How many puzzles?

The point of solving puzzles is to make your brain learn patterns. From my own experience, the focus should be on learning rather than solving. Make sure that you understand how the pattern works, why it doesn't in some positions, even if it takes a bit of your puzzle-solving time. You may also try raising the difficulty to normal, as I feel like usually the easier puzzles don't cover the whole theme that we try to learn.
You may end up solving less puzzles, but to me : Quality training > Quantity training

@Wodjul said in #5:

I should have mentioned that I am currently going through 20 types of puzzles on a weekly rotation.

This seems great. Once the motif is carved in your mind it really works wonders.

However, remember that during games, tactics don't show up by luck. It depends on things like development, having weaknesses, well-placed pieces, an exposed king, and so on. So if you feel like you lose to tactics every game, don't forget to check why the tactic was made possible in the first place. In a position with no weaknesses and well-defended pieces, the chances of losing to a tactic are very low.
Once your pattern training starts to kick in you will have great results, but keep in mind that there are very important aspects of your game that need training as well, even if they seem overshadowed by tactics.

@Wodjul said in #5:

This is how I see matters anyway. Player @Benji3359 claims the daily puzzle record - "Current World Record holder for the highest amount of puzzles solved in a single day (22,222). If anyone did better, feel free to let me know."

I will never get anywhere near that. Since I joined about 4 months ago I have done 4,235 puzzles plus maybe another hundred or two hundred in puzzle runs.

I had issues solving tactics quickly before, especially checkmates. I didn't think I would be able to spot them so quickly now, but here I am... And honestly, it's not doing hundreds of tactics mindlessly that helps, but rather to be actively trying to learn how things work.

Good luck and keep having fun, that's the important part ;)

Thanks, @Benji3359

Yes, I am trying to actively learn and understand how things work in chess and how my own cognition works. I do review failed puzzles and check what went wrong and try to understand it. If a puzzle is taking me too long, I uncheck "next puzzle" so I can immediately check what went wrong if I fail a puzzle. In end game puzzles, I sometimes play out endgame puzzles to make sure I know how to win a "won" endgame. I am working on Daniel Naroditsky's Endgame Youtube course.

I do know my training is too heavy on puzzles for the time being. I am trying to build one training habit / method at a time. The first is puzzles and tactics. When my tactics training habits are solid I will add a next plank, like opening training. I am also about to add a program that will train me in board vision: actually noticing all possible moves, all possible checks in a position etc. It is surprising how bad a beginner like me is at that fundamental task.

Though it is hard work, I do find puzzles are fun. It is very interesting to see all the amazing tactical patterns and nuances. I am seeing hopeful signs in my games. I think I am noticing more tactics. I did miss a checkmate in my last game (at time of writing this) but I did make the 2nd best move which trapped the opponent's queen. The checkmate I missed, I had just done multiple times in training in the last day or so. It hurt to see in the gaem analysis that I missed it but the disappointment should really engrave it on my mind for next time. I had also done Traps training in the last few days and a lot of them are queen traps. So, I was keyed in enough to see and play for the queen trap. I had some tunnel vision. I saw a good move and did not look for a better move. I will keep working on it.

The placement of men in puzzles is rarely repeated in real games. There is a missing piece, a misplaced pawn... there is a tendency to keep trying to shoehorn the mate you learned into the position when it won't actually work. Afterwards, in the analysis you see the blunder - the win was there after all - but you missed it trying too hard to replicate the mate in the puzzle.

The puzzles are limited in their diversity and once you are familiar with the patterns you're not gaining much by doing them day after day. At a certain level, you will gain more by selecting critical positions from GM games and deeply analysing them for 10-15 minutes.
Yesterday, I played 7 games in a blitz tournament and none were decided by a puzzle tactic. To be fair, my opponents were 2000 or lower but it still shows how practical play and puzzles are different universes. The only game I lost was due to checking with my queen on a square where it could be captured by a knight! To compensate, in the last round my opponent moved his queen to a square where it was en prise! Two of my other wins came after my opponents hung a piece. You don't have to be a tactical genius, speed and avoiding blunders are the deciding factors in blitz.

Well, I have added Puzzle Storm into my training routine as a result of this discussion, although I hate it (can't really get off the ground with it).

@AlexiHarvey said in #15:

Well, I have added Puzzle Storm into my training routine as a result of this discussion, although I hate it (can't really get off the ground with it).

Mind me asking what you hate about it? I believe I never seen anyone who has strong feelings about it.

@totallyrandomuser said in #16:

Mind me asking what you hate about it? I believe I never seen anyone who has strong feelings about it.

I dislike time limits in general, and since Puzzle Storm only gives you a few seconds back per puzzle it means you're only able to spend a few seconds per puzzle. It's faster to get them wrong quickly than to get them right slowly, and if you get them wrong you don't even have the time to review the correct answer. I find it very offputting. Maybe it would help if I played Bullet, but Bullet is likewise all stress no fun.

I have a bunch of sets of easy puzzles from books like Everyone's First Chess Workbook. I keep the same puzzles on rotation (woodpecker method). My goal is to get to about 500 per hour and be able to do that every day. I hope to build my rotating set to about 10,000 puzzles, so that I can get thru the entire set in 20 days. I can't do more than 1-2 hours of chess per day.

I also have grown to like the Easiest Puzzles on blitztactics.com (infinity section). Those go super quick and I can ususally get through about 100-200 in an hour.

Main reason I dislike(hate) it is because I am not very good at it. I don't think it's balanced well for lower level players, way too tough with little sign of progress on repetition. Best I have managed is 20.

Also the score seems heavily dependent on the puzzle rankings being true - which I doubt. I suspect new puzzles are fed into the system at the bottom, so you can end up with some oddly tricky puzzles in the low end. For example, I did ten runs yesterday and one puzzle even when extracted I got wrong after 5 minutes of thought, yet was rated under 1200! Best I managed in the ten runs was 15!

Seems more of a Bullet technique trainer than anything, a format I have no interest in whatsoever. They could do with a difficulty parameter, i.e. Bullet, Blitz, Rapid, Classical etc., especially as the normal puzzles have no time limits. Not everyone wants to practice their mouse skills!

PS: I use a trackball a well as a drag piece movement which I am sure doesn't help.

In an attempt to answer some of the concerns above:

"The placement of men in puzzles is rarely repeated in real games." - @puttster

This is true. However, it does not negate the value of puzzles. Rapid puzzles help you to quickly see possible tactics in a position. Slow analytical puzzles (because they are deeper and more complex) help you to develop your step-by-step move analysis, especially of forcing lines. Practical tactics in games will typically involve a combination of these two thought processes.

"The puzzles are limited in their diversity and once you are familiar with the patterns you're not gaining much by doing them day after day." - @lizani

There are over 4 million puzzles in the Lichess puzzle database. The diversity looks adequate to me. It is actually the limited ways of narrowing the diversity that mean pattern learning takes longer. For example, when doing fork puzzles it would be great to be able to narrow the search by specifying the forking piece or pawn. Of course, this shows there are a lot of subsets of basic tactics. In turn, that shows that many puzzles must be done to expand and consolidate your pattern recognition.

"At a certain level, you will gain more by selecting critical positions from GM games and deeply analysing them for 10-15 minutes." - @lizani

This is true. Puzzle training is only one part of a fully rounded chess training regimen. My training regimen is not fully rounded yet. I have my reasons, as a beginner following certain learning theories, for training in this way. I want to bed in one training habit at a time and then add more planks to the effort. This path is a bit of an experiment: an experiment I am willing to try and which might not suit everybody.