Scoring in Tactics

Is it my imagination, or does the scoring get more difficult as you get more points?  I got to 800, and after that it seems like every answer I get right earns me 1 or 2 points, but every answer I get wrong costs me 8 or 10 points! 

I've found the best way to deal with Tactics Trainer is to pay no mind to the score. It'll just frustrate you. Ignore the score completely, instead focus on learning from it.

Each puzzle has its own difficulty rating which is determined like an ELO rating- as people beat the puzzle, the rating goes down and as they lose, it goes up. 

Two things happen as you progress- 1) the puzzles get harder- that is you start seeing puzzles with higher ratings. 2) you lose more points for failing a puzzle than you would have if your rating was lower, just like losing a game to a lower rated player.

Thank you @Shock_Me - that makes sense and is consistent with my experience.   

For noobs reading this: a great realization was that you could play your *incorrect* moves in the self analysis tool to learn what you did wrong.  

@Penfold77 you're probably right but I want to get the sense of progress that an improving score brings.  I also use it to realize when I'm too tired to keep playing and need to stop. 

You also gain fewer points if you take a long time to solve it.  You gain a lot if you get it right very quickly, and gain very little if you take a long time.

Basically, the scoring works like you playing a game against the puzzle.  If you get it wrong, you lose, and the puzzle wins.  Your rating goes down, the puzzle's rating goes up.  If you get it right quickly, you win and the puzzle loses, so your rating goes up and the puzzle's rating goes down.  If you get it right slowly that's a partial win; you go up a little, the puzzle goes down a little.  If you get a multi-move puzzle partly right, that's a partial win or partial loss (depending on how many moves you got right, and how long it took).

The net effect is that easy puzzles will get low ratings and tough puzzles will get high ratings, and you will tend to get puzzles at about your level.

One of the reasons I stopped paying attention to the score. I'd be concerned with scoring higher, so I'd rush it and end up making the wrong move. Now I take my time to really look at and consider the board, even if I take so long it only nets 1 point.

My tactics rating is 500 points higher than my game rating. Means little. The goal should be to just learn the concepts.

I too get distracted by the scoring.  I think the time aspect of it should be optional.  Sure, one can use the trainer unrated, but the rating is nice to have as a metric of how you're doing. I think they should decouple time from the equation.

People always say if you want to improve, stop playing short time controls.  Seems to me the same would apply to the tactics trainer.  Not everyone who uses the tactics trainer is out to train for blitz/bullet.  Maybe they should have two tactics trainer ratings: one for clocked, the other unclocked.

 You can go to Settings/Factics & select unrated Tactics.

Yeah, I hate the tactics rating system. Never mind my sub-500 rating. I can't stand the fact that you only get one shot at getting it right! I get scared to work on tactics in fear of getting the first move wrong, and snap, minus 10 or 12 points. You can get free apps from the Google play store that are a whole lot easier on those who suck at tactics.

The reason time is part of the equation is because it's a part of your performance.  If you spot an easy tactic in 2 seconds, isn't that better than staring at the board for 15 minutes before spotting it?  And so shouldn't you be rewarded more?

I don't know which will tend to get a better score: staring at the board until you're sure you have it, or trying to guess in ten seconds whether you've got it or not.  My guess is it will net out roughly equivalent.  Going fast will mean more points when you get it right, but also more wrong answers.