I'm an adult improver, started laying 4 years ago. I never trained or did tactics or anything, until 3 months ago. I felt stuck at 2100 rapid on lichess, so I said to myself I wanna try at least for on or two years, how far I can get, if I actually put some effort into it. So I got myself an WIM as coach for online lessons and do daily tactics on lichess (1 theme per day). I feel like, the lichess tactics (especially basic mating patterns) are really improving my pattern recognition. On the other hand, the combination/calculation homework, I get from my coach every week are way more effective in teaching me to get a feeling for attacking positions and valuing initiative over material. I do like 50-100 daily puzzles on lichess and like 20 weekly puzzles from my coach. I feel like, that both help me improve in a different way. But the handpicked tactics from my coach out of grandmaster games, really helped me improve my intuition for attacking ideas and initiative over material. They are also way more complex, so I actually practice calculation in a challenging way. I usually spent never more than 5 minutes on a lichess puzzle, often not even a minute, while the puzzles from my coach are actually really challenging and take up to 20-30 minutes. I think, both have their merrit, but for example basic mating patterns in online tactics absolutely help improve pattern recognition. But in the end, finding a good coach is probably the best. If it's a titled player who teaches you the russian school of chess, like my coach, you are alos fooreced to learn endgames as a basic, which I could never motivate myself to do as much. So my coach teaches me mostly endgames, and a little bit of middlegame ideas, while the calculation/tactic stuff is left for me as homework, which is actually pretty smart, lol
When I started doing daily tactics, my tactics Rating was somewhere around 2100, Puzzle storm maybe 28, blitz Rating around 1800. 1 year later I had 2500+ tactics, Puzzle storm 42 an blitz Rating 2000+. So it helped. I also gained almost 200 FIDE Points in 6 months
Seeing David sit at his computer for the duration of the episode with the sun hitting him full on in the face the entire time, I’m 100% convinced when he says that he‘s able to concentrate the same way at his computer as in otb… 😂 thanks for all these great videos, they are really transforming my approach to studying/ training!
Despite having a 3000+ tactics rating I still feel like I miss quite a lot of fairly basic tactics in my games. So thanks for the timely video, I'll try my hand at some of these books and see if that leads to better results.
As a causal chess fan, I really enjoy puzzles even if does not always improve my actual game time rating. I’m comfortable with that for now and enjoy doing both books and app based puzzles.
It will with time, tactical training is a core requirement to progress as even quiet looking positions tend to have a sea of sharp tactics almost but not quite ripe for exploitation. From my own experience, studying checkmate patterns added a frequent win by checkmate element to my games because I began to coordinate my pieces better specific to the structure near the king, even if the opponent avoided the variation.
It would be interesting to discuss the difference between pattern recognition vs calculation in more depth and tools / techniques for each. It seems these are separate skills with different approaches being useful for each. For online vs books it seems the starting point for the individual is what they will actually do - so if you are able to make a habit of one or the other, then that is a good thing. Though the puzzlerush / puzzlestorm training I don’t think is useful.
True, yet there's overlap. When I played OTB I strove for dynamic play vs most yet I was learning not a good tactician. After coming back to chess, I've been able to study online books more methodically and gone from taking 8 weeks I have 1000+ position books done in 4 days or less. So I would say, what begins as studying becomes pattern recognition. It's really important though not to directly memorise, you need to develop generalised recognition and see what works.
I have to agree with Jesse. I always seemed to maintain deeper focus when working from books. It was to easy to just click the first move on my computer. I have done tons of computer tactics as well, and seen real benefit however.
Because they are accessible, online chess puzzles are very helpful for teaching pattern recognition for beginners and amateurs who are new to chess and do not have resources such as access to a chess coach or chess books. However, chess coaches and books are necessary for rated (or titled) players who want to break a particular chess rating.
quality is 100 times better. what do you think karpov was doing before computers? Calculating looking at the positions and really analyzing ... Idk I think thats just my take on it.
The problem with tactics is the solutions are very hard to calculate if you just try moves, you simply cannot select plausible candidates when by definition the best moves defy normal chess intuition. Seeing a pattern however then checking if it works is much faster. I have benefited a lot by studying problems, learning to figure it out. When I was wrong I'd analyse, see why ideas fail. It'd take me 25 mins at times to see the solution, yet now books that took me months, now can be speed run in a few days despite avoiding specific memorisation. So beginners need both easy practice AND study positions to learn new ideas
I don't like books before the strong engines era because of errors of analysis. You are following a good winning game but when you check it on the strong engine, the lines are faulty. Yes the instructions are great, but with faulty analysis and evaluation, the things are ruined.
Curated, themed puzzles from books are good. But so are randomized online puzzles, because like in real games, any kind of tactic can present itself at any time and you have to find it.
I'm an adult improver, started laying 4 years ago. I never trained or did tactics or anything, until 3 months ago. I felt stuck at 2100 rapid on lichess, so I said to myself I wanna try at least for on or two years, how far I can get, if I actually put some effort into it. So I got myself an WIM as coach for online lessons and do daily tactics on lichess (1 theme per day). I feel like, the lichess tactics (especially basic mating patterns) are really improving my pattern recognition. On the other hand, the combination/calculation homework, I get from my coach every week are way more effective in teaching me to get a feeling for attacking positions and valuing initiative over material. I do like 50-100 daily puzzles on lichess and like 20 weekly puzzles from my coach. I feel like, that both help me improve in a different way. But the handpicked tactics from my coach out of grandmaster games, really helped me improve my intuition for attacking ideas and initiative over material. They are also way more complex, so I actually practice calculation in a challenging way. I usually spent never more than 5 minutes on a lichess puzzle, often not even a minute, while the puzzles from my coach are actually really challenging and take up to 20-30 minutes. I think, both have their merrit, but for example basic mating patterns in online tactics absolutely help improve pattern recognition. But in the end, finding a good coach is probably the best. If it's a titled player who teaches you the russian school of chess, like my coach, you are alos fooreced to learn endgames as a basic, which I could never motivate myself to do as much. So my coach teaches me mostly endgames, and a little bit of middlegame ideas, while the calculation/tactic stuff is left for me as homework, which is actually pretty smart, lol
what was your lichess puzzle rating at the time?
When I started doing daily tactics, my tactics Rating was somewhere around 2100, Puzzle storm maybe 28, blitz Rating around 1800. 1 year later I had 2500+ tactics, Puzzle storm 42 an blitz Rating 2000+. So it helped. I also gained almost 200 FIDE Points in 6 months
Seeing David sit at his computer for the duration of the episode with the sun hitting him full on in the face the entire time, I’m 100% convinced when he says that he‘s able to concentrate the same way at his computer as in otb… 😂
thanks for all these great videos, they are really transforming my approach to studying/ training!
Despite having a 3000+ tactics rating I still feel like I miss quite a lot of fairly basic tactics in my games. So thanks for the timely video, I'll try my hand at some of these books and see if that leads to better results.
As a causal chess fan, I really enjoy puzzles even if does not always improve my actual game time rating. I’m comfortable with that for now and enjoy doing both books and app based puzzles.
It will with time, tactical training is a core requirement to progress as even quiet looking positions tend to have a sea of sharp tactics almost but not quite ripe for exploitation.
From my own experience, studying checkmate patterns added a frequent win by checkmate element to my games because I began to coordinate my pieces better specific to the structure near the king, even if the opponent avoided the variation.
It would be interesting to discuss the difference between pattern recognition vs calculation in more depth and tools / techniques for each. It seems these are separate skills with different approaches being useful for each. For online vs books it seems the starting point for the individual is what they will actually do - so if you are able to make a habit of one or the other, then that is a good thing. Though the puzzlerush / puzzlestorm training I don’t think is useful.
True, yet there's overlap. When I played OTB I strove for dynamic play vs most yet I was learning not a good tactician.
After coming back to chess, I've been able to study online books more methodically and gone from taking 8 weeks I have 1000+ position books done in 4 days or less.
So I would say, what begins as studying becomes pattern recognition. It's really important though not to directly memorise, you need to develop generalised recognition and see what works.
I have to agree with Jesse. I always seemed to maintain deeper focus when working from books. It was to easy to just click the first move on my computer. I have done tons of computer tactics as well, and seen real benefit however.
Can you please put in the description the four books that Jesse recommended.
Updated!
I like how DAVID PRUESS puts his point , there is definitely something good in online puzzles as he pointed out.👍👍👍👍👍
Because they are accessible, online chess puzzles are very helpful for teaching pattern recognition for beginners and amateurs who are new to chess and do not have resources such as access to a chess coach or chess books.
However, chess coaches and books are necessary for rated (or titled) players who want to break a particular chess rating.
quality is 100 times better. what do you think karpov was doing before computers? Calculating looking at the positions and really analyzing ... Idk I think thats just my take on it.
The problem with tactics is the solutions are very hard to calculate if you just try moves, you simply cannot select plausible candidates when by definition the best moves defy normal chess intuition.
Seeing a pattern however then checking if it works is much faster.
I have benefited a lot by studying problems, learning to figure it out. When I was wrong I'd analyse, see why ideas fail.
It'd take me 25 mins at times to see the solution, yet now books that took me months, now can be speed run in a few days despite avoiding specific memorisation.
So beginners need both easy practice AND study positions to learn new ideas
The Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book.
I don't like books before the strong engines era because of errors of analysis. You are following a good winning game but when you check it on the strong engine, the lines are faulty. Yes the instructions are great, but with faulty analysis and evaluation, the things are ruined.
Curated, themed puzzles from books are good. But so are randomized online puzzles, because like in real games, any kind of tactic can present itself at any time and you have to find it.
Do you have a show that focuses only on puzzle books that you recommend for different levels?
TL;DW online is better than books right?
GG EZ
books name ...
There are hundreds of them.
László Polgar - Chess
@@BeFourCM Agreed.
LEARN CHESS TACTICS BY John Nunn
Mammoth book of Chess puzzles
Puzzle books are way better, don't let anybody fool you!!!
Jesse needs to quit Puzzle Rush before he has an aneurysm