Puzzle algorithm change?

This is the extra hard setting. When will things improve?

Maybe this year...

The site has different modes too. You can choose Learning which is unrated and change a number of things; rating ranges, themes (which may not be completely accurate currently), and puzzles you've missed

Regarding rating, that's how it works here too.

On the inflation front, that's one of the goals of the new system, once all changes are implemented.

- Provide a more meaningful rating which correlates more closely to player’s Blitz and Rapid ratings.

There's some discussion about changes to the algorithm on Extra Hard

Chess.com's official statement regarding the puzzle farce:
https://x.com/chesscomsupport/status/1949970540845793609

Thanks for communicating, it is helpful.

I’ve been trying to figure out what that quoted part means. If it means I’m going to be fed a stream of very low rated puzzles, that’s not helpful at all.

A player’s puzzle rating should have almost no correlation to their game rating, they are two very different things. The puzzle rating should be higher and probably much higher. For those that want to improve pattern recognition and ability to handle a difficult one-time static position, puzzles that are significantly harder than a person’s current ability are necessary.

If the puzzles ratings themselves are being adjusted, that’s cool but a change like that shouldn’t affect scoring (other than adjusting for puzzle difficulty versus current puzzle rating). I don’t really see how there was a problem with that previously. For those mad about losing a lot of points on failure, if that puzzle was lower than your puzzle rating, you should be punished and harshly if the rating was much lower.

Thanks again, appreciate the comms.

My understanding is that all puzzles have been re-rated on the backend and their ratings are being used for the selection algorithm. The goal is that member puzzle ratings should align more closely to game ratings and I believe the intent is that ratings of puzzles should eventually be aligned with what that level of player would solve correctly in a similar manner to playing another player of that rating.

Until all parts are in place, it's hard to say if that's going to be the outcome. My personal assumption is there will be some rating differences, depending on chosen difficulty level, but players with 1000 point differences between games and puzzles probably won't be common. Though, I don't know how the backend and rating system might be configured to handle it.

Fix the puzzle algorithm. Too easy.

Thanks again Martin. I’ll be patient and see what rolls out later, I’m not leaving. lol

I do see a bit of a scoring problem in that a player’s puzzle rating should float up and down near their consistently maintained highest puzzle solving ability. Whatever is allowing the rating scoring to soar far above that is a good target for repair. In my opinion, scoring should only allow very minimal gain on puzzles near current skill level and tough punishment when failing lower ones. People might not like that though.

Getting +5 for every 'win' has been around forever. It wasn't a problem, when at least half the puzzles you were fed were challenging. It became a BIG problem when many people (those with higher ratings, at least) started getting fed long strings of puzzles 1000 points lower than their skill level, that we can get right and run our ratings even higher.

If the eventual goal is to drag the puzzle rating distribution into rough alignment with game (e.g., blitz) ratings, then why not put a pause on puzzles for one day, announce that you are going to map the ratings of all existing puzzle players and all existing puzzles downward to resemble the other distribution, and let everyone loose again.
The "mixed situation" that Martin has mentioned is, as days go by, expanding and extending the long tail of high puzzle ratings (only for those who continue to play, vs. the wise people who are letting the bugs get worked out). It seems virtually certain that this is WORSENING the original problem!

Please can someone tell me where the option to change puzzles back to normal is on an android phone. I only use the app, and can't see a tick box or any option for difficulty in settings. Thanks.

5 points for any win was actually introduced a few years ago, rather than being around forever. I agree that it isn't a problem as long as you normally see puzzles linked to your current score. I play around 1500 in 5m chess, but the longer I have, the better I am. My puzzle rating generally runs around 3000, and some take me 20m or more to solve (or fail!), and this suits me fine. The current situation is absolute garbage, and no matter the fact changes are being made, I don't really understand why it has been set like this.

The Difficulty setting is currently only changeable on the website

Actually, version v4.9.1-googleplay-265340 on Android has it.

More > Settings > Puzzles

That might be the beta release, so if you're updated and don't see it, it's coming soon

"a fix" has been pushed ? and it is worst ^^ now puzzles rates are totally random !!!

I think a change was made to Extra Hard and the ranges of ratings for puzzles seem to be wider and I believe closer to the original algorithm. That said, the selection algorithm is still based on the backend rating updates.

Yeah I don't think +5 is a bad thing. The problem is that at the extremities people keep getting the same puzzles, of which they remember the solutions, and hence these 2^16 puzzle ratings have happened. One guy still has a 65540 rating on the live leaderboard.

To fix it, just introduce more puzzles to the set. 500k puzzles at chess.com compared to 2.5M puzzles at lichess. Just use a computer algorithim to make puzzles like they do. They have fine tuned it to be from human games, so its actually quite good now.

The one thing that chess.com does better than lichess in the puzzles section is the ability to replay the puzzle that you have just completed, and also look it up in your history, which is great for improving at the game. So I'm waiting for the puzzles to be fixed, but until then I will use lichess.

Do I understand the chess.com X-Post correctly that all puzzle ratings will be reset with the update? BTW. would be cool to use better ways of communication than X, which nobody uses anymore due to obvious reasons.

It seems like things are slowly coming around. I'm starting to see more puzzles in the 2400-2700 range--a far cry from the slew of 1600-1900 puzzles I've been seeing for the last few weeks.

Still the same problem for me. Just popped in and dealt with another boring low rated puzzle. It used to be interesting and I used to be challenged. It's boring now. And been like this for too long.