> Today I want to look at solving tactical puzzles and break down what fundamental skills this activity enhances in us. Without understanding this you might very well be spending hours working on your chess, only to see little return.
Well new serious tone, but still hitting the right nails somehow. Good objective. I will come back. for that. And that question in general. I think lichess might already have made some steps toward one way to approaching that question. And you acknowledge that there is some chess beyond the mere number or idea of rating = strength. That it can be discerned and even talked about so we can help each other not letting our big stupid brain rot in the fog, but help it learn with the other less stupid but so slow to figure out things that have been over studied as the only brain there was in chess. But that brain is the one we also talk with. So thanks for making a frontal question of it.
Well new serious tone, but still hitting the right nails somehow. Good objective. I will come back. for that. And that question in general. I think lichess might already have made some steps toward one way to approaching that question. And you acknowledge that there is some chess beyond the mere number or idea of rating = strength. That it can be discerned and even talked about so we can help each other not letting our big stupid brain rot in the fog, but help it learn with the other less stupid but so slow to figure out things that have been over studied as the only brain there was in chess. But that brain is the one we also talk with. So thanks for making a frontal question of it.
Thanks for the blog post! One question about:
> So in this post I’m going to explore why some people doing large volumes of puzzles don’t seem to be improving and outline how to get the most from the time you invest.
In those cases, are your students' puzzle scores going up, just not their overall chess strength? Or are both stagnating despite the high volume of puzzles?
I'm used to thinking of puzzle score as a decent proxy for tactical ability, and I would also think better tactical ability would lead to some increase in chess strength.
> So in this post I’m going to explore why some people doing large volumes of puzzles don’t seem to be improving and outline how to get the most from the time you invest.
In those cases, are your students' puzzle scores going up, just not their overall chess strength? Or are both stagnating despite the high volume of puzzles?
I'm used to thinking of puzzle score as a decent proxy for tactical ability, and I would also think better tactical ability would lead to some increase in chess strength.
Very nice article! Much more based than most articles on chess improvement from other bloggers on lichess!
Thank you!
Thank you!
<Comment deleted by user>
Puzzles are about tactical skills training, but the rating average of all of them might not be some abstract measure of a one dimension tactical skill (skills= skill set of skills) (or vice-versa if we try to stop thinking in one 1d of strength, the strength multi-variate components "decomposition", mouthful, but maybe we need such words to become palatable, like space, or strength, or accuracy... other buzzwords we wield as if we knew what they meant to everyone, and that being the same).
Chess games involve many elements of some big skill set, and we might CERN or encompass a subset of them as being of "tactical" nature, but none of those scope would have a one measure of "strength". Unless you declare it so, and I guess we have with game based ratings.. While there too it is a poor learning problem tool, even so in that subset (tactical skill set), as I think we all would agree that there is not one tactical pattern (and that tactical pattern elements themselves might be legos for other tactical patterns, well nobody really made definition of what is a chess pattern, instead more words are used to evoke things that might depend on patterns, while that might be so, once patterns of the minimal atomic kind could be defined, I think prudence in words is warranted, and yet, that is our chains).
I think in puzzles both the puzzle maker and the puzzled (that is the human player) have more control over the learning problem or training about it. A full game does not have that.. all the duration of the game one is stuck tightly with the choices made in a long serquence of them.. and there is no changing the player on the other side just to test something about our own thinking ways. I made another longish post. about what i mean by using the puzzle many ratings (themes, are likely to be a first step toward some consistent enough prototype of skillset, however half implemented it might be, :). But here I wanted to adress the prvious post wondering about the relations between ratings. I suggest the way to use puzzles many ratings for one person, is just as experimental variables and measures (in a multivariate design of experiment). The wording is for less rambling. trade off. So play with your ratings, don't aim at them. They are tangent to the purpose of that kind of training. plenty caveats to what I say, of course.
Note: CERN does tango with disCERN.
Chess games involve many elements of some big skill set, and we might CERN or encompass a subset of them as being of "tactical" nature, but none of those scope would have a one measure of "strength". Unless you declare it so, and I guess we have with game based ratings.. While there too it is a poor learning problem tool, even so in that subset (tactical skill set), as I think we all would agree that there is not one tactical pattern (and that tactical pattern elements themselves might be legos for other tactical patterns, well nobody really made definition of what is a chess pattern, instead more words are used to evoke things that might depend on patterns, while that might be so, once patterns of the minimal atomic kind could be defined, I think prudence in words is warranted, and yet, that is our chains).
I think in puzzles both the puzzle maker and the puzzled (that is the human player) have more control over the learning problem or training about it. A full game does not have that.. all the duration of the game one is stuck tightly with the choices made in a long serquence of them.. and there is no changing the player on the other side just to test something about our own thinking ways. I made another longish post. about what i mean by using the puzzle many ratings (themes, are likely to be a first step toward some consistent enough prototype of skillset, however half implemented it might be, :). But here I wanted to adress the prvious post wondering about the relations between ratings. I suggest the way to use puzzles many ratings for one person, is just as experimental variables and measures (in a multivariate design of experiment). The wording is for less rambling. trade off. So play with your ratings, don't aim at them. They are tangent to the purpose of that kind of training. plenty caveats to what I say, of course.
Note: CERN does tango with disCERN.
> And then we can apply another overused chess quote: Tactics flow from a superior position. Or to use my own more eloquent quote: Tactics flow against you when your position is shite.
ahh. now I recognize the storyteller resurging. Is this a turning point? to be continued (my reading I mean).
ahh. now I recognize the storyteller resurging. Is this a turning point? to be continued (my reading I mean).
@Graque said in #3:
> Thanks for the blog post! One question about:
>
>
>
> In those cases, are your students' puzzle scores going up, just not their overall chess strength? Or are both stagnating despite the high volume of puzzles?
>
> I'm used to thinking of puzzle score as a decent proxy for tactical ability, and I would also think better tactical ability would lead to some increase in chess strength.
I think puzzle rating can be a good indicator of tactical strength if you are doing every puzzle the exact same way. But in reality a lot of people mix things up.
But in my admitedly limited data, stagnation in classical chess rating and puzzle solving strength are linked. The main problem is picking puzzles that are too hard. Then no new patterns are being learned and very little calculation is being done either. Just a lot of head scratching.
Oddly (and something I might wirte about one day) the only decernable link I've seen between someone's classical chess rating and the way they approach puzzles is not how far they can look or how clear that image is, but how far they are willing to look. For example a lot of new players can't solve a mate-in-2 because the first move involves sacrificing a queen and that it not something they can look beyond. "Well then I just lose my queen" and they start looking elsewhere.
> Thanks for the blog post! One question about:
>
>
>
> In those cases, are your students' puzzle scores going up, just not their overall chess strength? Or are both stagnating despite the high volume of puzzles?
>
> I'm used to thinking of puzzle score as a decent proxy for tactical ability, and I would also think better tactical ability would lead to some increase in chess strength.
I think puzzle rating can be a good indicator of tactical strength if you are doing every puzzle the exact same way. But in reality a lot of people mix things up.
But in my admitedly limited data, stagnation in classical chess rating and puzzle solving strength are linked. The main problem is picking puzzles that are too hard. Then no new patterns are being learned and very little calculation is being done either. Just a lot of head scratching.
Oddly (and something I might wirte about one day) the only decernable link I've seen between someone's classical chess rating and the way they approach puzzles is not how far they can look or how clear that image is, but how far they are willing to look. For example a lot of new players can't solve a mate-in-2 because the first move involves sacrificing a queen and that it not something they can look beyond. "Well then I just lose my queen" and they start looking elsewhere.
> So before we get into the meat of this post I just want to caveat that solving tactical puzzles is important, it should form a large part of your diet. But it should form part of a balanced diet.
The keyword being that there is a regimen. a diet. When schools of thoughts get hot heads, sometimes there is only monoculture in each turh that only remains. We all know how it depletes the soil in the long run.
Ok pure imposed analogy, not an argument, just a statement. That in the fog of our own learning inner workings, bet-hedging might be a long run robust strategy. Since chess learning is a long run thing. I am not talking about bet on the single game board, although that also happens but that would not be a strategy per say.
The keyword being that there is a regimen. a diet. When schools of thoughts get hot heads, sometimes there is only monoculture in each turh that only remains. We all know how it depletes the soil in the long run.
Ok pure imposed analogy, not an argument, just a statement. That in the fog of our own learning inner workings, bet-hedging might be a long run robust strategy. Since chess learning is a long run thing. I am not talking about bet on the single game board, although that also happens but that would not be a strategy per say.