Hi. I've been doing a lot of tactics trainer lately, but I'm not improving at it. I feel like my pattern recognition is at the same place that it was two months ago. I saw a David Pruess video here, and he said that solving many puzzles every day is useless--that you should study a few per day particularly well, and in a couple years you'll be good at tactics. I'm sure that works, but for obvious reasons I'm wondering what study methods exist which might require a shorter commitment, but which are more efficient than grinding tactics trainer. Thanks.
Accumulation of Patterns- This helps you at reducing the calculation you need to do. It helps you at disregarding the moves that you need to calculate. You can improve your pattern recognition by solving easy chess tactics problems.
Calculation Training - You can’t always rely with intuition and pattern recognition. There are situations where you need to do accurate calculations. There are situations where you need to do long calculations. To improve your calculating ability, you need to solve harder problems. You need to solve problems that has longer moves to solve.
Defensive Tactical Ability- I have seen many players that are good at spotting tactics against their opponent, but are poor at recognizing the tactical threats of their opponent. To improve your defensive tactical ability, you need to solve defensive tactical problems. You can also try setting up puzzles on your board and take the defensive side. For example ,if there is a white to fork black puzzle, take the black side on your board and find the fork threat of white against black.
Study The Games of Great Tactical Players- Study the games of great tactical players like Kasparov, Tal,Shirov,Aronian,Morphy and many more.
There are many good tactics books. There are also tactics puzzles apps that provides tactical puzzles. But I prefer books as they are carefully selected and more organize. Try using books and take your time at solving them.
Hi. I've been doing a lot of tactics trainer lately, but I'm not improving at it. I feel like my pattern recognition is at the same place that it was two months ago. I saw a David Pruess video here, and he said that solving many puzzles every day is useless--that you should study a few per day particularly well, and in a couple years you'll be good at tactics. I'm sure that works, but for obvious reasons I'm wondering what study methods exist which might require a shorter commitment, but which are more efficient than grinding tactics trainer. Thanks.