Tactics Training

According to the State of Chess.com cast that Erik did in March, they were going to convert Chess.com over to a new system Chess.com 2.0.  But that hasn't happened.  They were supposed to do it around June or July and it's now November.  So I don't know what happened.  And I did ask about adding tactical motifs and they said they wanted to wait on that until they switched over to the new system.  So working on it? maybe.  But given the past record, who knows when they will convert to 2.0 and then work on Tactics Trainer.  But I do agree with you a hundred percent.  They nedd to add some new features and fix some old ones.

It sounds like some videos could use improvement as well, in light of what is out there?

What do you mean?  Can you give some examples?

Senchean

It was the blitz style timing that was killing me. Gains of 1,2,3,4,5,6,7, rarely 8,9,10. Losses always 7,8,9,10. At a 51% pass rate I was on a hiding to nothing.

I will chill out and study other material for a while.

A relatively easy improvement to TT would be to break TT in to 2 timing controls. One on blitz style (current) and one at a standard 5 minute time control.

I just spent 10 minutes searching and can't find it. There is another thread that has had some activity this weekend where one person mentioned that he thought that certain aspects of this site had better counterparts, but they weren't all in one place. He mentioned some supposedly great videos and gave a link I think. He may have mentioned CT too, or at least I think it was mentioned in the thread by someone I think. I looked for it and am not seeing it, but it was active within the last 2-3 days max. For the most part, the only videos I have viewed have been on this site (with a couple of minor exceptions). I understand there are free chess videos all over the Internet though, such as on Youtube. I don't know about the quality and organization as compared to the videos on this site, however. I also like some of the articles on this site -- esp. ones where you can move pieces around on a simulated board.

I've had the same problem.  And you are definitely right about the time controls.  That's what I ranted about on page 2 of the thread.  Check that out and you will see my problems with Tactics Trainer

Chicken_Monster

It doesn't suprise me that there are aspects of this site which have better counterparts.  I do think they are working on them, I just don't know when the changes will be made.  I haven't heard anything about it sense March.

As far as videos, I use them the most and I find them to be fantastic.  Now there are certain video authors who are better than others.  My favorite is Melik Khachiyan.  As far as I am concerned there is NO ONE better to explain positional concepts.  And I really like is of Critical Squares to find Tactics over the board.  Ben Finegold is also great, but he hasn't been doing much lately for whatever reason.  Even though I harped on him a little bit because of tactics trainer, but there is no one else I have seen who gives their thought process WHILE they are playing a game.  It's great and really helpful.  And if you pick a topic and search the video section for that topic, you can learn a lot.  Though I will be the first to say, their search functions leave a lot to be desired.

Tactics Trainer is one of the main reasons I bought a premium membership. I feel I've already got my $50 out of it after 9 months of use. Sometimes I do 10 puzzles a day, others 100, but I have noticed it helping me in my thought process during actual games, because the tactics have taught me to look around and think of the possibilities. And if you get a puzzle wrong, you simply click on the solution and figure out where you went wrong, what you missed, etc. You also get a handy graph to show you your progress or decline day by day, month to month, and it also tells you which type of tactical theme you were either best at or worst at (opening, 3 move mates, sacrifices, etc).

Senchean - for warming up and for pattern recognition I use a custom set with a lower rating range, 1100-1300. Also it is often an obvious tactic that gets overlooked in games (see game 6 Carlsen An and for instance) so a good idea to continually work on these too.

Yeah, good luck with that.  Another "coming soon" feature of CC.  

Tactics trainer will help you improve (esspecially in blitz), but don't expect mirracles. It is very good for warming up before the game. You can try free tactics trainer from the URL in my profile which is more oriented towards pattern recognition (compared to chess.com trainer). It also doesn't reduce your rating when you solve the puzzle, because that's too frustrating and some people give up because of it.

I'm much more interested in improving my slow chess. I don't care about blitz right now (not that it isn't fun).

Not so sure if TT really improves your blitz play because I see people here with 2000 plus TT ratings and 1200 blitz. Strikes me as odd.

1200 is the default so it's possible they don't play blitz.  Or they cheat at Tactics Trainer.  Or they suck at blitz.

It's also possible that they are really good at Tactics Trainer, but not so good at basic tactics.  Because there are people who can see 5 move tactics but mis a mate in one, especially at that speed.

You take things too literal. 1200 +/- 50 odd points. Like your own blitz 1199...

1199 is -1 not -50.

People who are 2000 blitz here should have at least 1800 on the TT. If you see only 1200 it's probably because they had only a few attempts. Check the details by clicking on their TT rating. You will see number of attempts and other details. TT will help you in slow games too. Just don't expect mirracles. You first need to be able to get to the positions where you can use your tactics abilities :)

Yes I agree. On the whole TT is unlikely to improve blitz play because the general consensus is that to be a strong blitz player you must first have seen and internalised ideas and patterns slowly, during slow games or when working over annotated games etc, for then to be able to repeat those ideas more quickly. Tactics trainer is therefore not really a good tool for this either as it doesn't allow you to think over ideas for a reasonable amount of time. I think I called this a 'blitz trainer' earlier, but really more accurately it is a 'blitz checker' and those with strong scores, who aren't cheating, have probably already built up a lot of patterns over time and the trainer is merely reflecting that recognition. Once again, I am not saying TT is of no use, just that there is far better tactics training software out there.

You know I have to agree with Benedictine.  I am not in anyway claiming that I am any good at speed chess, especially blitz.  But, I have worked on speed games with 10/10 time controls and I noticed that when I first tried it I was at around 800-900.  But after I became more aquanted with stratigic ideas and patterns along with tactics, I was able to get it up to 1200.  And I there was at least a six months gap in between playing.  So, that understanding really helped.  But at this present time I can't break 1200 in 10/10 at all.  So I'm assuming I don't recognize enough patterns in order to play that fast.

This is also demonstrated in that even Super Grandmasters make huge blunders playing blitz.  There isn't enough time thoroughly evaluate the position so they are simply going off of pattern recognition.  And this is especially true for Bullet Chess.  Many grandmasters think it is a complete waste of time to study a blitz game because of the blunders, and the fact that there isn't enough time to thoroughly study the position so mistakes are made.  Unless, maybe you are looking at the blitz to find the mistakes, figure out why they are mistakes and then avoid them in your own slow games.

In the tactics training over at CT, do they give you human-written annotations with explanations for any of the tatics problems/puzzles? Especially the more complicated ones? Does TT on this site do the same?