Tactics trainer: Kindaaa dumb, do you agree?

I have to admit the tactics trainer is making me completely crazy.  There's a certain mindset (really awake and alert, relaxed, no distractions) in which I can cope with the timer.  The rest of the time?  I do things like fail to notice I've just put the enemy queen [i]en prise[/i] to one of my pawns because I'm so much freaking out about not being able to find the checkmate that I'm assuming must be there (and isn't).  Or I spend three minutes deciding that that pawn capture really IS the only thing to get out of a particular position, when the average time for the problem is 35 seconds.  Pretty much I can deal at a representative level with the problems whose goal is checkmate (which is about half of them?), but false expectations and the stress of the timer wreck the rest.

And as others have noted with themselves, this is almost precisely backwards of how I actually play in games.  In games I will always look for a checkmate, but I never expect to find one.  What I expect to do is to use the threat of it (or a check, or some other threat) to wring out an advantage -- exactly what's going on in many of those tactics trainer problems I keep screwing up.  The other day I missed a problem where the only response to a check-by-bishop was a pawn capture that exposed the enemy rook -- an opportunity that in a game or an untimed puzzle I would never miss in a million years.  Yet this time I did.  Flailed around for 30 seconds or so looking for a checkmate that wasn't there, then made a panic move that was of course incorrect.  Never even saw the rook. 

So anyway -- it is what it is, but it's making me crazy.

I can relate to the "being awake, alert & no distractions" part. I just dropped 50 points in tactical and then a 100 in chess mentor because I'm tired (but so "addicted" I can't stop). Regarding distractions: It seems that when I'm doing  puzzles someone always decides he wants me on the phone right now. 

Here's an example that TT is indeed harmful:

http://www.chess.com/livechess/game.html?id=231518071

I sacked the queen because I had seen all these spectacular queen sacs on TT, I saw the discovered check, the king retreating to the back rank and be mated with the rook ... what I didn't see was that he can escape in the other direction.

On the other hand, there are a lot of tactics I wouldn't even know if I hadn't seen them on TT ...

The problem is as someone mentioned: you do see the typical TT problems maybe once in a 100 games. If you think there is a great combination as seen on TT, there probably is not. If there really is such a tactic, you probably won't recognize it because you saw it on TT only a month ago.

Where do you set this range preference. I went to "settings" under Tactical Trainer, changed it to not show timer and then saved preferences but didn't see where range could be set.

Thanks.

Show timer has nothing to do with it.  That just governs whether the timer progress bar appears while you are solving.

Above that checkbox is a drop down where you change mode to unrated.  When you select unrated it asks you for the range by showing some text boxes below.

Got it.   Thanks.

A topic from 2011, yet I think it is still relevant seeing as nothing has apparently changed. I bought diamond membership solely for the tactics trainer, and so far it has been a big disappointment due to the issues mentioned in this thread. I hope they give it some attention in the future.

There's many solutions to each problem so yeah it's immensely flawed and stupid and gay and useless.

With the "bugs" that tactics trainer has, im very happy with it.  I have grown to appreciate the timer, and not worrying about the rating, and taking my time to solve a tactic.  Are there multiple correct lines?  Sure...and picking the "wrong" one isnt the end of the world, if my rating drops.  Its all about the learning. 

Sorry for necro-ing, but i haveto agree with the OP. Some of these tactics are just straight-up incorrect. There was one were the correct answer was a queen exchange, even though the simplest 2-move tactic i could see would mean taking the opp queen with no loss for myself. 

Many others require 5 moves that, to be honest, nobody would be able to guess due to how utterly convoluted and, in the end, needless the whole rigmarole was, when in fact i could see moves that would leave me in a far more advantageous position.

I'd go so far to say that a significant minority of the thousand or so "tactics" i've played so far are in fact detrimental to someone's learning experience. As there is only one accepted "right" answer, you are forced to figure out just what bizarre strategy the "player" was on before handing you the board. Sometimes, the correct answer actually involves and requires the opposition to actively STUMBLE into the trap, when there are other more defensively-advantageous moves. Baffling.

Sometimes, you are thrown into a mid-game scenario with as many as half-a-dozen greatly-advantageous moves (that i could see), then given a time limit of 14 seconds to figure out which one is the "correct" one the game wants you to  follow. In the end, half the time it's none of them, but rather some long-winded, 4-move pawn exchange that leads absolutely nowhere, but gives you a happy "Correct!" if you manage to guess which of the literal thousands of moves the system insists is the "best" move.

I'm sorry, but that is ridiculous. So far, one of the things i've learned from TT is that the people who put forward many of these tactics are either simply doing it for a trolling laugh, or are nowhere near as good at the game as they believe.

Totally agree, many of the problems are impractical at certain levels.