Tactics Training

How good is the tactics trainer on this site for improving chess tactics? Should I be using something else instead, and if so, specifically why? I hear mention of other resources, but no one explains why the others are better. Is it just that they are free?

As you can see, I don't have premium membership, so I don't know, but I saw someone say there are puzzles where you simply take a hanging piece.  Those "puzzles" are a waste of time IMO.  However it may be only very low rated problems, and it wouldn't be an issue for most people (?)

Also the puzzles are timed on chess.com... which has its uses sure, but I prefer untimed puzzles so there's no pressure to guess.

The "other resource" is probably chesstempo.com, which is great, but I also have books and an old version CT-ART.  I like books because they're available anywhere, but the digital puzzles (both on my computer and online) are more organized (you can review missed problems easily) and for quickly checking variations (e.g. with an engine).

I like chesstempo.com. You can play in standard mode where you get rewarded for completing the puzzle regardless of time. I also find the comments much more useful than here at chess.com. The commments are voted up and down by the users. Hence, the top comments revolve around useful stuff such as why certain lines do not work. These are often illustrated with a board, so you can play out the moves. This is not something you see here.

Pls increase the number of daily puzzle for free member.

I've improved my tactics a LOT using tactics trainer, though I do have frustrations with it

• They should allow you to do motif training, work on forks, pins etc.
• Being able to customize a set would be nice.
• A person shouldn't lose points for not solving the problem in time.
• A non timed rating would be nice as well.

With that said, I have noticed a high improvement in my tactical ability over the board because of tactics trainer.  But I use it differently based on Dan Heisman's advice on tacts.  He says that tactical motifs should be memorized just like a person does with the ABCs or multiplication tables.  This way you can solve problems much faster over the board.  How do you do this with tactics trainer?

Go into settings and set Training Mode to Unrated.  This means you can solve the problems, but you won't get a rating or points for them.  Setting Training Mode to Unrated will bring up the Rating Range setting.  Set this to 400-500.  This is the lowest you can go and they have to be 100 points apart.  Do these problems every day for at least a half an hour for a week.  These problems will be really easy, and boring but do them until you don't get ANY of them wrong and can solve them in 15 sec. or less.  When you can do this, set the Rating Range to 500-600 and repeat.  Continue doing this until you get to 1000 and then go to settings and set Training Mode to Rated and see how well you do.  keep doing this untill you get stuck, then start over, go back to unrated and go 1100.

I did this and my tactics have improved EXPONENTIALLY.  It doesn't just help with finding my tactics but I'm able to avoid my opponents as well.  My goal is to get my tactics rating to 1500.  I can get to 1392.  But I keep falling back down.

As far as sources outside of Tactics Trainer, I am a big fan of chesstactics.org  It's a free website that goes over how to find tactics for all of the basic motifs, Forks, Discoveries, Pins, Skewers, Removal of the Guard, and Mates.  It talks about tactics in plain language, and gives you a through process to help you find the answer to those kinds of problems.

As far as chesstempo.  I don't use the site because I don't want to pay for it.  the premium membership is anywhere from $20-$35 a year.  It's not a lot but considering I already have a Chess.com membership I don't want to add more.  But as far as the site itself, its list of features says it does everything I would look for in a site or program.

Hope this helps.

What comments? I didn't notice comments on the chess.com tactics trainer?

What tactics books are recommended and for what rating levels?

I have Chess Tactics for Students by Bain. A recommendation (one of many) of Dan Heisman.

The idea of turning the settings to unrated and playing between two ratings thresholds is an idea that Dan stole from the Soviets -- (he told me this). I think it's a great idea, although I haven't tried it yet.

So far I don't see a compelling reason to switch to chesstempo.com.

If you scroll down after you solve a problem, but before you move to the next you will see people's comments about the tactic in question.  You can also use Analysis board to see all of the annotation about the tactic and question.

As far as books Predators at the Chess Board is good which has everything from Chesstactics.org in them.  Also Winning Chess Tactics by Yasser Seirawan is good as well.

How is Chess Tactics for Students?

I haven't started it yet. On another book.

However, Dan has a special way he recommends studying the book. It is outlined here (search for "Bain"):

http://home.comcast.net/~danheisman/Events_Books/General_Book_Guide.htm

Begin with Susan Polgar's Chess Tactics for Champions and then move on to CT-Art software.  Supplement with Tactics Trainer or chesstempo.com. 

That Polgar book is on my short list already. Thanks.

I think they are great, I'll try 10 or more a day.

I like the study recommendations you give in your group. I saved a copy and plan to follow it to some extent.

Besides books and puzzles, another thing you can do is run your games through a chess engine, I like to use Arena which is free: http://www.playwitharena.com/

Going thru the moves of the game on a chess engine will show you if any tactical moves were missed by you or your opponent. These tactical situations tend to get etched in your memory once you see they were missed!

How it works is the engine says who is better or worse based on the pawn/pieces point scale and positional considerations. For example if one side is up .32 the position is fairly even (anything under 1 really). But if someone makes a bad move and hangs a knight for example, the engine will analyze it as -3 for the blundering side and +3 for the other side. It also shows you which moves the engine is considering. So this makes it easy to catch tactical blunders or missed opportunites.

All you have to do to use Arena once you download it, is also download your game's PGN file, which will email you the file from Chess.com Then just download the file on the email, and your computer will ask you which program to open this file with. Just select Arena as your default open with option. Now you can download any game PGN you want and analyze it.

I have been a fairly big user of tactics trainer on here with 13,000+ rated tactics and probably about half that again in unrated mode (used in a similar way as mentioned by Senchan) and it has helped me with my tactical vision no doubts. However, in the last few months I have switched to Chesstempo which I feel is vastly superior and I wish I had done this sooner.

Chesstempo is just better quality full stop. It's got better quality problems  all coming from master level games. It's got better analysis features such as more detailed alternative lines, better analysis board, computer analysis function and info to delve into which were the most popular incorrect moves. Most problems generally have some interesting and helpful comments at the end of every puzzle - as opposed to mostly trash talk on here - 'first' 'easy' etc. All of these features allow you to do a mini sort of 'post mortem' at the end of each problem if you so wish.

You can also design your own custom sets to work on specific areas of tactics which can be very helpful. For example you can examine a weak area (available to view in the stats) and train on this if you want. Or you might want to work on defensive tactics (seeing as most tactics in general problems are 99% attacking in nature?!) But for me it is the choice of modes - blitz, standard and mixed which is a fundamental benefit which is painfully lacking on the tactics trainer on here. For me the mixed mode on CT is an absolute gem, it is so good I don't really want to share it.

For me the main flaw with the tactics trainer on here lies in the awful timer system which I believe can be actually counter-productive to chess improvement. What the tactics trainer is on here is a blitz trainer, in that the scoring system awards speed over calculation and does nothing to train a correct chess thought process as you scramble to solve a mate in 7 position in 26 seconds or are awarded points for 'partially correct' i.e. plain 'wrong' moves. For the average chess player this system is just awful.

So I would definitely recommend CT over TT on here, without question if you are looking for quality over pulp. Also don't forget Chesstempo is not just a tactics trainer there are many other features to it such as the endgame puzzles, GTM and the chess database and other features.

If you do use tactics trainer then the unrated mode is probably the best option and then mainly in setting the problems between two lower margins in order to train over basic tactics and patterns, albeit from a mishmash of games. Though if you want to do this you would be better off using chesstempo standard and dropping the rating there as then you can also keep a record of your tactics, whereas unrated mode here you can't. (By the way, setting the trainer higher in order to look for more challenging tactics, say 2000-2200, does not really work due to the blitzy nature of the trainer. For example you might find a simple hanging piece problem but it is rated so high because the average time solve is 6 seconds or something).

My marks out of 10 for TT and CT:

Tactics trainer 2/10

Chess tempo 9/10

Someone above said they dont use chesstempo.com because of the price.  Thats silly, the free membership is incredibly generous.  Sure, they hold back some of the truly advanced features, like the ability to design your own problem sets and advanced statistical tracking.  Those features ARE worth money, but the free features are still terrific.  

You apparently didn't read my original post all the way or have some sort of memory problem.  Considering that I am already paying 99 dollars a year for Chess.com,  I don't want to up it to $119.  I don't have that kind of money to burn.  And, as far as tactics, chess tempo only has one feature I want, the creation of problem sets, which is behind a pay wall.  And that one feature is NOT worth the money.  The only thing in tactics that Chess Tempo offers for a free user is standard and blitz problem solving.  So no, it's not worth it.  And being concerned about money isn't silly.  I also said in my post that if I didn't have chess.com Chess Tempo would be perfectly fine, and cheaper actually.

Our OP also has a Diamond Membership and you get most of the tactical features on Chess Tempo with Tatics Trainer.  So if the OP wants to to shell out more money a year he's welcome, but he won't get much more at without paying for it.

So the question to you is, Did you read the whole post?  If you didn't why not?  And if you did, why didn't you take into consideration the statement, 

"... the premium membership is anywhere from $20-$35 a year.  It's not a lot but considering I already have a Chess.com membership I don't want to add more.  But as far as the site itself, its list of features says it does everything I would look for in a site or program."

Did you over look it? Forget about it?  Did you get so bent out of shape of the statement about not paying for it that you forgot or didn't care about the rest of it?  Or is it because you are not trained in how to reply to a statement as it is written?  I genuinely want to know why when posting here and quoting my post you didn't take into account the totality of what I said?  Because this is happening a lot accross all of American life where people simply DO NOT take into account what a person actually says.  They just cherry pick a statement, taking only what they agree or disagree with and ignore the rest.

@Benedictine : I'm definitely keeping my diamond membership on this site...I love this site. Are you recommending a paid membership to CT?

Senchean: I just read your previous post. Why do I need to create problem sets. Let me rephrase because "need" is a strong word. What would be the advantage to that (assuming it were free). I'm not sure I even fully understand what creating a problem set means.

CM: Yes I am recommending $35 for CT for the year. Problem sets are what I mentioned as custom sets see above. It amazes me that people are happy to pay $99 for chess.com but nothing for CT when CT is amazing value. 

Creating Problem Sets are another way of saying Motifs.  It gives you the ability to practice certain types of tactics such as pins, skewers, etc.  Not it may do more than that, and it seems like it does, but practicing motifs is the main use for them.  The reason you want to practice them is because it allows you to work on the specific tactic types you have trouble with.  Say you are having trouble with knight forks.  well you could create a set of problems focusing on knight forks, or even knight forks 3-4 moves away.  This is something tactics trainer doesn't do.  I wished to christ it did.  And during the State of Chess.com podcast earlier this year, Erik said they would be adding the ability to, but there has been no changes so far. so who knows.

as far as Chess Tempo, it offers a lot, but in order to get the really good stuff, you have to pay for it.  It's not that much over all, but if you are already paying for Chess.com you might now want to add more money to your annual expense.  Which I'm assuming is the case because you asked if any of them were free in your OP.  But, for what it offers, the cost doesn't seem that bad.  On the other hand, you can get the tactic set training out of Chess Tactics for Students by memorizing them over and over as Heisman says.  You can also use Chesstactics.org to do the same thing.

Does this answer your question?