Occasionally one encounters puzzles that are just totally stupid. Here's one of them:
lichess.org/training/64619Can we please give puzzles ratings below zero, so that crappy ones like this eventually get removed? This shit is really annoying, because one wrong puzzle can wipe out ten or fifteen correct ones. What is the purpose of even rating these things if ones that are eternally rated 'zero' stick around? Is anyone actually moderating these?
The puzzle is not stupid, it's just really, really hard. Black's 22...Rad8 prevents 23.Qxc5 because 23...Rd1+ would win the White Queen (24.Ne1 is met by 24...Rxe1+, *forcing* 25.Rxe1 because the Black Queen controls e1). Then Black is winning, because White's King is not safe, White's Rook on h1 is out-of-play, and all of Black's pieces are in the attack.
After 23...Nd3, White has nothing better than to give up the exchange with 24.Qxc6 Nxc1; note that 25.Nxc1 loses the piece back to 25...Rc8. If White tries to keep the material with a move like 24.Rd1, then Black will play 24...Nb4, gaining time against the Queen and protecting the d3 Knight, and follow up with 25...Qb6 threatening mate on f2. Black has a dominating position.
For the record, I've played this puzzle before, and when I replayed it this time, I got it wrong (again!). But that doesn't make it a bad puzzle, it makes it a good puzzle, from which I still have things to learn.
It's not a good puzzle; that's why it's rated zero. Some of the white responses take literally 15 moves to get any material advantage back out of; nobody would consider that to be a quality of a tactics puzzle. Thanks for backing up this obviously-shit puzzle so that you could copy/paste your engine solution on the forum for like, six people to read; I really wish you wouldn't have done that. It could really derail the point of the topic which is that puzzle ratings should be allowed to go negative, and once they do should be removed from circulation.
Here's another idiotic puzzle that takes 14 moves to get any material out of with perfect play, depending on black's continuation. 17000 plays, rated zero:
lichess.org/training/64659Maybe these stupid computer lines parading as 'tactics' is why everyone is switching to chesstempo to do tactics training.
Why are you focusing so much on material? Winning is winning. In a practical game, after 22...Rad8, Black is totally winning, because White is playing down a rook and Black is attacking with all pieces. Yes, if your opponent plays perfect, then it takes a lot of moves to actually win the game; that's just chess! Try playing against the level 8 computer and give yourself rook odds; I guarantee you'll either lose, or if you do manage to win, then it will take you a long, long time to win the game.
Here are three side-notes:
1. You appear to be simultaneously claiming that this thread is important enough that it shouldn't be derailed, and at the same time that only like 6 people will read it. These appear to me to be contradictory notions.
2. A bad puzzle is not one which is so hard that lots of people can't find the answer and feel sour about it; a bad puzzle is one which is either incorrect or has no clear lesson. The lesson in the puzzle you complained about is clear: your opponent's king is stuck in the centre and one of their pieces is out of play? In that case, you should make sure to pile as much pressure on your opponent's king as possible, preferably by attacking with *all* pieces. That's why 22...Rad8 is better than 22...Qb5, for example (22...Qb5 was my try). That's the lesson I took away from it.
3. Probably the reason people are jumping ship to ChessTempo is that the recent update to Lichess v2 has brought in a massive number puzzles which are too easy for their rating. Lots of the 2000-2200 puzzles nowadays are very easy forks and mate-in-twos, which previously would have been rated below 2000. My puzzle rating hasn't shot up to 2700 because I've magically got better at chess (my blitz rating certainly hasn't improved), it's because the puzzles are easier.
What do you mean 'why are you focusing on material'? It's an attack to win -material-. This question is bad by tautology. Tactics aren't about getting some positional advantage to squeeze for fifteen moves; they're tactics to win pieces or checkmate. Basically the entire chess world means this if they talk about a tactic, so you're either just pretending not to understand this to pointlessly further this conversation, or your opinions are so irregular as to be irrelevant.
Regarding your little bullet points, your (1) seems to be predicated on the idea that if you don't deem a forum post to be sufficiently "important" (e.g. combating climate change or saving refugees I guess) then Lord Biscuit does deign upon himself the right to just derail it (sorry, I'm just assuming you're a boy; only a rageful internet boy gets so mad that they bullet point their forum replies). Obviously, I haven't and don't have to claim that a thread is 'important' to claim that some rando shouldn't derail it. Your (2) is the tacit (and dumb) assertion that a puzzle is rated 0-out-of-2000 for some reason other than it sucks.
(3) is just another pitiable, TRANSPARENT AS GLASS flex, just like the first one I called out and that got you all butthurt. Slow learner for a 2700, but then again I watched you cheat like a motherfucker in the classical shield arena last week, so who knows what your puzzle rating should actually be.
Okay, I'm going to quickly respond and then unsubscribe from the thread.
Tactics are not all about material. Most difficult tactical puzzles have variations that lead to one side having a winning position, with little to no material advantage. In fact, most tactics are about *giving up* material to deliver checkmate, because that's what the game is about.
Basically no forum threads are important. I didn't derail your thread; the title of the thread is about how you found a particular puzzle "inscrutable", so you want it to have a negative rating; I responded by explaining why the solution makes sense, thereby solving the problem of it being "inscrutable". You appear to think that you made a thread about moderation of puzzles, when in fact you made a thread about one puzzle in particular, and that's what my first response was about.
In my second response, I made three side-notes. I intentionally made them side-notes so-as not to derail the thread; but you seem to have latched onto them and made them the subject now, meaning you've effectively derailed your own thread.
How many puzzles on this site have anywhere near as many upvotes as the number of people who have played the puzzle? Most puzzles have been played by at least 1000 people and have a rating of around 50. That doesn't mean 525 upvotes and 475 downvotes; it means most people just don't vote! A puzzle which has been played 17,000 times and has a score of 0? That probably means about 200 people bothered to vote, and of those, some upvoted but most downvoted. It does not mean 17,000 people downvoted.
If you really took a look at my games in the classical shield arena, then it should be pretty plain that I didn't (and don't) cheat. In my highest rated victory in that tournament, I was much worse out of the opening, played on down a piece for two pawns hoping for a draw because they berserked and I didn't, then they blundered the piece back in the endgame to a puzzle-like tactic (trade a pair of pieces and fork with check). That's chess.
And lastly, I don't see how I'm "flexing" by acknowledging that I haven't got any better at chess in the last two months. I said it myself, my blitz rating is going nowhere fast!
1. Tactics are almost always about material; tactics puzzles should be, otherwise they're positional puzzles. I'm fine with questions that are about things other than material-gaining combinations, but they're a different kind of thing. Dogging this logic with the excuse, "That's chess! No one will tell you where a tactic is!" is antithetical to the point of tactics puzzles: to memorize the preconditions for different tactics. It's like putting a sudoku puzzle in a crossword competition and saying, "That's life!"
2. "a bad puzzle is one which is either incorrect or has no clear lesson" I can't think of a chess puzzle that you can argue DOESN'T have a lesson. A bad puzzle is a puzzle that people dislike for any reason. And I think the reason here is pretty obvious.
3. The number of people who "bothered to vote" doesn't matter; what matters is that more people downvoted than upvoted (which you for some reason disregard as unimportant - ever hear of majority rule?).
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I also had this puzzle a few weeks ago and I failed to solve it. 30 rating points lost.
But I don't care about my puzzle rating. There is not even a ranking list for the puzzle rating on LiChess.
Solving puzzles is only a training tool.
If you lose points then you must see this only positive. Now you can play 15 puzzle more until you reach your old top.
Don't fear to lose rating points, that prevents you from playing at your best.
Edit:
I just saw that the account of the creator of this thread was closed. I could have saved my posting here.
Can someone please close this thread before more people waste their time by posting here ?