Tactic ratings

Why are tactics in the 1040 - 1050 range, which, unfortunately, is where I'm at now, harder than a lot of the ones that are in the 1070 range (which is where I was on Wednesday)? I may not ever be in the 1070's again, because typically, solving one gets me 1 point, but making an error takes off like 9 or 10 points. I know solving them faster would get me more points, but when I try to solve faster, I usually make an error and end up losing several points instead. What will I encounter if I get down to a 1000? Mates in 9? #thisSiteIsTooHard

First of all, you have to take as much time to solve them as you need to get them right. You only lose points for incorrect. You don't lose points for taking a half hour to get it right, you just don't gain points. Therefore, if you get less wrong, you will gradually improve.

You can't worry about how much time you take on the tactics. The timer is there to mess with your mind, just like in a game, when you blunder because you're under pressure.

Thanks for your responses. Yeah. Some of the ones in the 1030 range (which is around where I am now), should not be difficult, but I look at them, I can't make heads-or-tails of them, so just to not be on the same puzzle forever, I eventually make what seems like a good move, it's wrong, -10 points or so. I might end up with a tactics rating of 2 or 3. Oh well. I just found it odd that quite a few puzzles at the lower tactics ratings are more difficult than puzzles at higher tactics ratings. It's counterintuitive.

I would like to know how some people have ratings of 5000

https://www.chess.com/leaderboard/tactics

If you're in the 1040-1050 range, then you should be getting problems anywhere in the range of 1000-1100, and occasionally even lower than 1000 or higher than 1100. The problems are not that exactly correlated to your rating.

happy new year to all

I agree taking time to get it right is the best approach, but I lose points for getting it right all the time. Which is a big reason my rating doesn't go up. I know tactic trainer sometimes has a weird way of assessing points. Sometimes I'll get  40% right and gain points and somtimes I'll get 60% right and lose points. I think it has to do with the difficulty of the problem and the time it takes.

Dude it's simple. If you follow the following 3 steps, you will reach 1300 in no time.

• Look for checks, checks lead to check mates. Your first step is to look for all the checks that you can give.
• Look for all the captures. Usually there'll be a piece hanging.
• Look for undefended pieces, once you've located an undefended piece, there'll usually be a simple tactic like a fork or a pin to capture it.

If you get it all correct you will at least get a +1. You used to lose points before if you took to long to get it all right.

After remembering far too many times of getting them partially right, or even all right, and still losing points I decided to try taking a long time to see what happens. You are right, I still got one point. After being punished so many times for taking too long to get it right I started guessing to quicken my time and gamble on a good score, which is probably a bad idea. I always figured if I lose points for getting it right, might as well take a chance and only lose just a few more if I get it wrong. This way of not penalizing a completely right answer is a better idea I think.

I think I stopped going too fast when I realised I could lose a lot of tactics rating points by going for speed rather than accuracy. It isn't very hard to lose a few hundred points if you are on a losing streak. Some puzzles I found that if I get it all wrong I get -6 and sometimes I have found puzzles where I lose 10 points since the puzzle rating isn't very high. Yeah I agree that not penalizing a completely right answer is a better idea as well!

I found something interesting when I had a look at your tactic puzzles you did and compared to to my ones. The puzzles gave you a minimum of 20% (+1 score) for puzzles you got completely right, but when I checked my own puzzles I got a minimum of 50% (still a +1) for any puzzle I got completely right and in some cases I took much more time than the average time (compared to your 20% ones) and still got a higher %. Not sure if this is due to the rating difference or perhaps some other factor.

I've never understood how the points are allotted in tactics trainer. I think they are weighted depending on the time it takes compared to the difficulty of the puzzle relative to your rating. But I'm not sure. It's the only thing I can think of that explains why I might get a couple points awarded for a bad result, but points taken away for a good result. In other words, something like 2 out of 5 moves right on a difficult puzzle in a short time will gain more points than 3 out of 5 right on an easy puzzle that takes longer. That could also explain the 20% vs 50%. Maybe the 50% (still a +1) was achieved on a puzzle that was a lot higher than your rating where my 20%, was on a puzzle much lower than my rating.

I dont know, maybe none of it matters and Triggerlips question is the only one that matters, how do some people have ratings of 5000. When the best human in the world is about 2900 and the best computer is about 3300.

That is an interesting observation, & query.

lol

Do you know how tactics rating work? Not chess.com's fault.

T.T. is an enigma.

Thanks everyone. I just did my 5 daily tactics and failed one. I'll try this:

Daily puzzles are a piece of cake...

That are some good tips brianbmath!

I think for daily puzzles they wouldn't be 1800 otherwise it would make it difficult for most players to solve. I think the puzzles range from about 1000-1500.

Even though daily puzzles may be easy for you BronsteinPawn, they aren't easy for everyone.