Tactics Trainer should never remove rating points from the human, just add points when the best move was found. Neuro science for long time now knows that punishment is not a motivator for learning (instead invitation -> encourage -> inspiration).
Especially getting removed points when suggesting a second best move, even if that move leads to a forced mate is very annoying. I hate it. Give me back my points you stupid trainer, lol.
No-no-no. Chess is a very brutal game. Just picture this: you're playing a classical game, say 90+30, you've made 35 moves and it's still equal, your opponent finds some strong attack, but unsound. And let's say you miss tactics refuting it. What happens? You lose a game.
Not sure about position where many moves win, but the TT asks you to find the strongest, i.e. fastest win. That's one thing that is debatable about the TT. In that sense it's annoying, no doubt. Players tend to downvote such puzzles, where there's clearly 2 or more pretty much winning lines. Let's say the engine shows the winning move, which is +10, 2nd best is +7 (which is considered wrong), and 3rd — +6(also wrong). It goes without saying you'll win in all those scenarios. On the other hand TT is just a trainer, it's only for you and only you. There's no even a list of best tacticians on lichess. So when you hit the 2nd best move and failed, you'll know the real state of matters.
agreed. the emphasis of this trainer is to actually reward the players that either intuitively know the thematic attack, or the players that sat back, and calculated every line instead of just clicking on what could win because they know its a tactics trainer, so there must be a tactic.
#2 Tactics trainer is not a chess game. The purpose of the game is to win (or at least not lose), the purpose of the trainer is to train calculation and learn new motifs. And as i already said, it is a well known fact in science that punishment does not motivate. And demotivation is a killer for learning. And as you said, as there is not best of tactics list anyway it does not matter if this anachronistic form of punishment is taken away.
#3 to what do you agree?
So your idea is that everybody will have points, which mean just how many problems you've completed? I don't see motivation in that. Even more — I will be even less careful when solving them, because I can just play on intuition.
I dont say reward random clicking or error solutions, just do nothing in that case. Reward only the correct solution, do nothing otherwise. That is how to motivate people.
The rating is used to select suitable hard puzzles, if any attention should be payed then change over last twelve games on profile is a better target.
You already get 1 point for every puzzle, regardless of the result. This could maybe be displayed in the trainer too and not only on profile.
If someone gets so easily discouraged from solving puzzles, they probably aren't that interested in tactics to begin with. Following your logic, if you want to stay motivated at chess improvement you should play only weaker opponents so that you usually win. After all, the "punishment" of a loss could negatively affect learning. Yet, we know from the advice of serious players, as well as simply from common sense, that this is awful advice. If you want to grow as a player exposure to good players playing good moves is invaluable.
I would not consider being shown where you went wrong a "punishment". Ratings exist for a reason: to show how well you are performing at a given time. It also exists, more importantly, to track progress as your competence for a given task increases. You should not be so emotionally attached to this number that it causes you distress to see it decline. To improve at chess you need be shown your mistakes. Looking at moves you understand and being told "this move is good" by a third party will only help you so much. That is the nature of reality, regardless of how motivating you think being criticized is.
I recently played the black side of a Advance French against one of the strong streamers here on lichess. The first 15-20 moves of the game were about equal, we went into a fairly well-known theoretical line. Later in the game, frantic to catch up to my opponent who was already ahead in time, I decided to blitz out fianchettoing my LSB to b7. My opponent was quick to point out that is piece configuration is not something that is ever played in these lines because the bishop has no future if it doesn't go to d7 and later out of the pawn chain on the queenside. Being relatively new to the black side of the French, this was an important lesson for me. How much do you think I would have learned if he had simply said "The first 15-20 moves were fine". I would have learned nothing. I possibly could have identified this mistake by going back and analyzing the game myself, but his comment saved me a great deal of time in this regard. It's a simple and easy principle for me now: "Don't fianchetto to b7 in the Advance French". Being told a move you made is wrong is not a "punishment" and I have no idea why you would think of it as such.
Also many problems have more than one solution. Examples:
http://de.lichess.org/training/11443both 1.Rc1 and 1.Re5 wins. Only 1.Re5 is accepted as solution.
http://de.lichess.org/training/51022after 1.Qd2 Qxg5 2.Qxg5+ Ng7: 3. Rfd1 is "solved", 3.Qh6 is "good try but you have a better one" and 3.e5 is "not solved".
I'm not so sure about the "never-remove-points" suggestion but there's no doubt about it that the tactics trainer is seriously flawed. From an OTB training point of view it's perfectly fine to find a mate in 7 rather then a mate in 3. Or to find a tactic that leaves you a rook up in a totally winning position rather then finding the tactic that leaves you a queen up. It's better to find the latter, but it's simply good enough to find the easily winning alternative.
People interested in serious tactics training might want to check out
chesstempo.com - which IMHO is the best out there by a mile.
