Too Much of a Fun Thing
Puzzle Streak Considered...not great for improvement
"When you see a good move, look for a better one."
— Emanuel Lasker
"When you see a good move...eh, it's the right one you can stop thinking."
— Lichess Puzzle Streak (Levels 1 - 12)
I was rather excited to discover Puzzle Streak when it was first released. I had long since "graduated' from easy tactical puzzles in the Lichess standard Puzzle system - but was finding myself still losing games after missing painfully obvious mate-in-1 and forks. I really needed to be able to spot these simple tactics - but without any kind of "prompt" (selecting those puzzle categories up-front makes them too easy to solve).
So, Puzzle Streak seemed like the answer to my problems - it would start with those simple tactics I needed, progressing up harder puzzles at my current limit.
After a month of daily Puzzle Streak (and other studies), I decided to try my hand at Arena tournaments again. The result:
As the graph shows, I suffered a number of embarrassing losses, mostly featuring some rather painful blunders.
While Puzzle Streak "trained" me on simple tactics, it also ingrained the rather counterproductive behavior of jumping on the first tactic I spotted. I had learned that, in the first 12 or so rounds of Puzzle Streak, the first tactic is the right one. As opposed to most 1800+ level "Standard" Lichess puzzles - where the first tactic always seems to be red herring for the actual threat possed by the "opponent."
Jumping on the first juicy tactic you spot is a very bad habit!
So...I'm back to normal Puzzles for now. My new approach is do 5 puzzles a day (sometimes a few more), plus review any I got wrong from previous days on my Puzzle Dashboard ("Replay"). I am really striving to get every puzzle right - within a reasonable time limit (10 minutes...?). But, to be honest, I'm still struggling a bit. At least I'm trying and not just blundering until I "get on a roll" (chess doesn't work like that...)
Also: I've signed up for AimChess (succumbing to their barrage of adverts), as they create exercises from my games (which is fantastic) was well as offering a "blunder preventer" feature (which frankly I need more than a little of - to undo some of the bad habits from Too Much Puzzle Streak).
