Practice more basic tactics. You might have a high puzzle rating, but looking at a few of your games, there are a lot of tactical misses and bad trades. It took me a couple seconds seeing the position with game review to understand why the blunder was a blunder in quite a few cases. I might be 400 points lower than you in tactics with a similar success rate, but I also play puzzle racer and puzzle storm to just keep reinforcing basic patterns as I learn more thought provoking calculation based patterns. I think that you could grab 50 rating points just off of making this one improvement.
@aescht said in #18:
> I just take 10 or 20 minutes to get them right
In actual games, spending more than a minute in the 95% moves that have no "solution" is unaffordable. For that reason, one could try to do puzzles not 100% accurate, but at a reasonable time rate.
As @SirSpud525 notes, even if you fail you can be learning some patterns to recognize later. This applies also to hardest puzzles way above your rating, that you can try in order to get some feeling about challenging positions/lines.
I think doing easier, "normal" and hardest puzzles can help you to improve, just in different ways.
@OctoPinky said in #22:
> In actual games, spending more than a minute in the 95% moves that have no "solution" is unaffordable. For that reason, one could try to do puzzles not 100% accurate, but at a reasonable time rate.
There might be benefits to rushing puzzles, I don't want to deny that.
The big big advantage of only making your first move in a puzzle when you are sure you checked all possible variations is:
CONFIDENCE and PRECISION
If you cannot solve a puzzle with 100% confidence, you will always stay in a blurry bubble of uncertainty. It looks good, but you will never develop that sense that you are completely sure it will work out. It's a completely different ball game when you develop that. You can play against a Grand Master and will still be 100% certain that it will work out when you find a winning tactical variation. Even in a non-forcing line you want to know exactly how things can turn within a couple of moves. For that you need precision.
Speed will come second. The more you train, the faster you will become.
@aescht said in #23:
> You can play against a Grand Master and will still be 100% certain that it will work out when you find a winning tactical variation.
That's true, the problem arises in the other moves where you can't find it. If I have to be 100% sure there is *not* a winning tactical variation, probably I'll get flagged before reaching move 15. But I agree when you get a feeling of such a variation, it is better to be able to do all the calculations beforehand.
@aescht said in #14:
> You learn a lot more if you calculate long enough until you see the solution
@aescht said in #23:
> If you cannot solve a puzzle with 100% confidence, you will always stay in a blurry bubble of uncertainty. It looks good, but you will never develop that sense that you are completely sure it will work out. It's a completely different ball game when you develop that.
I'll give a try: 10-15 days really trying to get right every move, let's see how it works!
@aescht said in #23:
> If you cannot solve a puzzle with 100% confidence, you will always stay in a blurry bubble of uncertainty. It looks good, but you will never develop that sense that you are completely sure it will work out.
I think this is super important too. If I'm solving puzzles, I try to be mindful of the degree of certainty I have. Closer to 100% is better. Big difference between knowing something will work, and thinking 'that looks about right' lets go for that..
I would suggest practicing and studying chess for like 3 or 4 days then on the 5th day playing some games with full focus after you're done with your games analyze them, and check your openings this is going to help. I do this a lot and it has helped me
This topic has been archived and can no longer be replied to.