Tactics Trainer

i am pretty sure there is, in the settings, a way to hide the timer but still have rated problems. 

The only real way of measuring our tactical strength is OTB tourneys. I say forego all complaints, unplug from the matrix, and join your local chess federation. The adrenaline rush cannot be duplicated by any computer opponent.

how long were you plugged into the matrix to find a 6 month old post in order to tell us to unplug? 

After reading an article by Dan Heisman where he sites advice offered by IM D. Preuss I have changed my TT philosophy. I now leave the timer on but I try not to worry about it. The timer is just another tool to help TT determine the problem level it should be throwing at you.

D. Preuss's advice can be summarized as:

1. Try to do some tactics problems every day, solve problems until you have failed at least three (this usually takes the average person 15 to 30 minutes). Your main goal while using TT should be to develop your pattern recognition. Anymore training than this will probably be wasted as the brain can only absorb so many patterns in a day.

2. Do your best to never skip a day of Tactics Training. Missing a day and then doing 1 hour of training the next day will not make up for it.

3. After failing a problem - go over the problem again at least 3 times to hammer it into you memory. Remember the problems you fail are the important ones!!! Go over them again and again until you can recognize them instantly. This is the real goal of TT, to develop your pattern recognition.

I begin every session of TT by going over my recently missed problems, this warms me up and once again hammer the missed ones into my memory. I have also started recording my missed problems in a seperate file (since Chess.com only keeps your most recent ones), I keep a months worth of missed problems in each file and I try to go over them every so often.

I have followed this advice as closely as possible for about 5 months now and my Tactics Trainer rating has gone up almost 250 points. More importantly I am seeing alot more tactics in my games, both offensively and defensively!

Excellent post kypatzer, thank you for sharing :)

I feel like the system on 365 Chess is better there is a non-timed one and a timed one. Both of them have ratings.