is playing bots and puzzles healthy for improving in chess?

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I’ve been there and you should be playing humans if you want a realistic representation of your playing strength. You are indirectly manipulating your rating in a way. I do see chess.com are presenting player stats within a 3 months window, and their rating calculations equates this as well.

Puzzles and robots have their place. There was a two month stretch where I was learning a new opening and a couple defences where I used the engine at 2000-2500 to dial in my accuracy and correct move orders. You can also choose a time control to develop speed and be a layer closer to a real game environment.

I like puzzles for tactical training, practice, gain experience, develop pattern recognition, speed and repetition but again, it’s only one element of chess training and not a full representation of your playing strength nor should be all of your chess time unless you enjoy doing puzzles, sure. For example, my puzzle skills is 2,000 but my playing strength is 1300. While my other friends can have a 1,700 puzzle rating and are 1500+ playing strength. Reasons being are because they play much more than me , also stronger in the middle game and quick at recognizing tactics. I do admit I am a slow player and miss tactics even thought I see them afterwards. Moreover, I have friends who exclusively work on puzzles and will spend over an hour one one puzzle; it loses practicality in a game environment.

There are people who don’t even play online now but participate actively in the forums.

Nothing wrong with what you want out of your membership.

On a tangent note, bots are programmed to do odd things which are inhuman like shuffle a king in the middle game? This one example makes the bot over rated. A 1800 bot is way weaker than an experienced 1800 human. No disrespect to Wally lol.

" Is staying away from online a bad decision?"

Yes! Assuming you like chess, and want to improve, the best single thing you can do is to play humans and to analyze your games. Forget about your precious rating! No one cares about it except  you, and you shouldn't care either. Your rating will ultimately reflect your playing skill. If you get better, your rating will go up

"thanks! I am a very anxious person, so starting online games makes me anxious, i know that sounds silly but that's how it is for me"

You're not the only person who feels that way! But hiding in the shadows and only playing bots won't help you get over that.  You have to remember that if you win or if you lose, you're the same person! Your chess rating is not your rating as a person! Try to just play, have fun, and try to let your competitive juices start to flow! You may find that you'll enjoy competing, once you get used to it

Don t worry man im the same and i do care about my rating a lot too but without playing at least 200 games you will never know your real rating i really hate how the game asseses your rating at first and you end up on the lose streak and the graphs look bad constantly reminding you how low you fell. But don t be intimidated too much its good enough to beat all the available bots you can until you get stuck. Learn one opening which fits your play style basickly anything you instinctivly enjoy playing. The fun thing about rating is even if you fell like youve reached your limits you are nowhere near them. If you don t have negative rating you still have gass left.

Even if you play a person you're still playing against an engine, and when you lose you'll be discouraged and think you're no good at the game, but it won't be true at all. Happens all the time, here.

Play the computer and then there's no doubt about who/what you're up against. Seriously, people living outside of the USA just don't comprehend how ingrained fraud and dissimulation are in American business practices, and chess dot com is like any other amoral Silicon Valley grift.