How long do you spend on a single puzzle? Why?

Lately i've taken a break from chess and recently started studying it again. One of the reasons for me taking a break was that blitz rotted my brain and made me lazy, frustrated, unable to think and play moves only by intuition instead of calculation. I lost around 125 points (rapid) for the first time in my life. 

Before I took a break, I'd usually spend 2,3 or at max 8 minutes on a puzzle, with a correct rate of about 60-65% on a tactics-solving session of at least 2 hours. 

Now I'm doing only a few puzzles (7-15) in 60 to 90 minutes with a much higher correct rate (85% or higher), as I've noticed that the longer I go past that, I start to stop thinking. Because of  that, i'm doing them with the intent of getting it right no matter how long it takes me. And one thing I noticed about this approach is that I often find myself stuck on some puzzles, but after exhausting my options, a mental beam of creativity hits my brain and I start to look for more "creative" or visually irrational and unthinkable moves.

I know that there are benefits of doing a huge quantity of easy puzzles, such as increased pattern recognition, but I think that the harder ones where you spend a lot of time is great as well for other skills, such as the ability to correctly analyse and judge positions, the development of creativity, visualization and focus/concentration.

With that, I'd like to know:

1. Your thoughts;
2. How much time you spend on a single puzzle;
3. If you focus only on blitz, harder puzzles or a mix between both options.

Not more than 10min

I agree, however I still think there's benefits to untimed solving, as timed solving (especially faster times) can limit the calculation and rely more on intuition.

It depends. I spend anywhere from 5 seconds to 5 minutes on any given puzzle. The reason is because I spend the same amount of time on a puzzle move as I would on a move during a game.

So if I'm doing a puzzle and I'm in the regular game frame of mind, I'll take several minutes. And get quite a few right. But if I have a blitz frame of mind I might only take 10 or 20 seconds to try to figure out the puzzle. And get quite a few wrong. But no matter what I'll never spend more time on a puzzle than I would on a position in a real game because that defeats the purpose of trying to learn something from the puzzle. If it takes me an hour to figure out the puzzle, it's something that I would never see or do in a real game so there's no point.

Don't you think it can be beneficial for longer time formats? From my experience (no classical OTB tournaments), spending extra time after exhausting my options leads to considering new candidate moves that I wasn't aware were possible.

Also, I remember way more clearly the games I played on a tournament OTB than I do with all my online chess. So I think that despite focusing only on one position, be it a puzzle or a real game, for a long period of time, it can still have a great effect on learning and memorization.

Probably. But it's just something I would never do. I just play with friends so I'm not serious enough to ever play in a tournament again. So I don't think I would see any benefit from spending so much time trying to figure out a puzzle that has a solution that's so hard to find I'll never apply it.

You seem to still get 70 percent credit no matter how long you take. You lose full credit any time you miss. To me that means take the time. If i did puzzles like bullet then all the minuses wud rate me almost zero haha. But i still take no more then 2 or 3 mins bc after that idk what to look for.

In about 95% to 99% of the puzzles I take less than two minutes, be it wrong or not. This is because I play on thie site only to derive pleasure than actual improvement. In most of those days, I am usually not in the right state of mind to think out the puzzles (and that's why my pass rate is lower than 45%). Since I only touch on blitz and bullet, I would have lost on time in an actual game by thinking out long.

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On some days, however, I felt more energised. I have no idea how and why, but that remaining 1% (ok, a little more than that) of the puzzles warrants more time. In such situations I would sit down and look through and view the moves in motion in my mind.

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For the above, I meant the rated puzzles. For untimed puzzle rushes, on a minority of days, I sit down and think through the moves. On those attempts which I ended up scoring more than 50, I tend to take more time (because I have time to spare for the day).

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How long do you take to complete a puzzle on average?

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(I will consider this a "hit-and-run" post otherwise)

Based on your experiences, why not buy an actual physical chess puzzle book? They have more advanced stuff with deeper ideas for the puzzles than the ones on this site.

I have trained using both methods. Doing long sessions of easier problems seems to have a bigger impact on my game. Usually it isn't these long complex combinations that decide matters. Most of the time it is the short 3-5 move combinations that decide matters, However, I think doing the harder problems and allowing yourself as much time as necessary to solve them also has a point. Sometimes those situations occur.....also It teaches you to never give up on a potential combination. To actually play chess this way isn't for the faint of heart though. First of all you have to trust your intuition that there is something there. Also, you have to be okay with playing under time pressure. If you spend 45 minutes on a single move, which I have done before, then you probably won't have a lot of time for the rest of the game.

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As for how long to spend on a problem. Typically I do a lot of easier problems and do each problem in 5 minutes or less....sometimes as much as 10-15 minutes. When I get really focused on tactics, I also do more complex problems where I am often spending 45 minutes or more on a single problem. For blitz probably concentrating on the simple stuff is better. Doing the simple stuff really well probably goes a long way in blitz.

I've thought about chess tactics books before, but I have a habit of not finishing any of the books I've started.

• The first book I've started reading was "My System" - stopped about 90 pages in because it got too advanced for me;
• The next book was Plan Like a Grandmaster by Suetin, which I'm around 1/4 of the book in (this is my favorite book yet);
• And lastly I've started "100 Endgames You Must Know" by Jesus where I stopped on chapter 5 (rook vs pawn endings)/14.

Because of that, I don't feel too confident about starting another book. During this university's break, I was focusing on Suetin's book, but had to stop because of the end of the year holidays. I pretend to finish it and then move on to the 100 endgames while doing tactics on a online tactics trainer.

depends on the difficulty, if hard then 10-15

45 minutes 21 seconds...

wing chun training requires patience