Points formula in tactics?

Seems I'm getting punished in tactics.  Sometimes I will win with a three or four move combination and only get one point.  Then I will miss one and lose nine points.  Seems like the program is punishing me for missing.  Is there a formula for the way points are calculated?  More points for checkmate or amount of material won?  Lose less points for missing a hard one?

If you are on the app, it may be caching a bad calculation if you are only getting one point on every successful tactic. If you are on Android, clearing the app cache may help.

That said, if you take too long, the max you will get is one point.

I just looked at your last 25 and while you had a string of +1 on your last few, the others were mostly normal looking, with various values.

Then it must be that I was taking too long.

Thay have some weird setting for the tactic trainer.. Even when you get average (50%), you only get 3 points (even when you solve in less than 20 sec, if the pass rate percentile is high). at 99% you get 7 or 8 points. (from my experience).. I had to reset my TT yesterday and now am at 1314 in 16/22 tactics.

If you get 50% on a tactic, that's pretty bad, and it generally means you don't get points (and shouldn't). 

TT ratings are the most hyper-inflated thing on chess.com. Just don't always take forever to make the moves.

Basically it's like the rating formula for chess games - with you "playing a game" against the tactic. 

If the tactic is rated as high as you are, then 50% is the expected result and you shouldn't get points. 

There is also this arbitrary introduced into the system (because people were demanding it for very long), where if you solved a tactic correctly, you can't get less than +1 - even if your % is low and the tactic is lower-rated compared to you. 

It's an arbitrary and it has an inflationary effect - but people simply didn't like losing points when they got a correct solution - even when they were way slower than the average correct solver. The system got skewed that way.

I don't think it's just to get 2 points for 50%.. How can that be bad Cherub? It's average for all people who've solved it..

<Rasta_Jay> see my explanation above, and see if you still have questions after it. 

Imagine that you play a game against someone with a 1009 rating (same as yours) and make a draw - you wouldn't get points for that, as this is the expected result. See?

I understood what you meant. I believe 50% is not like a draw though since you solved the tactic, draw would be like solving 1/2 correct moves. 

I get Tactics that are over 1300 and still get 1 point for less than 50%.. Not cool

<Rasta_Jay> yes, you know - there is this difficulty in trying to match a system for grading problem solving to the methods used for games. In any case what counts as what is pretty arbitrary - but also pretty workable. 

So someone here decided that if you solved a problem correctly, but solved it way slower than the average solver - then it counts as a draw; or that if you got one half of the moves correctly, and did so in top speed - that also counts as a draw - that's their definition of it. 

Come to think about it, the last example I give is absurd - in a real game, if you sacrifice your queen and then play 4 moves out of 8 correctly - when the whole sequence is forced - you generally don't get a draw :-)

You see, the system is arbitrary and not necessarily completely logical - but it is true that it gives a pretty good estimation of how good a solver is in tactics. Problems do become harder the higher up you go on these ratings.

What you say in #12 is probably another quirk of a system that is already pretty quirky...

The point of TT is to get familiar with the patterns. The only thing the rating is for is to try and get you tactics that are at your current level. If you are familiar with the patterns, you'll begin solving them faster, getting more points, and start getting harder and different tactics, starting the process all over again.

@solskytz I always wanna make sure I solve the tactics, doesn't matter if I get one point.. But if you almost always get -9/-10 in TT for failing to find all the moves, then I wouldn't say it's acceptable. I tell myself to make sure I solve the tactic before playing, but I still find that I get ahead of myself when I think I found the sure move very quickly..And BAAM -10 points.. You see my frustration? I still like the tactics, just recently started my chess hobby as a grown man.. So I play just to enjoy, and occasionally beat my work colleagues.

@Stahl.. I would love it not to matter to me, but it's the only way I can tell myself that am improving.

Yeah, those +1 tactics were all solved at 2-4x longer than the average solve time. That will do it for sure (I should have looked at then when answering earlier )

Oh, saying it shouldn't matter an it not mattering are two different things

I still get the rating bug at times. But I use it to try and motivate me to improve solving and do it more accurately (and try to keep my rating between 1900-2000). I haven't done so well at that but I can always tell when my mindset isn't in the right place; my rating drops a lot. I really should work on improving my accuracy, since I'm way below 50% but I have fits of doing tactics and haven't been bothered with resetting and trying to improve that yet (recently).

Thanks for all the answers.  I like chess for the fun and am not too concerned with the ratings.  I like to challenge higher rated opponents, but don't find too many open challenges for them (losing is learning).

We are just humans in it,, Sometimes our animalistic instincts take over, making us think we've got everything under control. I was introduced to chess when I was 7, but I didn't become fond of it.. Since I used to see my uncles play 1 game in the course of several days.. Maybe that's why I thought it was boring at that age. I believe the more tactic patterns and motifs you recognize, the better you are in chess. I have seen my chess improve lately, since I started watching videos doing tactics..