Tactics Trainer on this Site

Did Tactics Trainer on this site help your chess tactics (and therefore your rating) very much?

I've done a little research and come across folks posting graphs showing an increase in their TT rating on the site over time. That's great -- that means you got better at the Tactics Trainer. Did you, indeed, also get better at chess tactics in real games by using this?

I see several people write that one should use CT. I've also heard arguments for staying with TT. What I like about TT is I already have a diamond membership, and everything is on one site.

Also, how did you use TT? Did you do it timed? Did you just practice untimed and 1100-1200 for a few weeks, then switch to 1200-1300 for a few weeks, etc?

Did you couple this with books?

Basically what I am getting at is whether, if I stay with TT, I will be able to substantially improve my tactics in real games (I'll study tactics books too)....and also, what method should I use (timed, untimed, rating thresholds, all of the above)...or is it imperative to switch to CT (it's not the cost that's the thing, it's the lack on convenience). If it makes a HUGE difference, I might use it. Maybe I will hear from people from both schools of thought.

What is CT? And as a premium member, can you save and practice tactics problems again? As a basic member, the tactics vanishes after one time itself!

Yes, you can see the tactics that you have done:

You can do that on TT...hmm....don't know how to do that. How do you?

Also, can anyone answer my OP? I'd love to hear from several people if possible with differing viewpoints perhaps.

Yes, TT helped my tactical skills a lot. For about a year and a half I did 15 minutes of TT every day and went from 1200-1300 to about 1900 in terms of TT rating. I did see a very clear improvement in my games as well. 

What I did was to hide the timer and try to make sure I saw the entire sequence before moving (easier said than done though, I'm often too impatient). I also have the board set to show white on bottom always.

On a couple of occasions, I also solved a small number of problems in books as well. (Perhaps 12-20.) Each time I did that, my TT rating went up with 100-200 points, perhaps because my biggest problem is my lack of focus (and aforementioned impatience) — I find it much easier to concentrate when using a book than a computer screen. (That being said, I'm not saying that using books instead of TT would necessarily been more helpful. I believe that my core tactical skills come from TT, but I need to work on my ability to focus and calculate till the end as well.)

I have tried other tactics trainers as well (eg. CT) but I think that the one on this site does almost everything I want, and does so in a more convenient fashion. If I could choose on thing to improve with TT, it's session support, ie. to be able to see statistics per session instead of only per day or in total.

My Home - Tactics Trainer - Performance

Why?

By the way, a "lightyear" is a unit of distance, not of time.

Did not find tactics trainer very useful. Of course I have no problems with tactics.

Of course. I beg your pardon, but would you be so kind as to pass the Grey Poupon, Sir?

I say, if you get it wrong, then there's a new pattern you learned. 'Nuff said.

Or for that matter, if you get it right, you probably also learned a new pattern...

Despite dozens of people telling you this same thing (IE CT >>>> TT) you find the need to question them every time.  You spent money on your diamond membership, so you want a reason to stick to TT.  At some point you'd think you would take people at their word at least try it.  

Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

This post from my blog is old, but it gives you the basic idea fairly clearly. http://chessskill.blogspot.com/

HAHA. The price of a MONTHLY (I pay month-to-month) diamond membership to this awesome site is less than the cost of a single Grey Goose martini at dinner. It is not about the money (how much do you spend on coffee per day...per year?), but rather about the convenience of having everything at one site. Premium to CT is is also a pittance, and I have tried it. I've been grappling with this issue, and so is one of the people who has given me lessons. Maybe you should actually read my OP, and if you don't feel like answering it then please go away and stop posting in my thread. I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

Thanks Ziryab et al. Interesting.

The link below is to a post where use of TT over CT is given. Reasons are given (other than 10 people told you go try it blah blah blah). I wonder what people think of the post linked to below, where TT is advocated. Maybe I should use both. Then others say chessimo.com is the bomb. There are only so many hours in a day for chess tactics...

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-equipment/best-graded-chess-tactics-course

Just use both! Do 25 a day from each. Definetly a different flavor to the problems each offers; I'm finding the problems here more difficult than those at CT at the same rating. I tend to find the comments at CT much more enlightening than what's typically seen here (easy, etc..)

I think sets of 300-1000 problems that you go through repeatedly are the best bet. None of these online rated trainers offer this repetition of position, but CT permits theme based training for premium members.

Two others that get praise are chessimo and en.lichess.org. I know very little about them or how good they are, but see the most written about CT v. TT. Second chessimo. Third lichess (order in which I see them mentioned).

@BoardofWar: Yeah, it's cheap and I have tried it (see above). I hear good things from others. No one is saying CT is not good.

Your profile indicates that you have never even tried Tactics Trainer once, however.

I use chessimo's iPad app, which I like. The problems are basic--forcing checkmates in a few moves. The design of the program is grounded upon repetition of each problem six times. After you've seen a mate in one six times, you see the mate in two that led to that mate in one (also six times), then the mate in three, and so on.

It's a very good, time intensive training program that drills certain basic patterns thoroughly.

I've also played on the Chessimo playing app on Facebook. It's not worth using. Players may get computer hints from "lifelines". Everyone starts with a few, and have the option of purchasing more.

I've played chess on lichess. It's substandard compared to Chess.com. I'm not aware of training features there.

I second (or third) the notion that CT has the overall best training environment and features. As with all training sites, the selection critera favor certain sorts of tactical problems over others. CT problems ask you to find optimal forcing solutions. These are very different than the positionally oriented problems in Lev Alburt, Chess Training Pocket Book II, for example. Chess Informant (the Anthology of Combinations and the new Encyclopedia of Combinations) problems are forcing, but often only to reach a positional advantage. I have not seen a lot of that sort in CT. 

Variety is the key.