The frustration of the Training Puzzles

I am a little bit addicted to the Training Puzzles and i am trying hard to get my score to level 2000 - but how on EARTH does the scoring work ?? It has taken me ages to get to 1740  ... and then in four failed puzzles I have lost 67 points ... how does that work .. when sometimes, a three-move combo puzzle that I get right gains me just 2 points ?!?!?

Literally makes me wants to throw the computer out the window, losing 20 points on an incorrect puzzle, but gaining a stupid 2 points on a correct puzzle ....

It's not that hard to figure out. Scoring is a combination of right moves measured against time, adjusted for the puzzle rating. 

If you get the moves correct on an easy puzzle (low rating) but take all day, you get few points. (Like puzzle #41577, which you got right but you took two minutes, when your target time was 30 seconds or less. )

If you get all the moves wrong on an easy puzzle, you lose a lot of points. (Like puzzle #71528)

If you get some of the moves wrong on a harder puzzle,like #587456, you can still gain some points.

Puzzles have a rating and a time element. If you take significantly longer than the average time, you score fewer points, I f you solve it quickly, you get more.

https://support.chess.com/article/286-how-do-puzzles-work

You also get a very wide range of ratings from the system, so if you miss a tactic a lot lower than your current rating, you'll lose more points.

Those puzzle can be very tricky and even if you can't solve them. You can still try to remember what went wrong. Sometimes, you can see the Queen Checkmate but sometimes you don't see the queen checkmate. It would be better if everyone here can see a queen checkmate. The time here should not be an issue. Getting the puzzle right should be the issue.

That's why I seldom do puzzles any more. I just need more time to work things through and as my puzzle score (rating) increased I lost points for missing puzzles while getting next to no points for correct solutions that took too long. In the end it was just more frustration than it was worth.

You can do them in the training mode without points and take as long as you want.

Yes, I need to try this. I think that's something new since I stopped doing them (about a year ago).

Thanks.

There has been an unrated mode for years.

It's just a number, man.

Like Zen and the art of archery, you have to believe the target does not exist and the arrow does not exist in order to hit the target.

That sounds like a great idea, until you try it. Archery is a lot like golf. The problem with believing the target, the ball, and the club dont exist is that whether you like it or not, the sand, the water, the trees and the rough DO exist.

Yes @BillyDoubleU !! Exactly that! So very annoying!

I have found that they are usually trickier than you think. By playing the obvious move, I get more wrong than right. It's usually not because my choice wasn't right, it's because the correct choice is righter. I think it all evens out. Sometimes the answer is really easy, and sometimes it would take me 30 minutes to figure it out. If I cant figure it out in a few minutes I just guess (or play the obvious move). 

Just do unrated and stop worrying about a rating that does not actually correlate directly to OTB chess ratings anyway.  The problem is that you are competing against a ton of other players obsessed with this meaningless rating, so they keep doing the tactics over and over (many do a ton of them on secondary accounts first, and only then on their main account to keep their rating pristine).  En masse, this dynamic drives the "average" solves time down and down until they hit a specific threshold.  That threshold is "what is the fastest that players can make a good guess, but not spend more seconds deciding if it is absolutely correct, on this tactic?".  So, your average casual chess player who normally spends a perfectly reasonable amount of time pondering a tactic gets pressured to make moves like a bullet player instead.  You learn to play "best guess" chess.

It's a pointless waste of time for everyone involved, and actually bad for your chess game at the extreme end, because you will learn to make a snap judgment when you are 80% - 90% sure to get a problem done in 20 seconds, when you could have been 100% sure at 30 seconds, but you aren't willing to put the time in.  Eventually you may find that your ability to actually reach that "100% sure" level of calculation when you really need to in a real chess game suffers as a result.  

https://www.chess.com/puzzles/problem/688020

Like the puzzle above. The actual forcing move to force the outcome without a doubt is wrong. Yet the other "forcing" move is correct even though black doesn't have to play it that way.

I lost 13 points because the puzzle responded to "hope" chess and not actual force.

Those smarter than me are welcome to tell me why black would hand white a free Queen...

Yeah, not sure I agree ... my positional identification has already improved IMO as a result of seeing these puzzles ... if you are aware that the time is less important than getting the puzzle right, how can there be a negative impact ?

So then, you don't need the timed, rated puzzles at all .  If you discard that aspect, you get all the benefits with no downsides.  All you lose is the ability to measure yourself against others on a number that doesn't mean anything.  If OTB/online chess ratings are important, that's fine.  There's a distinction between "real" ELO-pool ratings vs. arbitrary manufactured ratings that pretend like they go on the same scale.  

It also comes down to what kind of chess you want to play.  Are you trying to play objectively better chess, trying to approach the unattainable perfect "best play", or are you just trying to beat lots of run-of-the-mill players as fast as you can...

Oh do you mean why wouldn't black play King d7 after checking with the knight? White can check with the other knight and eventually win the queen anyways.

Just remember what Martin Stahl wrote in post #3. Then do the puzzles and your neural network will learn how to get the max from them. Don't think about it, trust your intuition and observe what happens to your scores. Your feedback processor will do the job and it's all unconscious.

If, instead, you try to control the process rather than the puzzles, you'll get irritated and achieve little. You wannabe a better puzzle solver will you?