Why I hate Tactics Trainer

lot of times the move we make are just as good but are not the ones in the program and we lose points by (failure??)--it would be nice to get graded for the moves we do make.....

Not. If your mouse slips it can't be counted as nothing. Also, you don't realize that Tactics Trainer is about finding the right idea, so a move that has the right idea should suffice. I'm also blocking you because of this.

I like the tatics trainer a lot and disagree with the complaints.  The only thing that i would appreciate is if there was more explanation on the "analysis and source" tab.  I personally rarely am able to use this to see where i went wrong.  Although, there is also the comments section that often help.  Speaking of which, perhaps if you flag something to report a problem you can just leave a comment for the moderator there. 

I also find it hilarious that on the computer version it says "incorrect move, good try!" and on the Iphone app it just says "Wrong!".  I guess I find it easy to laugh at things, though. 

Correct. Would like the computer to also explain why alternatives won't work. The problems can be made more accurate if Deep Rybka 4 Extreme, currently the most powerful engine, analyzed.

edited for proper spelling:

 Windows-7_:

1. How is Tactics Trainer supposed to tell when your mouse slips?
2. Finding the "right idea" might be alrght in positional puzzles, but in tactics problems there is always only one solution. If the "right idea" is fork the knight and bishop with the queen, but there are two ways to do it, should you get credit for picking the way that hangs said queen?
3. Why are you blocking ModernCalvin??!!
4. You don't need to the best engine in the world to confirm a tactic. Any decent chess engine can calculate forced/forcing lines perfectly (assuming it searches to the necessary depth, of course.)

I have a few issues:

a) Sometimes I get the the 1st 2 (eg) of a 3 move combination correct, completely missing the point of the last move, (hence the whole tactic), and end up with a positive score.

Other times I find a mate in 3, missing a mate in 2, and end up with 0. In my mind, I should have gotten some credit for the 2nd example, and none for the 1st.

b) I find it immensely annoying that when a tactic is clearly solved that you have to play out 3 or 4 extra moves while the trainer sacs all it's remaining pieces. On very few occasions these sacs make some difference, but mostly it just adds unnecessary moves.

 ↑

I agree.

The problem with giving credit for a slower mate is the question of how much slower can the mate be.

You know, something I'll always remember... About 25 years years ago IM Mark Levitt was playing on the top board of a major SA tournament in the last round of a swiss. Some spectators set up the position on an analysis board, and found a brilliant Queen sac, winning quickly. Mark didn't play move, but ground down his opponent in another dozen moves or so. When asked whether he considerd the sac, he said: " I wasn't looking for a sac, I already knew how I was going to win" ;)

 I think tactics trainer is great. Not perfect, but a great learning tool.

You are free to block whomever you like of course, but I find it odd that you are blocking moderncalvin because of what he posted.

 Very true. (Also there's that famous IM Donald Byrne quote, "Take his queen, mate him later!")

However, in tactics trainer, the goal is to find the quickest win. ;) 

Not right oinquarki-there can be multiple tactical lines in one position that lead to the same or better result.

also oinquarki, please follow my rule of not misspelling my username.

the only thing TT needs is multiple solutions, this is why I don't use it. but your other points don't make much sense to me

I think this is a fairly big problem - I've seen it a lot. Yes, ideally players should figure out the entire solution before playing their first move, but in practice we don't always - particularly with the timer ticking away. I've seen a number of problems that, for example, begin with a check that will obviously lead to a good position, but then become very complex tactics. Put simply: the rating of a problem needs to be calculated using only entirely correct solutions.

I agree with you, David, that ratings shouldn't be the motivation for doing the tactics trainer, but I think it's wrong to expect us not to pay attention to them - they give you something to aim towards. With this in mind, I don't think the scoring system is perfect. It frustrates me that while points awarded for correct solutions are scaled, getting the first move wrong always gets the maximum penalty. I rarely get +14, but routinely get -14.

My suggestion is to have minus-scores scaled as well - i.e. if you play a wrong first move with a lot of time on the clock, less points are deducted (this may sound like it'll encourage people to play moves too quickly, but minus points are still minus points). When I think I've seen a solution and play it quickly (admittedly to get more points) then I find out it's wrong, minus 14 can be a kick in the teeth - but when I think about a problem for ages and still don't see a solution, minus 14 seems fair. 

What I'm saying is we shouldn't be penalized for attempting to solve the problem quickly - you're the ones who've set it up that way!

I think it's a shame Windows-7 got quite so zealous in his criticism. Tactics trainer isn't perfect and a lot of his points are ones that need to be addressed, but for my part these issues are no more than frustrations - they are outweighed by the benefits of using the trainer.

It appears to me that you are more concerned with ratings and you are mainly upset for minor things like the message you get when you fail a problem. It seems you don't realize that TT is just a training tool and the ratings of the problems have the main purpose of selecting the right problems you will receive next. 

On another hand, do you have an example of a non-tactical problem?

As for boycotting, really, who cares? There are plenty of tactical resources around, so you will eventually find something on your taste. My opinion is that the TT here is very good and I don't have an example of another resource I can say it's clearly better than this one.

I have got the answer completely right against a higher rated puzzle within the time limit and my rating went down.  How annoying is that ?

 There IS a rated mode where the time is ticking down, but you don't have to see the bar!

My thoughts-

1) If you mouseslip, too bad.

2) Problems should be solved before the first move is made, so I like the idea of giving lower credit to a problem is there is a long pause after the first move in a sequence. I also think that if you mess up the combination partially through you shouldn't get much credit for it.

3) I am highly skeptical that there are "deeper" bettter continuations than the one provided as the correct answer in TT.

4) It would be nice if I could insta download the pgn of a problem that I missed so I can collect and study them away from chess.com

5) Alternate length mates should not be punished as long as they are sound.

In general I am happy with TT, it may not be the best tactics choice on the net, but with chess mentor the combination is pretty good.