The Positives of Resetting Tactics Trainer

I got this tip a few months ago and it works. Maybe it's purely psychological, but my tactics trainer rating has increased by about 200 points since I started resetting my history on a regular basis.

Improvement Through Reset. Miraculous!

Have you set any TT goals for yourself in the next 3, 6 months? In one year?

Finally! Some of the tactics patterns are looking extremely familiar, and I am seeing them in my games. It really does help, at least at my level of play.

After taking the predictable dip, I was able to finish this training session at 1300. Progress.

SCORE: 93.5%

My Rating: 1309 (+14)
Problem Rating: 1263 (-12)
Avg. Time: 0:43
Attempts: 4550
Pass Rate: 56.4%

I have reset my TT statistics a couple of times. Once to try and get a higher percentage correct and once when I was trying to see how much the ratings formula changed (to see if I could get back up to my high).

It is kind of nice to get some of the lower rated puzzles again; there are themes that I sometimes find there that I just don't seem to see very well. I might have to reset again soon, though, with the Android app, I might not get the best benefit as I tend to do more per day than I used to (and do them too quickly)

Thanks for the post.

At work, I set TT to unrated (700-800) so my elementary band and orchestra students get some practice. I also like practicing on those lower rated puzzles. 

An Android app? Are you practicing with a cell phone? That would be quite handy.

Last, how many puzzles to you average per day? I'm not that fast yet, getting in about 25-50 puzzles, sometimes more, if my brain cells cooperate.

Wow! 

GM RayRobson

3300

1014

74%

21 hours ago

Boy wonder is in second place on our TT leaderboard.

Just think of how easy chess would be for us if we had that strong of a tactical vision. Dang!

First place goes to someone I don't know.

tinman_k_hornet

3564

25101

48%

2 months ago

Yeah, I use the Chess.com Android app to do the tactics here in my downtime. It's extremely useful if I have a few minutes waiting for something/someone for me to fire it up and do a few tactics.

As to how many I average? I would say 15-20, depending on the day. Though, I also stop if I find myself missing more than I get or start getting a downward slump in my rating. I take that as a sign that I'm not really in a tactical mindset and need to take a little break. I'm actually in a bit of a slump right now and have shed 200 points over the past week. Might be the perfect time to reset.

Absolutely. Resetting sounds perfect.

If you reset, does that mean that you're going to be getting some of the same positions that you've had in the past, i.e. before the reset? If so, this might explain why your rating improves after a reset.

Yes, you probably will get some tactics you have had before but I don't think the number will be any higher than what you already get if you have a pretty steady range of ratings. In fact, many of your initial tactics are likely to be ones you haven't seen before, with the exception of people that flucuate near the starting rating anyway.

I get a few here and there that I recognize that I have done in the past already.

Thanks for the response. I haven't used the TT here much so I'm fairly ignorant of it. Another site's TT has a feature whereby you can't get much of a rating boost by doing a problem that it had given you before fairly recently, and I wondered if the TT here has a similar feature. Sounds like it doesn't - which is good!

I went ahead and did it. The only downside was the urge to try and get my rating back to where it was

I did 80 in about 35 minutes total and will probably do a few more this evening during some downtime. I'm a little over where I was when I reset and well within my range still. My % correct is a bunch better, for a short time at least.

Chesstempo.com is much better.

Agree.

Chess Tempo is the best internet site for tactics training, no doubt about it. I have a gold membership to that site. For 35 dollars per year, I get everything the site has to offer. As a beginner, I need tons of tactics training.

Before talking about Chess Tempo, I will always do tactics here as well because chess.com gives me excellent rating feedback which matches my Live Chess performane. The two numbers are very close, with the tactics trainer rating being about 100 points higher. Also, I really like the crisp interface, even more than the one at Chess Tempo, along with an excellent selection of problems. It is high quality stuff, for what it does offer.

A few things that I like about Chess Tempo. Keep in mind - this site is all about tactics training - so it is not a comprehensive chess site like chess.com, but when it comes to tactics, it comes in first place.

1. The ability to make custom problem sets, i.e., tactics involving pins only, forks only, mate in 2 only...the possibilities are huge. Chess.com does not have a custom problem feature, but I think I heard that they will have one someday.

2. A user defined chess engine. This enables me to go to their analysis board and run an engine, like Rybka or Houdini, when I can't figure out the tactic, even after the answer is given. You will see comments in chess.com where people won't get the tactic, and another user will explain the reason behind the tactic. That's one way to do it, but I prefer to run a chess engine and experiment with different continuations to help me to understand the tactic.

3. Chess Tempo has three basic rated tactics programs. Chess.com has one. In Chess Tempo there is Blitz, Standard and Endgame. The chess.com tactics are set to blitz speed. That is good for testing one's pattern recognition, however, the standard rated tactics are a very nice feature, where you will spend more time on each problem, much like a critical point in a chess game.

My Chess Tempo blitz tactics rating is 1303. My Chess Tempo standard tactics rating is 1529. My Chess Tempo endgame theory rating is 1454.

4. The progress report is highly detailed, where you can quickly spot your personal tactical strengths and weaknesses.

Example:

I agree chesstempo.com is focused on one thing and they do it very well. Chess.com is focused on community, and they do that very well, but their individual components aren't as good as sites more singularly focused.

Well done.

I started something new with the Chess.com Tactics Trainer. At Chess Tempo, ALL of my problems are saved. At chess.com - one problem is erased for each one I do after about 25 problems. This is something that they could fix. I mean, they save my Live Chess and Turn-Based games.

So, this is my new work around so that I can repeat the problems that I want to repeat. I simply record the Problem ID in Word, and will do those problems over and over again until they stick, especially the ones that I fail.

I need to remember this: chess improvement is mostly about the identification of mistakes, and getting rid of those mistakes, from a really stupid pawn push one makes in the opening that costs a tempo for nothing, to a basic mate that is missed.

IM Danny Rensch said this, and I paraphrase - when reviewing one of your games, find the first moment where the game leaves opening theory, and fix your first bad move.

I need to take writing lessons from you. I am far too wordy. Well said!

Please, for those who are confused by my many words, I want to say this: Chess.com is my favorite site - the one and only chess site that I call home, the first chess site that I log on to. They figured out an absolutely brilliant combination of this and that.

chesstempo.com also has a much superior game explorer. Their version keeps track of all variations that you've explored, and you can download that as a PGN file; it lets you filter by rating and year, among other things, so you can view just 2500+ GM games from only the last 5 years if you want. chesstempo also doesn't have the many little bugs and usability problems that chess.com has, like not making the move clickable when there is only 1 game (like 1...Nh6 on this page) in that line. And on top of that, they actually fix bugs when you report them.

thanks for letting me know about chesstempo if there are any other sites that deal strongly with tatics could someone please let me know. Also if its not as good as this site or better im not interested. Thanks

 I reset it too. I just to do it to see how high I can get without making an error in the least amount of attempts. also because of the partial points system, many many problems on here are underrated, you have problems that have a pass rate of 10%, 3000 attempts, and are rated 1300 or something. this can catch you off guard when you reset, because you are expecting to just get really straight foward pins, forks etc for the first 5 problems or so and then it's this really strange, not so straight foward stalemate thing that is hard to see when you trying to go really fast. this is interesting about chesstempo, how they have different modes, blitz, standard etc. I always suspected the tactics trainer on here was geared towards blitzing.