database of tactics from my games, both those I've missed and those I've found during games, though that process is slow going.

Anyone found John Bain online anywhere to avoid using the book? I started it but got bogged down in the slow manual process.