Interesting, I may make an account there.
Now that I look, I see a rating of ~2000 gets you on the top 20 rankings for that site.
I wonder what sort of problems FMs (and up) are able to solve in 3 seconds... probably pretty humbling.
I think Shirov had an account on there some years ago, and his rating was 2300-2400-ish. It's hella hard, that's for sure, and it is very easy to dump a couple of hundred points on any given day.
Dang! That's impressive Milliern! I do 5 a day here (it's all I can do), and 5-15 over at CT, depending on how many I get wrong and have to study. Sometimes I find doing that many tedious. I can't imagine going through 1500.
We'll see if it produces results. I try to mix up slow (untimed) with loose time constraints (e.g., chess.com's TT) and tight time-constraints (e.g., chess.emrald.net). My slow tactics get better and better, but I am not sure my blitz is getting much better. It just takes a second or two too long to find them. Kids absorb these patterns so easily, but I think an adult can still absorb them through hellish hard work.
I think you're on the right track as I'm facing similar tactical challenges myself. You really need to use different methods of tactics training and attack your learning from all different angles. Of course, massive repetition is an absolute must. We simply have to work harder than we would have to if we were trying to build our pattern bank when we were teenagers.
I use CT blitz and standard, the TT here on Chess.com, and spend time with tactical videos and acticles now and then. It's taking a lot but I finally hit my first real sticking point in numerous months at around the 1600 standard mark on CT and the 1500 blitz mark. Prior to this I had increased my standard a good 250 points in a handful of months and my blitz went up like 350 points. Indeed though, I can literally "feel" how I would be making somewhat faster progress if I had spent this kind of time and energy on tactics (I didn't even play chess then) when I was 17 or 18. I also feel it's somewhat relative, however, as I didn't have the focus, dedication, or attention span for the game of chess back then. So, despite the spongier brain, I would say I'm overall far, far more fit to get legitimately good at chess now than then. (age 33)
My humble numbers.
Chess.com TT: current - 1918, best- 1946.
Chesstempo.com mixed tactics(I do only it): current - 1800, best - 1881.
lichess.com: current - 2379, best - around 2400.
CT-ART: current and best - 1874. But i did 50 puzzles there and i think it will grow more.
Some comments:
chess.com. Indeed I memorized some puzzles but it doesn't mean i failed to solve them. In most cases it took too much time for me the first time and since they cycle, I had a chance to solve them faster next time. I've solved 80 percent of puzzles which is not bad i think. Most chess.com puzzles are quite easy but have very short average time to solve.
lichess.com. They don't care much about time. If you solve a puzzle, you will be praised with points and if you solve fast, you will get more points. I've reached the point there in general puzzles are much more complex than i face on chess.com.
Chesstempo.com. It's something between chess.com and lichess.com.
Lichess is a top, top quality project but the only thing that isn't on par with every other feature the site has is the tactical trainer. That's so, so bare bones compared to what it could be.
Luckily, it's a hot topic on the forums over there at this point and thibault has stated that they're working on it.
ChessTempo is, in my opinion, the best overall chess website out there. Their new live chess is fantastic and growing fast and their tactical and endgame trainer is beyond deep. Their database is also arguably the best you could get online and it costs $4 month.
With V3 on it's way (eventually) here...it's not a bad time to be playing chess online.
I disagree about lichess.com tactical trainer. It's also good but it's different. It allows to go to really tough puzzles with rating 2400 and 2500 which have many deep lines. They require good visualization. On the other hand chess.com is good to learn and train pattern recognition. All skills are important.
I disagree about lichess.com tactical trainer. It's also good but it's different. It allows to go to really tough puzzles with rating 2400 and 2500 which have many deep lines. They require good visualization. On the other hand chess.com is good to learn and train pattern recognition. All skills are important.
No...I like the Trainer on Lichess I just think that they haven't put as much effort into it as they have the other aspects of the site. I mean...they haven't. Look at how ChessTempo shows all the different possible computer variations after a problem, and has comments, tags, etc. It would be nice to see that kind of depth on the Lichess Trainer while also taking advantage of the open source nature of both Lichess and Stockfish.
My humble numbers.
Chess.com TT: current - 1918, best- 1946.
Chesstempo.com mixed tactics(I do only it): current - 1800, best - 1881.
lichess.com: current - 2379, best - around 2400.
CT-ART: current and best - 1874. But i did 50 puzzles there and i think it will grow more.
Some comments:
chess.com. Indeed I memorized some puzzles but it doesn't mean i failed to solve them. In most cases it took too much time for me the first time and since they cycle, I had a chance to solve them faster next time. I've solved 80 percent of puzzles which is not bad i think. Most chess.com puzzles are quite easy but have very short average time to solve.
lichess.com. They don't care much about time. If you solve a puzzle, you will be praised with points and if you solve fast, you will get more points. I've reached the point there in general puzzles are much more complex than i face on chess.com.
Chesstempo.com. It's something between chess.com and lichess.com.
That's something I don't understand: how someone could have a 1300 blitz rating and a 1900 TT rating. I'm not ragging on you, so don't get me wrong. That's just the sort of differential that I would take to indicate that particular puzzles are being memorized, and that the underlying tactical patterns are not being assimilated.
Thanks for the numbers for reference.
Lichess is a top, top quality project
I need to check this out.
I have tried tried the Lichess tactic training system but don't like it. It basically has positions where one side is completely dominating (winning) eg whole Rook ahead and you have to find the absolute best moves to finish the opponent off, so a further win of lets say a Queen instead of a mate in 4 will lose you points. Also they tend to drag the puzzles out when you have already acheived the aim, so you have achieved a +8 winning evaluation and you choose to liquidate to an easy won endgame but you could have won an exchange instead.
On Chess.Com I am currently hovering around 2000, have been in the 2300's before but gather that most of the hard puzzles from years ago have now suffered the same rating decline. My only explaination for this happening is that as Chess.Com has matured so have its users. In the early years there would have been many beginners as a proportion of total users so they would fail many puzzles.
That's something I don't understand: how someone could have a 1300 blitz rating and a 1900 TT rating. I'm not ragging on you, so don't get me wrong. That's just the sort of differential that I would take to indicate that particular puzzles are being memorized, and that the underlying tactical patterns are not being assimilated.
Thanks for the numbers for reference.
I think it's not that simple. Firstly, am i prohibited to memorize? What can i do if puzzles cycle? Do i need to forget them? Secondly, do you see my percentage? It's 80%. Not many players have this percentage. I'm taking approach not to race against time but solve them till the end. Can you say it's mostly about memorization if i'm actually solve them from the first attempt? Memorization helps me to solve them quickly second time. And some puzzles are completely nuts. They are difficult to calculate till the end but have low rating and short average time. Lichess doesn't have such thing at all.
In blitz I flactuate much. I can have 1500 and 1200 during short period of time. Probably it depends on my form. On lichess i have standard rating 1800 which is similar to chess.com's standard i think. I lost a lot of blitz games on time in absolutely winning positions because i can't manage time properly but i feel that my chess understanding is good enough. And i'm playing blitz because i want to manage time better.
That's something I don't understand: how someone could have a 1300 blitz rating and a 1900 TT rating. I'm not ragging on you, so don't get me wrong. That's just the sort of differential that I would take to indicate that particular puzzles are being memorized, and that the underlying tactical patterns are not being assimilated.
I think that there are other factors as well. My personal TT best (before I had to clear the statistics due to a bug a couple of years ago) was in the mid 1900s, but my blitz is usually around 1200. (I have a FIDE online blitz rating of about 1700, but it's quite new and I expect it to go down a lot.).
I have a lot of trouble focusing when playing (which makes my level of play extremely uneven). I usually don't have any trouble spotting tactics when someone else is playing (that's quite common, I know), and I usually see the tactic I should have played, right after I let go of a piece...
I'm also quite prone to tilting if I make a mistake, or notice that I should have played something else (no matter if I'm still winning or not...), or even if I get a winning position (especially against a stronger player) and don't believe I have the technique to score the point...
These are all factors that will affect your performance more than your tactical ability will (it doesn't matter how good you are at tactics if you blunder horribly in every game...).
When I grew up in pre-computer days, I never did tactics books--just played over games of the great masters (Jack Collins' method of teaching Bobby Fischer), but in 1980 with a 1900 rating, I started adding tactics problems. Something clicked, and my rating went up over 2200 USCF. Tactics problem solving definately adds something. In a "real game" though you never know if the position you are in is one of the "tricks."
When I grew up in pre-computer days, I never did tactics books--just played over games of the great masters (Jack Collins' method of teaching Bobby Fischer), but in 1980 with a 1900 rating, I started adding tactics problems. Something clicked, and my rating went up over 2200 USCF. Tactics problem solving definately adds something. In a "real game" though you never know if the position you are in is one of the "tricks."
I definitely agree. In my two years of (USCF) tournament play, following the couple of months it took me to learn the game, I almost entirely did tactics puzzles in books, and went from about 1000 to 1600. My guess is that the practical strategic stuff you pick up from playing games is enough to supplement tactics study to move someone to close to A-Class. Studying master games has made me so much stronger, so I imagine someone with a breadth and depth of knowledge acquired from going through master games would suddenly get a huge boost from beginning to focus on tactics.
Speaking about tactics assimilation. Recently i have been solving a chess problem. Motif was extremely simple and common - back rank issue, I have seen it probably hundreds and thousands times but have spent 5 minutes on this on. I'm wondering how come i haven't assimilated it yet.
2500 tactcs on chess.com and 1820 on chess24.com
The memorization angle that you mention is interesting, especially that you have a friend who can solve problems quickly, presumable due to memorization, but his tactical ability doesn't tranfser to playing ability. It's interesting because memorization is exactly the method recommended by GM Ziatdinov, just get exposure to many patterns that you can recognize quickly.
Let's keep distinctions clear: does he recommend memorization of particulars or universals/generalizations. I am guess he emphasizes the latter, though he may be speaking generally enough for one to take him to mean that individual (i.e., particular) puzzles should be memorized. People who memorize particular puzzles have not necessarily assimilated the pattern. I am definitely all for memorization, but of this more general type. Memorizing particular things doesn't help much, except to aid in developing pattern recognition a bit. That's why studying many puzzles with the same motif is more effective than memorizing one particular puzzle within a motif. It is also why Dan Heisman advocates something like the de la Maza method, except much more systematic, in that he suggests we be able to do every basic motif type (in a selection of books he's pointed out on his website) very quickly.