Rating Chess tempo and FIDE....

[tama]

Thanks Tacto! i c now, ive bin focusing more on my plan then my opponents, yes! is make perfect sense, Even when im actually  good at telling what my opponent is going to do i don't bother calculating it because it takes to much time so i focus more on my plans usually.

I see ill play a lot more games for now on.

[tmr]

Your rating for now is better than myne on here but I take it my advice has some merit becuase my fics and chesscube ratings are much higher than yours. My cts is also somewhat higher.

This is an interesting observation.  I suppose it indicates that to be successful you really have to be well rounded in all aspects of the game.

The more ideas for the site Richard: 1) opening training and 2) endgame training.

[tacto]

Well there are already endings in the problems... But the openings isn't a bad idea...

Like a huge opening explorer would be great...there aren't any decent ones right now...

something like this: http://www.shredderchess.com/online-chess/online-databases/opening-database.html

But just higher rated players and newer theory...just a huge compilation of recent top gm games and so on.

But I guess this is only a dream. Since Richard is only human hehe .

ChessTempo should perhaps stick to tactics for awhile still.

[richard]

Endgames is something I have fairly high up the priority list.  While there are a few in the tactical problem set it would be relatively easy to add a lot more (or have a seperate endgame training section).

The opening explorer idea is interesting, but requires a huge amount of new code to support it (essentially a large and reasonably efficient chess database).  There are also a few of these around (shredder chess's explorer is one of several) so I'd want to make sure it added something over what was already being provided (I have a few ideas, but nothing concrete yet).

Regards,
Richard.

[chipschap]

"It is important to note that if you do a lot of tactics per day like on CT or CTS you WILL have a temporary decline in rating becuase your thoughts are UNBALANCED. ex. you concentrate more on your plans than your opponents"

The guy at the local club who coaches me informally noted this in my play and pointed it out to me.  "You're finding tactics for yourself but you're not seeing your opponent's tactics."  It's a real danger.  To combat it, I now take a few moments to look at the board and try to find a tactical opportunity for my opponent.  I'm not quite "there" yet but it is helping.

[btherl]

I recommend using fritz or some program to go over your games and to also study openings. NOT MEMORIZE.... that useless. If you know why and when you will be able to apply those things studied in all games and openings.

I wouldn't say memorizing is useless.. at higher levels of play it is essential.  It's no use knowing that Bd3 is usually played in "this type of position" when black has a brilliant pawn sacrifice response, which you could have avoided by memorizing that you must play Re1 first.

And for blitz games, memorization is essential, as you cannot possibly calculate opening tactics during the game.  Even during long games, memorization, which builds on years of GM play, will always leave you with a better position than just knowing the ideas alone.

So while knowledge of the strategic ideas is essential, memorization is also essential to progress beyond a certain level.

[tama]

I noticed something in grout rates, people grow at rates similar to there characteristics. ex) people good in math usually exile in tactics, people that are good in languages seem to have better memory's for openings, but people that are good in math tend to have more common sense so they learn faster.

I have come across many people playing for 10 years and have very poor ratings U1500 and some that play for 1 year and are already 2000+ and the reality is that the people playing for 10 years are better in languages.

I also be leave memorization is useless until Master level and higher. Also many people that have 0 natural talent seem to have no imagination. Imagination is key in chesstempo and in chess. You cannot possibly memorize anything besides comprehending the themes and improving calculating speed + dept.

I have also noticed my own limitations in dept, i have trouble when calculating over 20 moves in advance on chesstempo, my mental picture of the board starts to get blurry. Does anyone else have this problem?

I am also very board and decided to rant about random things in hopes of livening up the forum a bit.

[tacto]

There's a lot that I disagree on.

Math and language have little do to with your chess abilities, hard work has.

You say memorization is useless before being a master, but you won't be a master unless you can get good positions. I know that you don't have to MEMORIZE stuff just you HAVE to learn openings.

Is there even a Chesstempo problem with 20 moves lol

[richard]

tacto: This is the record holder (if you count half moves then it is 20 moves including the opponents first move):

http://chesstempo.com/chess-problems/40579

If you include problems that were rejected by updated problem generators then this monster is the winner (mate in 15! (or 30 half moves)):
http://chesstempo.com/chess-problems/1394 (ahh the good old days :-)  ).

There is a semi-recent paper published in a psychology journal that looked at factors in chess success at the junior level.  IQ score and visualisation ability appeared to have been low predictors of success (I think the author concluded that motivation/hard work was much more important).  Having said that, these were all children with relatively high chess playing abilities and as a group they all tested with very high IQ scores, but what differentiated the good players from the very good ones was hard work not IQ. IQ did seem to be more predictive of performance in the younger children who had less exposure to chess practice, but not in the older age groups. I can try and dig up a reference to the article if anyone is interested.

Regards,
Richard.

[sergei]

Dear friends, if you want to have real correlation between FIDE rating and Chesstempo rating ought to take mating problems away from the server. I have several personal conversations  with russians GMs and IMs. They prefer to win a piece, but not to spend time finding mate in 5 and more moves. Double attack in various ways is the key to real life chess success. Richard is doing great job improving his site and I hope he will move it in more practical direction.

[newlook]

I was curious how many "mate in 5" problems are on the site. According to the search results:

All mates: 4462
mate in 1: 643
mate in 2: 2633
mate in 3: 898
mate in 4: 219
mate in 5 or more: 69

All those GMs and Masters who write books must value at least some percentage of mates in their training exercises. Looking for mate in 5 with all the pieces on the board is probably not the best use of time for a human player, but those are less than 1% of the server's problems. Having mate-in-2 answers visually "pop out" without effort is a skill that I imagine almost every GM has, and they won't pop out at you unless you've practiced a ton of them.

[richard]

Hi sergei,

As newlook pointed out the number of longer mates on the site is not currently that great (although overall about 25% of the problems are mates).  Premium users can create their own custom problem sets and can chose to have only non-mating tactics if they like, unfortunately the custom sets are ( for obvious reasons) not rated.

Regards,
Richard.

[newlook]

I don't see any performance ratings for mates vs. non-mates. There are ratings for the tags, but since the mate/non-mate category already exists for all problems, that would be a good way to break down the ratings.

[richard]

Good point newlook, I've updated the todo list with an item for adding non-mates and mates to the motif performance table.
(edited to make my original garbled comment semi-understandable :-)  ).

[sergei]

Dear Cheestempo friends! I am very concern about tactics ratings and FIDE rating because we obviously spent lots of time here, but not mooving forward in real chess.From the other hand I can testify that Richard is putting more and more practical problems. Do not take my radical advice "get away mates!" too seriously. Only idiot can imagine tactic server without mates.  A great deal of success in real game depends on "double attacks". We need more knight forks here. Variuous pins are in high need. We obviously need typical rook endings here. It is also important skill for real game success.