I don't think you're wasting your time as long as you learn from your mistakes and improve your pattern recognition.
looking for good ways to study tactics
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try the tactics trainer here on chess.com!
The chess mentor works just as well!
Or how about hitting up the study plan!
Premium members gets chessmentor ,it is a digital coach on this site,I think you can improve with it.There are other softwares like chessmentor 3.0 ,chessimo etc which you can download and improve.
ive been testing the mentor and its ok:) against most of my opponent i understand the position much better because i have studied but i lose because they are better than me at tactics. tactics is number one. i dont care about the rest
Jargonaught is correct on the study plan under Learn Tab.
You're looking for a good way to study tactics, you're a diamond member with unlimited access to the tactics trainer, and yet you've only done 300 something problems? I'm a little confused....
baddogno: i do alot ot tactics but on a different site:) dargone that sounds interestning. instead of trying to do as many puzzles as possible having a reasonable big set and hammering them into your longtermmemory
You can also use the basic tactics courses on Chess Mentor in the same way that Dargone suggested to build tactics rcognition. Go through a tactics course until you are getting 100% on all the problems, then move on to another course. Come back in a week or so and redo the first course. Still getting 100% ? Hammer the course until it's back to 100%. Obviously there are times when a book is more convenient (and Bain's book is excellent), but I think digital media is a bit more efficient. When you can 100% all the tactics course on Chess Mentor, you will have gone a long ways towards learning pattern recognition. IM Danny Rensch also has a video series on tactical motifs that covers the same ground.
its as simple as that. i usually do the puzzles in the norwegian newspapers and a little of ctart3 but sometimes i wonder if im wasting my time. for example if you learn a language reading a dictionary from cover to cover is a almost guarantied way to fail. any opinions on this? have anyone studied tactics by some kind of studyplan and had success with that?