difference between CT and CTS good or bad?

[uri blass]

I agree that if you remember only the solution it is not good.
practically I understand why the solution is good in case that I play it and if I do not understand it immediately I look at the solution and think about it in order to understand.

Note that you can also solve all the problems in
CTS by thinking about them for more than 3 seconds if you like to do it.

You can order problems based on rating of the problem and try to solve problems in CTS and use all the time that you want for it(I simply prefer the problems in CTS and this is the main reason that I spend most of the time in CTS).

I practically solve problems in CTS unrated after failure to solve them fast
and sometimes I do not like to guess a move when I simply have no idea what to do so I think for a significant time
until I find a solution even if it means that I lose rating points.

Uri

[richard]

Hi Uri,

As I've mentioned before CTS is a good site and you could do much worse than concentrating your tactical efforts there. Having said that, I don't agree with all of your analysis on 1-8 being advantages for CTS, I'll quote the ones I disagree with below:

"1)In CT each user has a chance of receiving any of the problems in the system.
In CTS it is not the case and weak players never get very hard problems(not that I never got a problem with rating that is more than 300 elo better than me in CTS)"

On CTS you have a narrow band of "reachable" problems, this means that improvement is often caused by memorizing the problems in your band rather than any improvement in tactical ability. 

"4)CT often have cases when there is mate in 1 and another win and you solve the problem wrong when you choose the first win that you see.
CTS does not have it often.

5)CT more often than CTS have more than one winning move when you need to find the computer move and finding a winning move is not enough."

CTS makes zero attempt at dealing with ambiguity where there are two or more winning alternatives.  I sampled their problems semi-recently and they have a fairly high number of problems that have winning alternatives, one reason you may not be seeing these is that these types of problems tend to get higher ratings than they should, so they may be getting ratings outside your current reachable rating range.  CT can still make mistakes here , but at least tries to either remove ambiguous problems or avoid failing users for viable winning alternatives.  CTS is quite happy to fail you for missing a rook win when a queen win is available.  CT should never do this and it is a bug I would try to fix if it does.  Have a look at the crafty analysis for say 100 or so randomly selected problems (not just problems you were served) and see how many had a second best move which was winning.

"6)The display of the board is different in CT and CTS".

I guess some people might prefer the CTS board, but the majority of users who use both sites seem to prefer the CT board (and it's interactions) over the CTS board, even the people that hate CT usually agree the board is better at CT :-)

"7)The problems in CTS tend to be shorter with some surprising move so sometimes it is not easy to solve them.

The problems in CT more often is to calculate some long line."

This depends very much on rating on CT, yes, higher rated users get problems which usually require more calculation.  Lower rated users tend to get problems with a difficulty similar to those at CTS.  Note that the reason many CTS problems are short is not because the position is simple but that they very often never reach the real point of the tactic.  This is a problem for CT as well, but it is much worse on CTS than CT.

"8)In CT in blitz both the problem and the user can lose rating points
This does not happen in CTS."

In my opinion this makes very little difference to the user in practice.


Regards,
Richard.

[uri blass]

My comments:
1)I think that memorizing more problems is also an advantage because in a game I can think that some position is similiar to some position that I saw when I know the tactical idea of it.

Part of the possible tactical improvement that people can get is by knowing to think better and not memorizing positions but it is only part of the possible improvement that people can get.

I think that the solution to the problem of memorizing is simply to have more problems instead of having big range of rating.

2)It is possible that you are right that in CTS there are many cases when there is more than one winning move but there are not many cases when I find the wrong winning move in CTS.

Here there are many cases when I find the wrong winning move(it can be missing short mate for longer mate or finding winning material that is not the computer choice).

3)The main problem with the display of the board is solved and the difference is not important for me after not having the square of the last move with different colour.

4)" Note that the reason many CTS problems are short is not because the position is simple but that they very often never reach the real point of the tactic.  This is a problem for CT as well, but it is much worse on CTS than CT."

I disagree that it is much worse in CTS.
It seems to me that CTS is based on human games and I see there no stupid computer sacrifices but human moves that force you to show the point of the tactics.


Uri

[drahacikfm]

It seems to me that CTS is based on human games and I see there no stupid computer sacrifices but human moves that force you to show the point of the tactics.

All CT problems come from real games.  The moves played by the problem are the best move calculated by the computer, and are not always the move actually played in the game, if the human played a worse move.

You could also equally say that on CT the problem never plays a stupid human move that loses the game more quickly, and the CT problems always play the best defense!

[uri blass]

It is possible to combine both.

The problem can force the user to win both against computer defence and against human defence when the user get the points only in case of winning against both.

Uri

[pawnmancer]

URI: From my point of view I consider almost all the disadvantages of CT you listed as it's advantages.

Here's my background: I don't play blitz, cause I don't enjoy playing chess fast. I concentrate mostly on slow OTB(at leas 60+G). For about 1.5 years i solved problems on CTS, and my OTB rating wasn't really improving (it was fluctuating around 1200 then). Half a year from now i started to solve problems here and my OTB rating quickly went up. Now I am around 1600 and I am steadily improving. (look at standard rating graph on this site and watch my steady improvement

The reason is I think because here, thanks to the standard mode, I am able to try to apply most of what I learn from books and other players about evaluation, heisman's "seeds of tactical destruction" etc. This improves my calculation skill a great deal. I was also able to incorporate blundercheck into my thought process, which helped me trendemously. That's something you can't do when solving problems fast on CTS.

I also strongly agree with drahacik and his points.

[uri blass]

I am also interested more in slow time control but
I come from a different starting point

I improved in avoiding stupid blunders many years ago by myself with no internet training.
The way was simple.

when I had rating of 1600 I lost games that I thought that I could avoid losing by thinking better.

It was mistakes of missing the next move of myself or the next move of the opponent(it does not have to be tactics and it could also be good positional move).

I thought that if I only added to my usual thinking searching one ply forward like a computer results could be significantly better so there was time that I told myself simply to look at all the legal moves of myself and my opponent during the game.

It was not an easy step because inspite of knowing that I should do it I forgot about the principle during games so in order to convince myself to remember I
decided simply to repeat telling myself to look at all the legal moves not only during games but also not during games and it clearly helped.

I am not a computer and I am not perfect in not missing the next move of myself or my opponent but today  I am certainly better relative to what I was in the past and even without telling myself to look at all legal
it is some automatic thinking of me to look at all the board(Note that it happened some times during CT problems or CTS problems that I missed something simple because of not looking at all the board but solving tactics  is clearly different than OTB games).

Now I think that I can improve by knowing more tactical patterns because one of the problem with  missing tactics are moves that I simply underestimate when I stop the analysis too early and I hope that I can learn to have better intuition about what is good and bad.
 
Even in normal chess you have not infinite time and when you calculate line you need to stop somewhere and decide if it is good or bad
so there are moves that you consider as bad and stop the analysis.

Note that I find the posts of drahacikfm interesting and I do not think that it is bad to train at standard time control but I think that you can do it also in CTS
and there are people who clearly do it and try to solve easy problems with 100% accuracy without caring about time.

practically there are cases when I think few minutes about a problem after failing to solve it in CTS at fast time control so I clearly use CTS also for
thinking at slower time control than blitz.

I find CTS practically better than CT because cases when I blunder in CTS by good but not good enough are rare(if I blunder it is usually a real blunder) when cases when I make good but not good enough in CT happen often.

Inspite of it I trained significant time in CT in blitz lately and I plan to continue hopefully in order to get new blitz rating record.

[drahacikfm]

I find CTS practically better than CT because cases when I blunder in CTS by good but not good enough are rare(if I blunder it is usually a real blunder) when cases when I make good but not good enough in CT happen often.

It is very unusual that you have experienced this.  On CTS, if you can win a queen with one move, or you can win a knight with another move, you will be marked WRONG if you win the knight.  On CT you will NOT be marked wrong for winning the knight. You will be given a message to look for a better move.  This is huge advantage of CT over CTS. 

On CT, you will never be marked wrong for playing a move that has a computer evaluation more than +1.75 (unless you had a mate in 1).  On CTS, in theory, there could be many problems where you are marked wrong for playing a +3.0 or +5.0 move if you had a better move.  CTS does not have any "Good move, look for a better move" message.  Just FAIL.  That is a serious problem with the program design at CTS.  CT is much more advanced in that regard.

Maybe CTS solves the issue of the flaw in their program design by not including any problems that have more than one winning move.  In that case, CTS is missing out on a lot of very interesting and instructive problems!

[uri blass]

My point is that practically there are often cases when I lose points in CT inspite of finding a move that is good enough to win the game only because I fail to find the computer move(it can be missing mate and it can be blundering after getting a message to search for another move and it can be using more time in blitz to find the computer move that also cost rating points) when situations like this do not happen often in CTS.

You can consider it as an advantage of CT but I do not like the fact that I can win the game and still lose rating points(not because of not finding the win fast enough).
 

[drahacikfm]

Your argument is not logical at all.  On CTS you FAIL the problem for a winning move if it is not the best move. On CT you get another chance to get the problem correct.  That is the point.  You are complaining about an advantage!

It is completely irrelevant to the argument if you lose rating for the  problem on CT after getting the "good move message" and then trying a different move.  The point is that you got another chance, but on CTS it is FAIL immediately and losing rating points for a winning move!  Don't you see the big inconsistency in your argument?  You prefer to fail immediately and not get another chance, like on CTS?  Very strange.

[uri blass]

I do not say that I prefer FAIL immediately and my point
is that I prefer one of the following:

1)not getting often problems when there are 2 winning moves
when I can choose the wrong winning move(as happens in CTS)

Never is better but nobody is perfect and in CTS at least I do not have often 2 winning moves that cause me to choose the wrong winning move.

2)not losing rating points for cases when I find a move that is good and not good enough even if I fail to find the computer move.

In OTB games I do not lose rating points for cases when I find a winning move only because my move is a slower win.

Uri

[tama]

Uri,

It is useless to memorize problems,because its the theme that matters and learning how to see and combined all the different themes into a tactic is what CT is about CTS does nothing but force you to think fast and guess moves. OTB people calculate to at least 5 moves fully before making any move, well that's at least how i do it.

[richard]

I do not say that I prefer FAIL immediately and my point
is that I prefer one of the following:

1)not getting often problems when there are 2 winning moves
when I can choose the wrong winning move(as happens in CTS)

Never is better but nobody is perfect and in CTS at least I do not have often 2 winning moves that cause me to choose the wrong winning move.

Because of the rating and problem selection system in place on CTS you will be getting problems that are very easy for your current level of play (compared to CT).  Problems on CTS with more than one winning move (especially where the second winning move is very obvious) will get higher ratings as many people will get them wrong, so you are less likely to see as many of the "double winning move" options until you have a very high CTS rating, especially if you concentrate on being correct and don't care that much about your rating on CTS.

2)not losing rating points for cases when I find a move that is good and not good enough even if I fail to find the computer move.

In OTB games I do not lose rating points for cases when I find a winning move only because my move is a slower win.

There is more than just an aesthetic reason to prefer short mates over long ones.  A mate in 6 is usually much easier to make a calculation mistake in than a mate in 2, so I think there is some advantage in training to find shorter mates.  If you find non-mating material winning moves (where the best move was not a mate in 1) that led to a fail (rather than a "try again" or lost points in blitz due to taking too long), then please post them on the forum as I will disable these examples manually and work on improving the generator so that it does not produce such problems in the future. 

Regards,
Richard.

[uri blass]

Uri,

It is useless to memorize problems,because its the theme that matters and learning how to see and combined all the different themes into a tactic is what CT is about CTS does nothing but force you to think fast and guess moves. OTB people calculate to at least 5 moves fully before making any move, well that's at least how i do it.

Tama,

I disagree that it is useless to memorize problems
I can only agree that memorizing problems is not enough
so I do not claim that it is useless to think about hard problems.

Memorizing a problem for me is not memorizing the solution without understanding why it works.

Memorizing problems can clearly help because a similiar theme to the theme that happened in a problem can happen in analysis of your game.

I do not understand what you mean by
"OTB people calculate to at least 5 moves fully before making any move"

If you mean that you calculate everything that can happen in the next 5 moves then I think that it is impossible and humans are not computers that can do it.

You can hope not to miss logical good moves often if you are a strong player.

Uri