I like solving puzzles. But I would like to know why X is not the best move. Instead, all I get is that my move was incorrect. Is there a platform or an app/tool that can give me more information about this?
if you are talking about lichess puzzles, then you can simply enable the engine, and check what it would play against your move X. then play your intended reply and so on, until you understand why X does not work.
@glbert said in #2:
> if you are talking about lichess puzzles, then you can simply enable the engine, and check what it would play against your move X. then play your intended reply and so on, until you understand why X does not work.
you took the words right out of my mouth lol
> if you are talking about lichess puzzles, then you can simply enable the engine, and check what it would play against your move X. then play your intended reply and so on, until you understand why X does not work.
you took the words right out of my mouth lol
I guess for (very) low level players analyzing the puzzle with an engine can still be pretty challenging, since they don't know what exactly to look for. Having someone to talk about the puzzle is a good way of making progress in that case.
So... @Benutzerin0815 maybe just post the puzzle in question here and - important - tell us what you were thinking/calculating, that led you to your (wrong) decision.
So... @Benutzerin0815 maybe just post the puzzle in question here and - important - tell us what you were thinking/calculating, that led you to your (wrong) decision.
Chesstempo is also a very good site for puzzles and there is a comment section where users discuss the solutions which can be quite informative and helpful.
sometimes people discuss a puzzle in the game chat or the game the puzzle comes from. that happens more often with higher rated puzzles though, and even there it is still somewhat rare.
@glbert said in #2:
> if you are talking about lichess puzzles, then you can simply enable the engine, and check what it would play against your move X. then play your intended reply and so on, until you understand why X does not work.
Thanks a lot! Good tip. I‘ll try it right now.
> if you are talking about lichess puzzles, then you can simply enable the engine, and check what it would play against your move X. then play your intended reply and so on, until you understand why X does not work.
Thanks a lot! Good tip. I‘ll try it right now.
Lichess (and chess.com) puzzles are good for "finding tactics to solve" and keeping yourself busy or in shape, but *NOT* good for LEARNING tactics. There is a huge difference between that. A good puzzle book written by a strong IM or GM is much better for LEARNING tactics.
People learn by pattern recognition and training in blocks or segments. If you notice, good puzzle book start with a theme in simple positions and slowly work it into your brain and then slowly increase the difficulty. But (i don't know about chesstempo yet), online tactics overwhelm you by giving you positions with all sorts of themes in random positions, often with illogical positions. That's because, while these were real games played online, most of these are in very fast time controls, and by "weaker" players, so you end up with positions that you would never see in any printed puzzle book. Also, positions that are too open and have too many things attacked are VERY bad for learning tactics, due to "sensory overload". Computers don't care about this. But humans do. A problem with a wide open queen that has 5 different checks in 2 moves, with only one correct in each move could be very hard for a human to solve, but engines don't care about human feelings or emotions.
But if you look at puzzle books, all of the games in good books are taken from either high level GM games, or samples played by the author, in normal or slow time controls (maybe some rapid games), with no blitz or bullet games, so the positions are much more "sane" and more like something you would see in a real game, and those are much easier for people to follow, rather than kings out in the middle of the board with someone having no development, with a ton of material, and so on.
People learn by pattern recognition and training in blocks or segments. If you notice, good puzzle book start with a theme in simple positions and slowly work it into your brain and then slowly increase the difficulty. But (i don't know about chesstempo yet), online tactics overwhelm you by giving you positions with all sorts of themes in random positions, often with illogical positions. That's because, while these were real games played online, most of these are in very fast time controls, and by "weaker" players, so you end up with positions that you would never see in any printed puzzle book. Also, positions that are too open and have too many things attacked are VERY bad for learning tactics, due to "sensory overload". Computers don't care about this. But humans do. A problem with a wide open queen that has 5 different checks in 2 moves, with only one correct in each move could be very hard for a human to solve, but engines don't care about human feelings or emotions.
But if you look at puzzle books, all of the games in good books are taken from either high level GM games, or samples played by the author, in normal or slow time controls (maybe some rapid games), with no blitz or bullet games, so the positions are much more "sane" and more like something you would see in a real game, and those are much easier for people to follow, rather than kings out in the middle of the board with someone having no development, with a ton of material, and so on.
@Falkentyne
Thank you very much for your time and effort in explaining the subject to me. It has helped a lot! Do you have any book tips for beginners with around 1000 Elo (real, not Lichess Elo)?
Thank you very much for your time and effort in explaining the subject to me. It has helped a lot! Do you have any book tips for beginners with around 1000 Elo (real, not Lichess Elo)?
First of all, i completely agree with...
@Falkentyne said in #8:
> Lichess (and chess.com) puzzles are good for "finding tactics to solve" and keeping yourself busy or in shape, but *NOT* good for LEARNING tactics. There is a huge difference between that. A good puzzle book written by a strong IM or GM is much better for LEARNING tactics.
But there is still a thing lichess does right. There is a puzzle rating in lichess, and puzzles in a suitable range around the moving puzzle rating of the user come one by one. Yes, some positions are crazy from the point of view of a human, and a 2000-rated player will never get them so, especially when the player is a positional one. But puzzles are not about the positional taste, unfortunately, and such skills are hard to improve, they are all about recognizing patterns, building candidate moves, getting them in the right order by investigating possible transpositions, evaluating position after the capture chains are done, and making the final decision.
And maybe a better on, just starting a puzzle streak may be a lot of fun, and a learning experience. It starts with "easy" positions, often mate in one. (But crazy of course, and there was in some case often a mate in one all the last five moves, but now this mate in one is more challenging.) The level grows puzzle after puzzle, and after solving a puzzle one can see the full game - so stop there for a while if it came from an opening of interest, or if it is an end game and you want to go in depth. (Rooks, or queens, or just only pawns. We have a "general feeling" - but why it was winning in the given situation?) One can open from the last solved box the link, and stay there for a while.
Unfortunately, the whole history / the chain of "solved puzzles" is almost lost when the streak stops...
I would have here one question please...
Is it possible to get the FEN position of a given puzzle quickly?
(E.g. from the analyze mode, after solving it, or after seeing the solution is still ok. Starting a study from the game of the puzzle is too complicated already. I just want the FEN to copy+paste it into a latex document, which becomes quickly a pdf that i can read on the mobile phone some days later...)
@Falkentyne said in #8:
> Lichess (and chess.com) puzzles are good for "finding tactics to solve" and keeping yourself busy or in shape, but *NOT* good for LEARNING tactics. There is a huge difference between that. A good puzzle book written by a strong IM or GM is much better for LEARNING tactics.
But there is still a thing lichess does right. There is a puzzle rating in lichess, and puzzles in a suitable range around the moving puzzle rating of the user come one by one. Yes, some positions are crazy from the point of view of a human, and a 2000-rated player will never get them so, especially when the player is a positional one. But puzzles are not about the positional taste, unfortunately, and such skills are hard to improve, they are all about recognizing patterns, building candidate moves, getting them in the right order by investigating possible transpositions, evaluating position after the capture chains are done, and making the final decision.
And maybe a better on, just starting a puzzle streak may be a lot of fun, and a learning experience. It starts with "easy" positions, often mate in one. (But crazy of course, and there was in some case often a mate in one all the last five moves, but now this mate in one is more challenging.) The level grows puzzle after puzzle, and after solving a puzzle one can see the full game - so stop there for a while if it came from an opening of interest, or if it is an end game and you want to go in depth. (Rooks, or queens, or just only pawns. We have a "general feeling" - but why it was winning in the given situation?) One can open from the last solved box the link, and stay there for a while.
Unfortunately, the whole history / the chain of "solved puzzles" is almost lost when the streak stops...
I would have here one question please...
Is it possible to get the FEN position of a given puzzle quickly?
(E.g. from the analyze mode, after solving it, or after seeing the solution is still ok. Starting a study from the game of the puzzle is too complicated already. I just want the FEN to copy+paste it into a latex document, which becomes quickly a pdf that i can read on the mobile phone some days later...)
This topic has been archived and can no longer be replied to.