Suggestion for the Tactics Trainer

Good Suggestions.  When I started this post I must admit I didn't know about the unrated option (where you can also choose the level of the puzzel).  That will work for me.  Thanks for the ideas everyone.

maybe to combat cheaters make the timer even faster?  That way they won't be able to set up the board quickly enough?

Well it doesn't sound as if they will change it.  So we might as well give up on this thread.

i don,t think people should be penalised on time, it makes a mockery of the whole game, its not a mere race.

Well I appreciate that you agree, as a chess teacher, that the idea has merit.

 thank you, but i didn,t think of cheating, just that time is a different matter, it isn,t chess

not true on all accounts! :D you are not playing against the problem - you are playing against everyone else using tactics trainer. we don't arbitrarily assign times to the problems. the timer is based on the averate solving times of everyone else using it. that is why some are fast and some are slow to count down. look - if the average 1600 rated player takes "x" seconds to solve a set of problems and you consistently take longer than the average, then you are clearly below 1600, and your rating should reflect that.

you really have to understand the math behind the ratings to understand the beauty of it and why it falls apart when you don't keep things consistent. frankly and honestly, we did some things on chess mentor to "soften" the ratings blows for failure. and what did we end up with? rating inaccuracies. player ratings are inflated, problem ratings are deflated. why did we do it? because people were complaining about losing rating points for some things. and now we're going to have to roll back those changes to fix that. :)

JMCrockett - if i simply didn't want to change it and didn't care even if the idea has merit, why would i engage in the conversation? chess.com is built by the users through your ideas. just because i don't agree with you doesn't mean i am being stubborn or too lazy to implement, it means i think i'm right and that i am speaking from experience and what i feel is a deeper understanding of the situation.  ;)

I'm cool with it Erik.  I'll just use the unrrated section.

 Not necessarily. "Easier" problems have a 'bug': they can be solved by inspection, which means that you need only to look for moves, rather than strategical aspects.

While this method might be faster, it does little to improve one's tactical skill, that has more to do with analyzing strategical aspects that will justify the moves themselves.

it's the tactics trainer, not the strategy trainer :) and your point doesn't address anything i said in the quoted text. ;) if you solve more slowly then other people on average, then you are on average a lower rated tactician. having some problems be easier than others does nothing to affect that.

The unrrated area is working fine for me...I can work on the puzzels that are difficult and take my time. 

So Far I've solved much more difficult puzzels when not feeling pressured by the time.  Though if my rule of zero was in effect my rating would not have changed, but because I solved it the puzzel would have become lower rated?  Is that correct?

not necessarily. did you read the help file on how we do ratings for tactics?i believe that the minimum "score" for solving the problem is a .2, which if you are much lower than the problem might actually give you some tactics points!

How does the time and rating work?

The Chess.com Tactics Trainer uses the same Glicko rating style used in our Online Chess and Chess Mentor. Essentially you are playing a quick game against the problem! If you lose you can get up to a full point win, and if you fail then you get a "0" score. Those scores are put into the Glick forumlas and then both your rating and the problem's rating are adjusted.

But the rating isn't as simple as a win or a loss - time is involved. We track the average time it takes to solve the problem and your score is calulated based on where you fall in relationship to this average time. For the exact values, see the chart below.

It's very annoying you get less points for an equal dual and less points for solving it, I wont pay for that. It's not amusing anymore and that's a mistake in your shop!!

What do you mean less points for an equal dual?

When I play tactics trainer I do not look at the rating, rather I look at the pass success rate. Right now it's at 50% and I want to get it up to 51%. This might sound easy, but I've done about 2500 tactics, so that 1% is actually a massive milestone.

JMCrockett.

Yes, but the examples you have given are those of people working the system to gain higher ratings. However, if people were just cool, instead of wetting the bed over a fictional rating on an internet site, then the Glicko system would be fine.

the same can be said about all ratings systems. just practice without participating in a rated event and you will improve faster than your rating. also, it is not a fact that "once a player reaches an established rating level, it becomes very difficult for him to improve his game."

I'm really enjoying the unrrated tactics trainer mainly because I can choose the level of the puzzles I'm playing. 

 I never thought about doing that, sounds like fun.

I think it's an time is an important feature of the Tactics Trainer (being I a player who lose most games by time!).

I once read that if you have to spend too much time trying to find the answer to a tactic problem (knowing that there is a winning move), it is very likely that you WON'T see it during a real game.  And failing a winning tactic during a game = blunder !! (decrease in ratings!).

So, knowing if you are spending too much time, is also instructive.  Someone else is doing better.

JM: I love that you thought my idea was so novel!!  I hope you change their minds.