Tactics Lull
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I'm not very good at chess and lately have been working hard in the tactics trainer to boost my skills. I do tactics training a couple times a day and actually started seeing some great improvement. I went from an 800 score to 1100 in a few weeks. today however something happened. I got nearly every puzzle wrong. No matter how long I looked at a puzzle I just couldn't see what the next move should be. I dropped all the way back down to 800 in a single day and it's killing me
Does this happen to anyone else? what do you do?
saber_chess wrote:
Does this happen to anyone else? what do you do?
It happens. Take a break, and try again another day.
When I’m tired I couldn’t spot a herd of elephants thundering through the living room. Keep trying after a rest, it will improve. And maybe read some tactics primer books.
It happens, I've had days when I've gone down almost 200 points in tactics trainer, and those -100 points off-days are not all that uncommon. Like week ago I had a day where I passed 25 tactics and failed 22, and then the very next day I passed 66 and failed only 37. I think the best idea is that if you're having one of those off-days, is to take a break and stop for the day. Try again the next day. If you already reached 1100 rating once, it shouldn't be too difficult to get back there.
Don't get discouraged, just keep going at it. There is no way that you wouldn't improve and start cementing those patterns in your memory - and you'll get better, faster and have easier time recognizing motifs.
Think of it this way: Now that you're back to ~ 800, you'll get some extra time to go through those simple puzzles. Those simple ones are fundamental to learn correctly, in order to start solving the more difficult ones efficiently. After all difficult puzzles are usually just two, three, four or more overlapping simple puzzles, that you have to recognize. Once you master simple puzzles, it gets much easier to recognize the key motifs in more complex ones. Tactics training is to your chess thinking like what weightlifting is to your muscles.
Also having checked your tactics trainer profile, try to slow down your solving pace a little. I know TT rewards you with points for solving quickly, but it's better to solve for accuracy than speed. You'll get less points, but learn the ideas more accurately, which will help you more in the long run than a rating bump at a moment might.