How To Efficiently Improve At Tactics

Hello, everyone.

I was pretty much stuck at below 2200 on Chess.com's tactics trainer, and when I recently reset my rating, my rating is now sub-2000. I feel like I'm hitting a plateau when it comes to tactics.

I'm wondering if there are some good/creative ways to get better at tactics. Thanks!

Do more tactics. That's technically the only way. 

In short,

Don't play short games.

If you see a tactic once, you'll most likely be able to find it again. Unless you have memory loss, or you are retarded.

noice

Try to get every tactics you're trying to solve right (as if you played the position OTB and couldn't take back).

Read a book explaining tactics themes if you haven't done it yet.

Try to solve compositions and endgames studies.

Paying attention to the board is always important. You can start out with any opening you like but after you start moving major important piece's, defending, setting up for checkmate and those sorts of thing it's easy to make a small error.

Well I did recover some rating from 1930ish to 2000. I am a streaky tactician...

@torrubirubi, I think I know this guy .

But thanks for chiming in! I am indeed on Chessable. Maybe if I have some money, I will purchase more books.

I don't know the answer to your question.

But studying nothing but endgames for a while made my tactics better.

Endgames tend to hyper-focus on piece activity and you get a lot of calculation practice.

Maybe studying more tactics will help you with tactics, but in any case if you're stuck you'll probably have to change what you're doing to improve, and solving tactics online strikes me as... a method that would be easy to not concentrate on.

But maybe I'm old school because I got my tactics from books, set them up on a board, and did a lot of analysis for each position. However this method does not answer your question for "efficiently" improving.

What about his tactics rating in other sites and also other rating (e.g blitz). The reason I am asking is that the sample size in chess.com is very limited 60,000 only for all rating pool from (300-3300 rated puzzles ). So there would probably be 3000 + puzzles for  3000+ rated pool.  It is possible to memorize those puzzles and get bogus rating. ( It is tip from someone with 4500+ tactics rating)

For OP, Would you be interested in playing other sites with unlimited time to solve the puzzles. According to my experiences, tactics puzzles 2200+ to 2800 are close to master level. At the moment I am also pushing my tactics rating bar beyond 2500+. With this current puzzle, I am now thinking for more than 15 mins and still dont get any clue, lol, but it would be a good idea to play on unlimited time to build up skill. In my experiences, I did about 3000+ puzzles and rating increased from 2100 to 2400.

Rook on 8 to c2 followed by takes on the d file, Rd5, and capture the bishop? Oh I guess Kh2 or something.

How about a6+b6 to kick the queen off the 5th rank?

Hopefully there isn't something embarrassingly bad about that haha. Just a guess.

I came to the a6 + b6 conclusion after about 30 seconds, can't see anything wrong there.

Yes, the three root of lines I am thinking are 

1. Nd5 to threaten the bishop from a1, h8 diagonal , if bishop move to other diagonal , there is rook exchange followed by Nc3 fork. But there is Bd4 solution for white

2. Qb8 and put pressure on d1 Rook. If white defend by playing Qf1 or Qe2, put Ne4 pressure on another rook. However those moves are still not forced to crack down white weakness.

3. 1. --- Qb8, 2. Qf1 R8c2 to put pressure for defenses  but still there is escape for white.

Yeah, it's the sort that can distract you with tempting lines, so if there's a penalty to solving in less than... anything under a minute, then IMO that's silly and just encourages people to guess. In a real game (OTB tournament game) you should calculate multiple lines carefully, not rush a few short lines then guess.

But again, I'm not really sure how tactics work online. I did some untimed ones on chesstempo years ago.

Oh crap, I did not see a6!! , lol. 

Yes, both Techniques and Speed are important. But my strategy is " Correct technique first, speed will follow later". It was the strategy  I was told during my swimming training.