No, because in TT you have to calculate things first - although very quickly - and decide which move is best. With jumping on the first 'good' move you won't have much success, thus most players don't do that.
Tactics trainer teaching people to make moves too quickly?
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Their argument is that it is trying to teach a certain method of pattern recognition.
I personally don't think this is the right approach to anyone who isn't an expert in tactics already. I think it is far more important when below say 2000 tactics rating to spend the time thinking over the moves so that your brain forms the thought processes correctly. Then when you are an expert at all tactics it is a good time to work on spotting them very quickly.
I truly believe that taking no expert tacticians and forcing them to move quickly for fear of losing points for taking the time to figure the problem out is actually a very bad habit to instill and doesn't allow them to learn the proper thinking techniques in the first place.
The chess.com TT also gives a completely incorrect if for instance you go down a path that is mate in 5 instead of 3 as opposed to saying "That is also winning, see if you can find better" because in the end you're working to win more chess matches. A mate is a mate even if it takes longer. Taking a free queen over seeing a mate in 5 will still win you the game (and in fact may make the opponent resign as soon as you grab the queen so it could possibly be an even faster win) so the trainer should account for that like other sites trainers do.
Been discussed many many times before. I used to come to chess.com's defense and regurgitate the company line about it being "pattern recognition" training, and the timer being an essential part of that. Now I'm just not so sure. I seem to be doing my tactics training more with other software packages; ChessKing has a whole bunch of standalone software trainers including a 3 volume set on tactics. There are obviously at least half a dozen other packages and other web sites as well. I'm beginning to think that until and unless you have a few thousand patterns down "cold" the TT here is actively counterproductive. "Guess and click" is just not the way to go but time pressure forces us to do that. Maybe if I get better, the TT will make more sense, but for now it has a diminished role in my training.
Then I must recommend you this site:
Here you can play either 'blitz' or 'standard' tactics. If you play standard tactics, time doesn't affect your score. Blitz is similar to TT, but harsher (you lose all points whether you solve 0/5 or 4/5 moves etc.).
With my CT profile Adweaden I also started by playing stardard and than slowly switched to TT and blitz.
Thanks for the site link...I tried ChessTempo and after about 40 boards I'm already rated 350-400 points higher there than here on the tactics trainer.
Also I can play more than 3/day ;)...
I was just using the ChessTempo tactics trainer for the past 4 hours and visited these forums for a break. I need to take my time on the problems as I just started playing 6 months ago so I don't have a bunch of tactical patterns in my memory bank, sometimes I can't just look at a board and see a tactical pattern so I'll have to consider various options and calculate them all. Today I spent 17 minutes on a problem where the average attempt time was like 3 minutes for example, but I got it right and I know it's helping my calculation.
Before I found the ChessTempo tactics trainer I was considering quitting chess but now that I've been using it I have a lot of fun and feel like I'm improving. I actually like solving the puzzles there better than playing real games.
Hey, does anyone have a paid membership to ChessTempo? I've been curious what the hardest problem there is. I looked at it and less than 10% of the people who attempted it got it right, but I wasn't able to actually select that problem to try with a free account. Perhaps someone can post that hardest puzzle in this thread.
I just wanted to open a discussion of the tactics trainer. It's clearly fun, but I am also wondering if people are not hurting their games by becoming too used to jumping on the first good move they spot.
The old saying "when you see a good move, sit on your hands and look for a better one" seems counter to what the tactics trainer encourages...if you examine a position longer than your average blitz player, your rating will drop even if you make the correct moves.
It seems like an attention-deficit disorder kind of system :).