Why tactics rating is so high
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Speaker: [00:00:00] Hello, my dear chess friends, and welcome to another episode of Next Level Chess Podcast. This is where you hear a grandmaster ramble about chess improvement, and hopefully you take something away that helps you improve your game, your mindset, your training, and then eventually you will see Your improvements in your game and in your rating today is a special episode because it's episode number 11.

And initially I said, Hey, I'll try out 10 episodes. If nobody listens to it, I'll stop this podcast. But some people listened so thank you very much for listening. Thank you for rating the podcast Thank you for sharing it with your friends And continue that and also thank you for all of your feedback and you can still keep feedback coming I'm, very happy to hear from you what you like what you dislike about this podcast and possible ideas what I could talk about what Bothers you in chess [00:01:00] improvement and how I can help you Get better at chess.

Now, before we go into this episode, just a small reminder that if you want more chess improvement from myself, you can go to my blog, nextlevelchess. blog. You can find a lot of articles there about chess improvement. You can also sign up for my free newsletter where you get chess improvement advice, just like on this podcast into your inbox for free.

You will find the link in description. Last but not least. If you want the non plus ultra from me, you can also check out my courses and sign up for them. One is beginner focused and the other one is how to train focused. So in line with this podcast from today, because today I'm talking about puzzle ratings.

And how you should solve puzzles in order to not only improve your puzzle rating, but your actual game rating. Because you might be one [00:02:00] of the many, many people that has a way higher puzzle rating than normal rapid or blitz rating. Happens to nearly everyone that the Lichess puzzle or Chess. com puzzle rating is like four to 500 points higher than your blitz or rapid rating.

And that's a lot. And many people, if you Google it, they will say, Hey, am I doing something wrong? What is happening here? Why is my pulse rating so much higher? So first thing that I want to say is that it's kind of normal. But second thing I want to say is that it is a problem for many people because they solve tactics in order to get better at solving tactics in a puzzle.

But instead what you should do, if you want to improve your game against human beings, you should solve tactics as a way of improving your game. the skill to solve it during the game. So puzzles and game tactics finding are [00:03:00] two different things. You can use puzzles to improve your puzzle rating, but you can also use puzzle to improve your real rating.

So today I want to talk about what you need to do. In order to improve your real rating through puzzles. Now, what happens very, very often, I really see that, um, with nearly everyone, especially when they start playing chess is they open up, you know, some tactics. puzzles and they just start making the most obvious move.

I call this the try and error method. So you're just going like, Oh yeah, um, that looks very logical. Boom. And because the puzzle has a solution, you went to a puzzle, you know, that is pre made and you know, there is a tactics. More often than not, you'll be right. So, you will be reinforced to do this behavior.

Now, why is this a huge problem? This is a huge problem because during the game, that's not working, [00:04:00] okay? If you play a game of chess and you just try out the most logical move without really calculating, more often than not, your opponent will just Take your queen or take a bishop or thank you very much for this sacrifice.

It doesn't work at all So in a game, there is no take back. There's no trying the error and that's why it's very very important that also when you train with puzzles that you don't do the try and error method. So even if that works to increase your puzzle rating and what's worst in my opinion is like these quick puzzle rush where you have like three minutes and you have to solve as many as possible because they just force you to not really think through your full, you know, tactics, but just go for it.

Go for the most logical move all the time. And because also you. only stop when you have three mistakes, you get used to the idea that you can actually make mistakes and still [00:05:00] okay. So that's horrible habits. And I really, really recommend everyone to stop doing that altogether. So how should you do it instead?

Instead, what you should do is once you see a puzzle, you try to think as it were the game. So you're trying to take into account. Who has actually more material, right? Many people don't even realize if they solve a puzzle with a rook up or a rook down. So that's very important. Look at the board. Assess the position first.

Then look at your candidate moves. Look at checks, captures, and threats. You might have heard of that. Always check your checks first, then captures, and then threats. And then once you see a move that you like, then really calculate it until the end and think, would I play this move right now in a game? And if your answer is no, then you need to continue thinking about that.

Once you see the full line, okay, so you, you saw, oh, bishop takes [00:06:00] h7 is very tempting. So, I actually calculated the next three moves and yes, it leads to a checkmate, so it seems to be the right thing. Then take a pen, take a paper or open up whatever note on your screen and write down your solution. Write down the full line.

and then execute the move. Now, why should you write it down? Because like this, you're really making sure that you don't cheat, you know, that you're not tricking, your brain is not tricking yourself, that when you only calculate half of the line, you're saying, yeah, yeah, for sure. I saw that as well. Really try to write down everything.

It helps a lot. I know many people don't do it, even if I say it, but it is the ideal way of solving puzzles. And then you can compare your solution that is written down with the solution of the puzzle. So that's the first big difference. Um, if your puzzle rating, or if your tactics are good in [00:07:00] puzzles, but not in the game, probably you're not doing this the right way.

The second big difference is that in puzzles you have unlimited time. So, I just talked about this like puzzle rush, why I don't like it, this three minute kind of do as many as possible. But it's also not good if you're just taking 15 minutes for a puzzle, but then you go on to play five minute games.

Because, well, you'll never be able to think for 15 minutes. Even if you play rapid, you will not think 15 minutes on one move. So, you need to make your thinking time according to what you will be able to think during a game. So, don't give yourself way more time. than what you have during the game. What you can do, for example, is you can say, I have a limit of three minutes per puzzle.

And after three minutes, what you're doing is you're trying to take a decision, or you force yourself to [00:08:00] take a decision, even if you're not sure that you found the answer. Because, well, that's what happens during a game. You can not only play a move when you're 100 percent sure that you found the right move, instead, during a game, You need to come to a decision at some point.

So let's say you're playing rapid 15 plus 5, 10 plus 5, 15 plus 10, whatever time control rapid, then you can say, okay, three to five minutes. for every puzzle, because that's realistically the maximum I can really think on one move. Once you hit that time, you write again down your solution, you try to execute what you think is the best move or your solution, and then you compare.

Now, if you're wrong, it's very important to see How far wrong are you? Like, there might be a win, but your solution was just much better. Okay, that's pretty decent in a game, we would be happy with that, right? It's not perfect, but it's decent. But if instead of a [00:09:00] win, you play the line that was absolutely completely losing, then that's a big problem.

So step number two to improve your tactics actually for your games is when you solve puzzles. do them time restricted and they should be in a time frame that you have during a game where you play against humans. So for Blitz make it quicker, for Rapid a little bit longer, and if you play Classical make Uh, games, and you want to improve your calculation, you can think up to 15 minutes for one position.

And then last but not least is just the knowledge that you actually have a tactics when you solve puzzles, right? So you might say, well, there is, this is impossible to take that away because well, once you open a puzzle. puzzle solver, be it on leachess, chess. com, there are other ones online, you know that there needs to [00:10:00] be a correct solution.

And actually, yeah, arguably you should get angry if there is not one correct solution, but there are maybe seven or whatever, because that's not a good puzzle. So what are you, what are you doing?

So instead of just focusing on these tactics puzzles where you know, that you have a tactic, I really highly recommend at least from time to time to take up a book, like, for example, there is a book called practical chess exercises, 600 lessons from tactics to strategy, written by Ray Cheng. And in this book, you will really get a position and you won't know what you're supposed to do.

There can be anything from developing a piece to winning, um, a piece to checkmating, to trying to draw the game, to trying to just defend the worst position. And you will hone your skills that you actually need during game. And I talk about this in my course next [00:11:00] level training, where I talk about this five steps of tactical mastery, where step number one is learning a new Step number two is solving that new motive when you know that there is this motive.

So you just go to pins and then you solve pin, pin, pin, pin, pin. Then step number three is what most of you are doing. You just go to a tactics puzzle trainer and you don't know which kind of tactic there is, but you know there is one. And then nearly everyone forgets step number four, which was the step I was just explaining, which is solving best move positions where you can.

You might have a tactic, but you might also not, or the tactic that seems most obvious is Might actually not work. And then step number five is excelling at the game. So during the game, you actually spot moments where you can find tactics and you also spot the moments where a tactic seems tempting, but it's [00:12:00] actually not.

not working. So these are my three big takeaways. If you want to start improving the tactics that you find during a game and not only your puzzle rating is to never do try and error, but instead write down the solution to think about how much time you want to use for each puzzle. And that should be reflecting the , time that you get during a real game.

And then number three is to not only solve puzzles where, you know, there is a tactic, but also get some puzzles where there might be just a developing move and you could be tricked as well by the author. So with these three steps, I'm sure that you can improve your tactics, but then finally also you can actually show what you can do during a game.

Okay, my dear chess friends, that's it from me for [00:13:00] this one. I hope this helps you find tactics during games. If you like this episode, please make sure to rate it, make sure to share it with your friends. And also make sure to check out my other chess improvement stuff because if you like this podcast I'm sure you'll like my writing which you can find on nextlevelchess.

blog you can sign up for my newsletter link in description and you can check out my courses where I give as much value as possible go deeper into how to train well and what to do to really become a better chess player. See ya!