Tactics Trainer Problem Difficulty

Hello!

Since October 24th I have noticed a change in the Tactics Trainer. Whenever I fail to do a problem, the next problem Tactic Trainer gives me is not for my rating level anymore. Solving it successfully is pointless, as I get a minimal positive rating change (+1), whereas if I fail at it, I lose many points (ca. -25).

Here is an excerpt from the last days (starting with 24th Oct) from my tactic trainer performance:

Notice the change between 23d Oct and 24th Oct, when suddenly the problem ratings drop, especially after a "Failed" performance.

Can anyone explain why the system was changed? It doesn't make much sense and punishes failure more than necessary. Is it supposed to artifically make the users' ratings drop? If so, why don't you just do -400 or -500 for every user's rating and every tactical problem and it should be fine.

Thank you for your answer!

Greetings,

Kurai

why is there no answer to this perfectly logical question??

Yeah it's painful when you get lower rated problems, but haven't had it happen to me recently.

They all seem to come in a row though and it's very hard to even maintain your rating.

Hello!

A small update on this problem, which still exists and maybe got even worse?! Look at my recent Tactics Trainer activity:

This has been going on for a month now. As you can see, no matter how well or poorly I performed, the next problem difficulty seems to be random and rather low. And chess.com advertises with an enhanced experience for their Tactics Trainer? What's the reason for this changed behaviour of difficulty? I would appreciate an (official) answer :) Thanks!

Greetings,

Kurai

Take a look here:

http://www.chess.com/tactics/problems

See how few problems there are in your (very high!) range. My guess is that TT is running out of problems to set you that are close to your rating, so they set you some that are higher and some that are lower, with the average coming out about right. 

With all due respect Kurai, and I have nothing but admiration for your skill level and respect for the amount of work it must have taken to achieve it, you're acting as though the TT rating had some meaning.  The only purpose of the TT rating is to ensure that you are presented with a range of problems appropriate for your skill level.  Obsessing over your rating and bemoaning the unfairness of the problem selection process is just silly.  Now go enter some OTB tournaments and become the titled player that you obviously should be.

Hello!

Thanks for the answers! You may be right, Josechu, that TT has run out of problems for me.

@baddogno: The reason why I am complaining is not my rating. The difficulty level (i.e. tactics rating) is too low for the problems presented to me! It does not matter to me which rating I have (tactic trainer rating is inflated as we all know and I stated in post #1). It is nevertheless unsatisfying to see a change of +1 after having solved a problem successfully.

In any case, the "problem" of lower rated (thus easy) tactics still persists, but I've gotten used to it now. Still no official response though, which I find a bit disappointing.

Greetings,

Kurai

Kurai - someone told me elsewhere that beliving in moderators is like believing in Father Christmas. They don't exist. A more optimistic approach is that chess.com is like a co-operative; other members are more likely to help you out than the over-stretched staff. I quite like that, actually.

The issue you mention about only scoring +1 when you have solved successfully is more likely to be because of time than the problem rating. If you haven't looked before, from your TT home page click on <Help> and you will see a list of TT topics, including explanations of how the rating system works.

I'm going through a patch at the moment where I am getting most problems right but taking too long, so I LOSE points! (A lot of points!) 

I consulted the rating distributions of the problems and it seems that a major issue is indeed the lack of problems at very high level.

Repeating the same problems over and over again is certainly inflating the rating, as we use our memory instead of our real tactical skills. Even at my level (1700), I observe a significant repetition rate of about 5 %

And indeed, there are several players with tactical ratings well above 3000, which I suspect may be overestimated (if not, they should consider a professional career in chess ). At such a rating, there are only a few hundred of problems available, and the repatition rate should be near 100 % if these players are solving a lot of problems daily

Thus, I suspect that the rating range of the problems offered to highly skilled players has been broadened to avoid too many repetitions (hypothesis that could be only be confirmed or infirmed by chess.com staff).

Anyway the site should refurbish the problems library so that more challenging problems are offered to the master level.

In the meantime, I suggest that, in rated mode, the player should not be offered problems already solved (or consulted) in the past 30 or 60 days. It implies, for the program, to keep track of the activity for 1-2 month, but I think it feasible.

Did some problems on my android. No idea why I got so low rated problems or why I was allowed to do this many tactics at the same day. Hard to maintain a rating with problems rated 1000 points below.

Same issue here. I had played a LOT of TT, and I believe it ran out of problems in my range.  I kept getting <1100 or >1800 rated puzzles.  One conclusive fix is to go into Settings and reset all your history  You'll start over at 1200, but move up 50+ points at a time.  And then you have the entire database to go through again.

This may be off topic, but tactics trainer seems more challengeing lately. My tactics trainer rating was always around 2600 for several years. Suddenly, I am in the 2300-2400 range for the last 300 problems. Or maybe I am just getting old :(

I am having the same problem, I am not particularly concerned with the rating, the lower rated problems do have a more real world content and they are good for sharpening up.

However I am seeing an endless stream of 1400 problems many of which I have already completed 2 and sometimes 3 times.

My main reason for being on Playchess is the tactics trainer. I would be grateful if the problem could be looked at    

My are almost always original and even 2200 level problems (which used to be much easier than the 2600 variety) don't appear to be any easier. There seems to be a cap on how much I can gain (10 points) but I can lose very large amounts (30-40). About a month ago,the algorithm would repeat problems that I missed (even just a few minutes before), but that has ceased altogether. And sometimes I get a mass of composed problems, mostly endings  at a single time. Maybe the K factor was changed. I don't really care about the rating either, although I was curious as to why my rating crashed suddenly.

I'm thinking of 2 possible effects that could harm your rating

1. Chess.com don't want to give a problem 2000+ rating to start with, so if they added a lot of new hard problems it would especially affect those clearly above 2000 while the problems are on their way up to get their deserved rating.
2. When your very high rated and have done a lot of problems you are starting to run out of problems at that level and will face lower rated problems. Lower rated problems (100-400 points below) is not much easier than the higher rated and the rating difference will make it a lot harder to gain rating points.

All in all you should focus on the tactics and not on your rating anyway, if your getting irritated about loosing a lot of rating points, then maybe that is part of your issue. I think your just having a bad period which everyone get sometimes. I think you'll manage to get back to that level eventually.

I am not concerned about rating just variety, I am seeing a high volume of low grade problems, when I mouse slip or just screw up I drop back into a lower rating and endlessly repeat these problems.

I see no point in continuing like this, I will begin my search for another tactics training site, probably resign my membership as nobody has had the courtesy to answer this thread.

I agree, this has taken all the fun out of tactic trainer, which was the highlight of my chess day.

sorry - what has taken the fun out of tactics trainer? i wasn't able to understand exactly what is making people enjoy it less. that they are getting problems with lower ratings?

Totally agree, couldn't have said it better myself.  It has been since July 24, 2013 that Tactic Trainer started acting haywire for me.  I get 25 problems, and 23-24 of them are rated 200 points lower than my rating.  So even though I'm getting 18-20 problems correct (and getting partial credit on several), I'm losing points or breaking even, all the while frustrated because the problems are 30 second puzzles...  I enjoyed it much more when I was getting difficult puzzles that would require 1-2 minutes of thinking.

ok. noted. will investigate.