Tactics Training Purpose

I regularly run accross complaints in tactic training regarding puzzles with multiple winning lines.  The complaint is typically that their answer that leads to mate in a move or two more is just as winning as an answer that mates quicker.  These people do not understand the purpose of tactics training.  It is not to find the "correct" move.  It is to see the opportunities better.  In addition, the "correct" move will be different depending on the player.  If I see an easy immediate and obvious way to win the Q, that is a more "correct" move for me than mate in four.  My calculation abilities and not good enough to see mate in four with certainty.  I could easily miss something.  I sometimes miss calculate mate in one.  The most "correct" move for me is the move that solidifies a position that is overwhelmingly winning.  But that does not mean that tactics training that illustrates mate in four opportunities are useless for me.  It is useful to me to learn to see those opportunities better even if I would make a different play given the position in a game.

The purpose of tactics training is to help us see the board better.  We can then make the strategic decision in our games regarding the tactic that most reliably leads us to the win.

However, there is a danger in tactics training.  When presented with a position in tactics training, you know there is a tactic.  Usually a winning tactic although sometimes a defensive tactic.  If you see a pin, or en passant, or a fork, or discovered attack, there is a good chance that the tactic relates to it and often if you leap on that opportunity, the tactic unfolds for you without actually seeing it before the first move.  This is dangerous. 

I think tactics training is most useful when played slowly.  Forget about the score.  Do not move until you see the tactic all the way through.  This is the way to improve actual play.

Unless, you play tactics training not to improve actual play, but for the purpose of playing tactics training.  In that case, nothing I said is relevant to you and go ahead and complain.

If a tactics training system is carefully maintained, it will not have many if any abiguities. Therefore, the point WOULD be to find the correct move and the correct move would be the same no matter who is playing.

If you have found any move other than the best move, then you have found the incorrect move.

TT is designed to reward those who recognise and analyse tactics quickly.  Tal is the role model if you want one. 

Your TT rating will go up to a certain point if you analyse perfectly but slowly but after that you will peak because of the timer.  You don't have to be a GM to be good at TT.  Just look at the ratings of the GMs.  They are not on top of the ratings list for TT. 

Most of the puzzles in TT demand the utmost accuracy.  The more accurate you are, the stronger you will be when analysing in real games. 

TT also helps intuition.  Intuition is not perfect but it is a great time saver, even when you need to look for the strongest line.  Tal was accused of playing on intuition but maybe he was one step ahead of everybody.  Also look at some live commentary by Kasparov.  He uses intuition a lot but only because he has a lot of analytical training behind him which has given him such a good eye.  Intuition is the crossover from tactics to strategy.  Capablanca said something alone those lines once.

I disagree with 99% of the spiel in the original post.  If you found how to win the Queen, and mate in 4 is available, you didn't find a good move.  You still give your opponent the opportunity to play on.

Now finding mate in 6 vs mate in 4, who the hell cares?  Both should be deemed correct.  It's the fact that mate is available and you found mate.

That said, the one really retarded thing about the Tactics Trainer is that it encourages guessing.  It should not base score on speed.  You are better off spending 3 minutes to analyze and find the right move (and determine why it works) rather than 30 seconds to guess the right move (an absolutely retarded way of studying), but with the way it's set up, it encourages players not to fully analyze because of the penalty for time.

My point was perhaps not well made, but it is defensible regardless of my qualifications to make it.  That is that the purpose of tactics training is to sharpen the eye to recognize tactics and that can be achieved regardless of whether the "correct" move as defined by tactics training is the "correct" move in an actual game.  The objective is to recognize the tactic.

Once you sharpen your eye to see tactics better, then you can choose the best move from among the tactics you see based on your own abilities.  In my case, I evaluate moves based on my assessment regarding the reliability of getting the win.  For me a four move mate that is complicated would be less appealing that a six move mate that is simple and I can see clearly.  Or a one move Queen kill might be even better for me since I am not a very good player and any combination that involves any complexity has a danger of making a mistake.

Hopefully tactics training will help improve my calculation skills and more complex tactics will become more useful to me as my ability to calculate them accurately improves.

My overall point is that the purpose of tactics training is to sharpen the eye for recognizing tactics.  Whether a 4 move mate is better than a 6 move mate does not matter.  That is how tactics training is set up and it serves its purpose for sharpening the eye to be defined as a 4 move mate is better than a 6 move mate even if in a real game you would define them as equal.  Or from my perspective the better tactic is simpler and more reliable than faster.

As for my failure to improve, perhaps I should quit playing chess and doing tactics on my phone while watching TV. LOL

Well, tactics training and daily puzzles have made me a little too eager to sacrifice material. It always works in the puzzles so why shouldn't it over the board?

I play a lot of Tactics Trainer. I play it mostly for fun.

I don't know that it improves my game very much because as noted earlier in a TT problem I know there is a hidden great move. In a real game I don't know when there is and when there isn't.  

I can't say for sure that playing a lot of TT even improves my Tactics Trainer skill very much. Sometimes I look at my TT rating/score and start playing fast to ty to improve the rating. Sometimes I see that I am missing lots of problems so I slow down and look at my pass rate % number. I am probably a better TT player than I was a year ago, but probably not very much, especially if you consider how much I play.

I can name a lot of things wrong with TT - but I keep playing anyway.

I don't like the fact that many problems have a pass rate below 30%. Since problems are rated and you are supposed to get problems at or near your rating level, why do you get one with a pass rate of 21% or even 5%? A problem with a pass rate of 20% is above my skill level.

I don't like the fact that if I get in a cautious mood, and slow down to make sure I get them right, I lose points on almost every problem even though I got them all right.

Like the others here have mentioned, I don't like the fact that - especially if the puzzle is late in the game where there are not so many pieces on the board and therefore not so many possibilities - you can make a great move that might win the opponents strongest piece and almost for sure win the game, but your move is wrong because it is not the BEST move. Or your forced mate in 4 is wrong because there was a forced mate in 3. As far at TT scoring there is no difference between the worst move possible and the second best move possible. Any move is either perfect or wrong.

But having said all that I do like TT. I play a lot and plan to continue. I write three or four comments every day. Sometimes I complain and sometimes I say something positive. I don't mind other people complaining in the comments because I know TT can be so annoying.

But I play it anyway. I figure as long as I am paying my membership money, I am allowed to complain. 

http://www.chess.com/blog/Till_98/huge-tactics-training

I also play a lot in TT. It's just fun for me. Sometimes my brain starts moving inside my scull because of time pressure. The most annoying thing in TT is very hard puzzles which have low average time. The only way to get over them is to memorize and solve quickly next time so that it demands good memory as well. I also don't see significant impact on my play from solving them so far.