Exercise points don't reflect capability under pressure. The whole online points/rating system discourages many modern players ( i.e. average 1330 players) from experimenting out of their comfort zone. I like tactical problems (www.chess.emrald.net/ free site ), but getting to a postion where tactics payoff requires a bit of knowlege in openings. There doesn;t seem to be a magic bullet in chess....gotta play each move like it's moving out of the book right now. I'm sure it's different for players rated 17-18-1900, but patzers at 1350 need tactical experience, opening experience and humility.
I lost points while solving a tactics trainer puzzle?
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I also like the fact that ChessTempo has unlimited tactics/day for free members, plus two endgame problems/day. (That doesn't mean the site is better than Chess.com. In a nutshell, is nothing but a trainer - without a community, live chess etc.)
BorgQueen wrote:
IMO, time crunch is not paramount when you are tactics training.
This is exactly why I use ChessTempo.com for tactics training now.
You can you turn off the timer and still have scoring so that if you get a phone call or have to help your friend, spouse, child immediately, you can do so and just return to the problem later without suffering a -40 or some crap.
It also accepts alternative correct answers instead of penalising you hard for finding a great move just because there is a better one.
It doesn't have a bunch of "utter crap" computer generated problems thrown in that have never been looked at by a human which have 12 different good moves.
It shows you common lines that fail so you can see why your solution didn't work.
Among other things.
Sorry, but chess.com's tactics trainer is very poor by comparison.
Chess.com TT has alternate lines in the analysis and source.
all of the problems I've looked at are from actual games on chess.com, so they aren't computer generated positions.
And again, it seems some people are just more interested in their rating than actually learning tactics. I don't understand how to option to turn off one's timer and still get rated is that important if learning the tactics is the goal.
As to the "pattern recognition" issue, I like the tags that are associated with each problem because it gives you some ideas about what kinds of tactics you need to work on. And the descriptions the linked article gives about various tactics are very helpful.
I'm slowly getting the hang of this one here. My problem was twofold: 1) When I played fast, I blundered, losing points. 2) When I played slow, I solved the problems, but lost points anyway. I soon was down to 950 points, so I never seemed to get to see more interesting problems! I then however decided to forgo a lot of my usual evaluation routine ("How's material?", "pawn structure", "weak points" etc.) and just looked for signs typical for a tactical pattern. Once I found it, I only briefly checked whether it is safe ("Has he checks, or surprise Zwischenzugs?") This seemed to work. As I am not a paying member, I can only do three puzzles a day, but I already got my score up to 1400 and the problems slowly but surely start to get more interesting. In the end, I still much prefer Chesstempo's trainer, with no timer, though. Over there, I'm currently at about 1800 in tactical and 1700 in endgame problems, which means the problems I get are quite a bit more complex. I also like to think long and hard with no time pressure, which is in line with my preference of the 40 moves/2 hours format for gaming.
Kingwraith wrote:
And again, it seems some people are just more interested in their rating than actually learning tactics. I don't understand how to option to turn off one's timer and still get rated is that important if learning the tactics is the goal.
Because the goal is to learn tactics. Getting punished for getting the problem correct is quite simply bad pedagogy. It destracts from the goal.
If you are going to give rating points for problems, and then punish people by taking away rating points for successfully completing the problem, then people are going to find an issue with that.
That you don't understand why that is simply is fascinating in it's own right, as it is simply and basic psychology that any instructor of any subject understands. You don't tell a student "you failed!" when they get the right answer. It tends to be counterproductive in any number of ways.
Kingpatzer wrote:
You don't tell a student "you failed!" when they get the right answer.
Actually, most standardized tests I'm familiar with have very specific time limits. If an answer was provided after time had run out, it would be scored the same as no answer or an incorrect answer. In the case of TT, an incorrect answer gets negative points, so it's not so unreasonable that a "late" answer also gets negative points.
I won't regurgitate the same cricitism that others offer to the TT, although I don't disagree.
I also have Shredder on my Android phone and have been using its tactics trainer a bit.
I haven't shopped around for other tactics trainers, because both of these seem more than adequate for my needs. And the lot are better than the first trainers I encountered. (Chessmaster on Xbox 360 comes to mind, although it wasn't bad.)
I've got to say I agree with the basic idea. It seems silly that if I make one correct move and then fail at a multiple-move puzzle, I'm more likely to gain points than if I take a lot of time over one move. I just lost 11 points on a puzzle that took a lot of thought.
I think it may be okay to always award 1 point for successful completion, whatever the status of the timer.
Cystem_Phailure wrote:
Kingpatzer wrote:
You don't tell a student "you failed!" when they get the right answer.
Actually, most standardized tests I'm familiar with have very specific time limits. If an answer was provided after time had run out, it would be scored the same as no answer or an incorrect answer. In the case of TT, an incorrect answer gets negative points, so it's not so unreasonable that a "late" answer also gets negative points.
Tactics Trainer is not analogous to a standardized test in that the point of the tactics trainer is not to evaulate one's tactical ability but to train one's tactical ability.
If the point is to evaluate one's tactical ability, then it is poorly designed as there isn't a set number of pre-scored problems being provided to give an accurate evaulation of a person's ability. Further, if the goal is evaulation rather than training then the name of the tool is misleading.
Cystem_Phailure wrote:
Kingpatzer wrote:
You don't tell a student "you failed!" when they get the right answer.
Actually, most standardized tests I'm familiar with have very specific time limits. If an answer was provided after time had run out, it would be scored the same as no answer or an incorrect answer. In the case of TT, an incorrect answer gets negative points, so it's not so unreasonable that a "late" answer also gets negative points.
To be fair, if the correct answer in the TT comes after the time's been running out, we seem to at least lose less points than if the incorrect answer had been given.
Kingpatzer wrote:
Tactics Trainer is not analogous to a standardized test in that the point of the tactics trainer is not to evaulate one's tactical ability but to train one's tactical ability.
OK, and the people who feel similarly should then have no problem with using the untimed version with no rating if they don't want evaluation.
Cystem_Phailure wrote:
Kingpatzer wrote:
Tactics Trainer is not analogous to a standardized test in that the point of the tactics trainer is not to evaulate one's tactical ability but to train one's tactical ability.
OK, and the people who feel similarly should then have no problem with using the untimed version with no rating if they don't want evaluation.
The problem there is that one doesn't then get a good history of progress one is making.
A good pedagogical tool will reward a student for good performance, provide negative feedback for poor performance, and provide a way for the student to track progress for similar types of problems. Tactics Trainer in the current incarnation does none of those things well.
Again, it is probably better than nothing, but it is simply not comparable to available tools that are focused on doing tactics training well.
Kingpatzer wrote:
The problem there is that one doesn't then get a good history of progress one is making.
Well, then, you mean the purpose of TT is to serve as an evaluation tool? You just said that wasn't its purpose. Make up your mind, Jack!
Tactics trainer is a great tool. There obviously is a big difference in skill if someone can solve a puzzle in 15 seconds vs. solving it in 5 minutes. Stop complaining please and accept the challenge. Don't focus so much on the ratings, try to become better at recognizing and solving puzzles. This will help you in real game time situations.
Cystem_Phailure wrote:
Kingpatzer wrote:
The problem there is that one doesn't then get a good history of progress one is making.
Well, then, you mean the purpose of TT is to serve as an evaluation tool? You just said that wasn't its purpose. Make up your mind, Jack!
All pedagogical tools require some evaluative function, but that doesn't make it the primary purpose of the tool. The primary purpose of a standardized test is precisely evaulative.
gauranga wrote:
Tactics trainer is a great tool. There obviously is a big difference in skill if someone can solve a puzzle in 15 seconds vs. solving it in 5 minutes. Stop complaining please and accept the challenge. Don't focus so much on the ratings, try to become better at recognizing and solving puzzles. This will help you in real game time situations.
Sorry, but you're wrong. I appreciate that you're a titled player and I'm not. But I assure you that "accepting the challenge" will result in habituating poor thinking processes in many players. I'm one of them. When I "accepted" the challenge my tactical recognition did not improve. However, I did find myself blitzing off bad moves in OTB situations out of habit all the time.
By moving away from a tool that rewarded poor thinking techniques and moving to one that focused on correctness of responses, and demanding of myself that I calculate out the tactical sequence and ensure that the resulting solution is accurate, my OTB performance went up significantly. I know from talking with others that I'm not alone in that problem.
But utlimately, even for blitz training, the TT here is not a "great tool" when compared to other options. Again, that's not unexpected since providing a high quality tactics training tool is not the primary goal of Chess.com. But it isn't a great tool. It is arguably not even adequate.
OK, putting aside trying to guess the intended purpose, I still think use of the timing in the score reflects realistically on ability, given that the problem evalautions and alloted time are continually updated based on the relative success of the people working the problems. When someone gets a negative score, their rating decreases and the problem rating increases. And the amount of time they're given to solve the problem is not arbitrary, but rather exactly twice the mean time taken by all previous people who have completed the problem. Even once time has run out they can still get some credit (I think 20%) for the problem, but it seems reasonable to me that their rating should decrease if they take more than twice as long as the average correct solver.
Cystem_Phailure wrote:
OK, putting aside trying to guess the intended purpose, I still think use of the timing in the score reflects realistically on ability, given that the problem evalautions and alloted time are continually updated based on the relative success of the people working the problems. When someone gets a negative score, their rating decreases and the problem rating increases. And the amount of time they're given to solve the problem is not arbitrary, but rather exactly twice the mean time taken by all previous people who have completed the problem. Even once time has run out they can still get some credit (I think 20%) for the problem, but it seems reasonable to me that their rating should decrease if they take more than twice as long as the average correct solver.
It reflects realisitically on the ability to play blitz. I doubt it has much correllation to real chess for many people. I'm an older player with a history of significant head injuries. I can't even play poorly in games with less than 30 minutes. I am hopeless at blitz (with an under 900 rating on ICC). My brain can't even begin to process the board in that short of time. However, I've put in three back-to-back performances at tournaments with G/2hr or longer time controls that are significantly above my current rating -- two over 1700 and one nearly 1600 (my current OTB rating is 1425).
I got to the point of being able to do that by doing a couple of things. Most notably, I moved away from training blitz tactics and to training my thought process on tactical problems.
I know that for older players, even those without cognitive disfunctions, this is a common reality.
Moreover, given that the tool is punative towards those who really do try to practice a proper OTB thinking process, the reality is that the user pool is probably primarily blitz players. If that's the case, and I expect that this is a reasonable assumption, then what this measures is rating performance versus people who are good at quickly recognizing blitz tactics in a blitz tactical trainer.
And for training blitz, I suspect that the TT here is adequate. It still doesn't allow for tracking results based on types of positions, setting up problem sets to train specific areas of difficulty and the like, but it is not horrible.
But for non-blitz players it doesn't do much but punish them if they try to approcah the board in a way that reinforces the thinking process they should be using OTB.
I'm always amused by the stress over TT ratings that people experience. TT is (should be used as) a learning tool.
As a pedagogical tool it is poorly thought out. It encourages improper thinking techniques and punishes success.
The notion that it is about pattern recognition is laugable since you can't actually do any sort of specific pattern training. If you have a hard time seeing long-diagonal moves as part of removing a defender, you can't train that pattern.
It may well be useful for teaching people to make speculative aggressive moves quickly in blitz. But it is not good for teaching people to find tactics in real OTB games.