Tactics Training, how much does it help?

Somehow I'm not so sure about this. If I play online chess, I play less games, and frequently go from one game to another, like in a simul, sometimes I'll make a mistake simply because I forgot about the position/plan. Plus I play significantly less games, learning less lessons.

In Blitz or 1-minute chess, I make mistakes more often, but I can recognize the patterns that led to those mistakes. I can play tons of games, and in post-morten analysis of each I can see what mistakes I did (and a lot of them). I can understand what I could have done to win that game. Plus I'd have learned a lot of lessons because I've played so many games.

That was my experience of online CC chess, that I could forget my previous analysis and make a mistake more easily, even when leaving notes -- but I don't think this is what estragon meant, slow games meaning at least 15 minutes per side live games.

If you're hungry to absorb patterns, try 5 minute chess at least, also in the way of patterns really consider playing over 10 GM games really quickly from an opening or player you like, it's free and easy just go to chessgames.com.  Even though you're doing a quick play over don't just click the next move over and over, if you can't go slow enough to look at the position after each move consider playing it out on a real board (which is what I like to do) because at the very least having to physically move the pieces will slow you down.

1 minute chess is "all the tactics you can see on your opponent's time" the only thing you do on your time is move -- and all blitz chess in general teaches you to find OK moves very quickly, cut off all analysis and just play them -- which makes improvement come very slowly.  All that's to say there are much better ways to get patterns than 1 minute chess.

Yeah, longer games are surely better for a player's development.  Bullet games don't really exercise a player's full thinking technique, and they can cause some really bad habits.

This affects me at times — if I've been playing too much bullet then I rush even in slow games.  My thinking technique becomes, "It's my move.  Quick!  Find something!"  And then of course I blunder.

By the way, after looking at your three examples, eXecute, I think that part of the problem is that you're not considering your opponent's replies before making your move.

Thanks for the input, orange. I think maybe longer games may help.

What I've always found is, at 5 minute chess 60% of my losses are due to time. Because I begin to think seriously and make mistakes. With 1 minute chess I don't usually lose on time, but I lose to blunders.With 10 minute chess, most of my losses are due to simply being outplayed, not really time problems.

So I think somewhere between 10-20 minute games would be optimal for me.

I never said I was learning much from bullet games, just from the post-mortem analysis. To learn I usually play 5-minute, but that too is really fast. So I agree, I should increase time.

Arbitrary, I agree, sometimes it's hard to adjust after playing fast 1 minute games.

I do have somewhat of a bad habit of making a move without sometimes considering the opponents best response.

When I look for good tactics on chesstempo standard, it takes me 2-5 minutes to make the appropriate moves because I'm thinking so deep.

This is why I'm playing bullet chess, to improve my time-pressure problems and my speed at thinking (but I guess that's impossible).

I think that tactic trainer and chesstempo are too offence-oriented... there are a lot of patterns regarding how to gain a piece or how to checkmate... and much less regarding how to avoid the checkmate or anyway how to block the attack of the opponent.

eXecute i was in your exact situation. then i read jeremy silmans reassess your chess and it all opened up for me. the book explains the basic of opening, endgames and every part of the middlegame. but dont get me wrong, this is no "beginnerstuff" to easy for you. this is tough stuff and you will struggle with it if you are below 2000 in rating. but the reward will be just as much:) and he even recommend books to read when you are done, how to study tactics and combinations and lots of nice stuff. and silmans books are enjoyable books that are fun to the end

Reassess your chess might be a good one. But shouldn't I wait for the 4th edition to come out? (Supposedly, I heard there is one, the last edition was 1997 so I'd assume it would be out soon enough right?)

i thougth about that myself. but it was supposed to come out in februar 2010. its still not out and now i hear it comes in june. i heard that the 4th is really good and the final edition, maybe you can read jeremy silmans amateurs mind while you wait? depend how much money you want to use on chess of course. through that book he plays against amateur players and he is starting them in winning positions but they lose all of them. he carefully explain the thoughprocesses they should have used, the goal of the book is to eliminate amateurmistakes which by him is probably anyone under master:) many of the mistakes are really obvious, but not before he points it out and explains. it was my first chessbook and it was so entertaining i read it in two days

That might be a good idea tiger. I also bought "Concise Chess Middlegames" by McDonald, and Zurich 1953 by GM Bronstein (Going over the games one by one, although I think maybe this book was intended for masters).

I'll definitely look into the amateur's mind one, although most of my big mistakes are in blitz, I think maybe it might help me stop making such mistakes even in fast games.

Tactics trainer you can easily make the first move without seeing what the final result will be and discover more as you add moves. You don't have that sort of chance in a real game.

How long have you been playing?

I learned the game as a child, but only seriously played a lot of blitz games since December 2009 (though I did have a few months around march 2009 where I played a ton of games). So, I'd say I am still fairly new, but not a total beginner, intermediate 1300-1700 range.

My experience consists of blundering away a couple of games on here. LOL.

You should play a lot more games maybe, that might help.

Doing tactics trainer will help your game alot. Over the table you have to beable to spot tactical patterns fairly quick, there just isn't enough time to spend searching for tactical traps. The whole point of doing tactics trainer is so you don't waste all you time looking for a winning tactic, if it's there you will see it right away. In my experience doing tactical puzzles and in games, If I don't see some tactic within the first the first 1-2mins of looking at a position I generally don't find it. 

wow... how is my rating on here like 2200 tactics (havent been on tt since about october, and that was when i had rating of 1600

chesstempo i am hovering around 1700 as of february

@David, that's pretty impressive. And tactics trainer is not easy, because they give you so few seconds to get a problem right, if you get attached to one plan in your train of thought you might make the wrong move. To top it off, when you get something wrong you lose 16-17 points, when you get something right, usually the most you get is 10-12 points (on rare occasions full 16). And if you get 1-2 moves right, but you miss the last move or something, you still lose points.

So it's pretty difficult. When it's not timed you have more time to think through everything.

I don't think turn based rating has anything to do with tactics trainer rating. Just look at me, I only have 1700-1800 TT rating.

I think that TT rating and CT rating might not make a big difference in terms of level of play. But I think the more problems you do, the better you become. Even if rating is relatively the same. The number of problems you do might also help. I've done 2046 problems already.

Intresting idea. What kind of time controls did you play in these games?