Frustration with Tactics Progress

I'm not progressing very well with either Tactics Trainer here or the one over at www.chesstempo.com. Checkmates seem to be my biggest tactical weakness.  It takes me too long to see a forced mating sequence or I miss them completely.

The puzzles are random, so I don't know if I should be looking for a pin, fork, skewer, hanging piece or mate, which burns up seconds on the clock when doing rated puzzles. I do believe that the clock is important, as I need to be able to find good chess moves in a reasonable amount of time. I can't take forever when playing Live Chess here or over at ICC.

Should I abandon tactics trainer for a while and focus on checkmate puzzles out of a book, memorizing mating patterns? How many patterns would be a good start to commit to memory - 100, 200, 500, 1000? How many are there really? I have no idea. Or better yet, how many important checkmating patterns are there?

Being a Diamond member, if there are any other services at chess.com that could help, please advise. Thank you.

Like the Nike slogan - Just Do It (tactics puzzles) does not seem to be working right now.

welcome back musik.  have you tried chess mentor?  it is slower and also more talkative.  well, textative.  anyway, i like it.  i don't use it too much because the lessons are unpausable and i can't always set aside the uninterrupted time.  the lessons i have done are good and have improved my pawn endings.  not that my last loss is any indication of that. 

oh, thanks for the encouragement.  actually i am quite proud of that game (even with the loss).  i had a mcuh stronger opponent (who i have only beaten twice) on the ropes for much of it.  just a miscalculation or two in the end cost me.  it really ended some of my frustration i had been feeling. 

Have you solved the 139 checkmate problems that I sent to you?

Thank you for the tips.

I was rated over 1500  at chesstempo until I decided to restrict my time to 5 minutes per tactical problem. I did this with the idea that I don't have 20 minutes on the clock in Live Chess per position. My chesstempo rating dropped by over 100 points with my self imposed time constraint.

I guess it was faulty thinking on my part, applying Dan Hesiman's thoughts on time management (using time wisely) to tactical problems.

I'll go back to taking as much time as needed to see the tactic and score 100%. Thank you.

As always, I advocate doing your tactics training to the fastest time settings you can.

The goal isn't to be able to make sure you can calculate the win when the situation arises on the board, though that is nice too. The goal is to make it so you recognize the patterns of the pieces immediately and instinctively. This will allow you to understand potential tactics on the imaginary board in your mind as you consider different possible moves and responses, and it will let you spend your time considering the most fruitful variations on the board.

Simple example: Being able to notice that your opponent's king and queen are in line for a skewer or pin is helpful. It's more helpful in the long run to instinctively know that the squares along a certain diagonal are poison for the queen, so that you don't even consider it moving there as you think through your lines.

The most simple tactic is a capture. When you are considering moves, you don't have to think "Okay, I don't want to put my queen there because his knight can capture it." You know it instinctively, and that lets you spend your time considering other moves. You want more complicated tactics to work the same way.

No, but I will now. I saved your book from a buried folder and placed it on my computer desktop so I will see it everyday, and I WILL finish the book. It's the most organized and systematic book on checkmates that I have ever seen, and I do have several good books on checkmates.

Checklist of Checkmates with Exercises by James Stripes

I'd be happy to create a buzz about this book. It belongs in stores and libraries everywhere for the serious chess player.  The illustrations, text, structure, scope and sequence...all perfect. I really don't need another book on checkmates after I master your book. It really is that comprehensive.  :)

I appreciate the compliments. There are some known errors in the text, and in at least one of the diagrams. Perhaps when my current history class ends I'll have the time to attend to corrections and begin shopping for a legitimate publisher.

I blogged about one of the errors at http://chessskill.blogspot.com/2008/09/pillsburys-mate.html

The TT on chesstempo.com is quite difficult to progress at in terms of rating. 

Completely agree! IM David Pruess had an awesome post on a thread I started a while ago where he shares a megaton of chess wisdom that touches on this very topic ...link here http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/chess-advice-most-chess-players-dont-like-to-hear?page=2

with a verbatim excerpt on the tactics study portion:

or when i give players in the 1000-1800 range advice on improving their tactics, viz: 10-15 min per day of solving simple tactical puzzles. the goal is to increase your store of basic patterns, not to work on your visualization, deep calculation. remember that is your goal. you are not trying to prove that you can solve every problem. if you don't solve a problem within 1 minute, stop. it's probably a new pattern or you would have gotten it by now. (with private students i'll take the time to demonstrate this to them: show them through examples that they can find a 3-4 move problem in 10 seconds if they know the pattern, and that they can fail to find a mate in 2 for 10 minutes if they don't know the pattern). look at the answer, and now go over the answer 3 more times in your head to help the pattern take hold. your brain can probably take on 2-3 new patterns between sleeping, so you should stop once you've been stumped by 2 or 3 problems (usually will take about 10-15 min). there is no point in doing more than that in one day. and any day you miss, you can't make up for. a semi-random estimate on my part is that you need about 2000 of these patterns to become a master. so you need to do this for 2 years or more.

I'll check the blog. Thanks.

And thanks again for your excellent book on checkmates.

Regarding point one:

What IM David Pruess says about tactics runs contrary to the recommendations over at www.chesstempo.com.

"1) At the start only do Standard.  No Blitz.  Your goal is to get the problems right and improve your calculation, not to do them fast."  - chesstempo

I am confident that David's teaching strategies are sound, so I must not be understanding something about his comments.

With regards to memorization and me, repetition over many days is required for new information to travel from short term memory to long term memory. Once in long term memory, I can say that I know this information, and that it can be retrieved instantly. 

What is 5 x 5?  25.  I knew the answer instantly and can retreive the first few moves in the Ruy Lopez always and instantly because I have played this opening many, many times: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5. The Petroff, easy, 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6. The French - 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5. These tabiyas are stuck in my brain permanently and I enjoy automaticity during live play, up to a certain move. 

In school, teachers strive for automaticity with their students in math facts, which is the ability to do things without occupying the mind with the low-level details required.

The teaching philosophy at chesstempo is similar to mine when teaching children music. I tell my students to first practice a new song at a speed where no mistakes will be made, then speed up the song to the appropriate tempo. If the student practices too fast, she not only is practicing mistakes, but developing bad techniques and many other terrible habits. Also, I've also been told many times to play slow chess first, then gradually build up to faster time controls.

Regarding point two:

Recognizing chess patterns in under one minute falls under the category of automaticity. But I see this as a form of assessment AFTER the patterns have been taught and practiced hundreds of times each. To simply plow through several tactical puzzles on Tactics Trainer before a study of tactical patterns while accepting or expecting mistakes sounds like the chess student is not ready for this chess test using TT.

It seems more logical to first study chess puzzles at a 1200 strength, for example, until they are mastered, and then take a timed test on 1200 strength puzzles (the one minute drill per puzzle) to check for automaticity and accuracy.

By mastering all of the checkmate patterns contained in Ziryab's chess book, my hope is to drastically cut down calculation time it takes to solve each tactical puzzle.

I have a few large chess books that perhaps covers all of the different chess tactics. These books can't be completed in even one year, so maybe they contain the 2000 patterns that David talks about which are required for one to play at a master strength. Spending time in just one of these books should also reduce the time needed to solve tactical problems.

BTW - thanks for all of the helpful comments on my topic.

My last chess thought before bed. Based on IM David Pruess's number of 2000 patterns for master chess strength, and 2 years to learn them, here is some math.  365 days in a year x 2 years = 730 days.  2000 patterns divided by 730 days = 2.74 patterns per day to reach 2000 patterns in 2 years, or, Chess Master Musikamole. :)

If you were to teach me 2.74 patterns in one day, then test me the next day on those patterns while teaching me 2.74 new patterns to be tested on the next day, (to keep on schedule), and expect me to retain all of these ever increasing bits of information over a period of two years, I would say – no way teacher – you are nuts!

This sounds more like cramming for a test, which never works for getting information into long term memory. The information will get dumped.

In this light, the problem I see with Tactics Trainer or the tactics trainer at chesstempo is the lack of repetition of any of the 2000 patterns for even one of them to completely stick for good.  Example: a smothered mate happens about once every blue moon in Tactics Trainer (rated).  That is hardly enough repetition for this mating pattern to stay forever lodged in one's brain and always available for instant recall.