Post by Radrook Admin on Apr 6, 2024 18:27:38 GMT -5
Careful Practicing Puzzles Demanding Quickness
Yes, solving those puzzles quickly is fun. Yes, they do provide certain skills in pattern recognition. Also, quickness is indeed an advantage. Especially when you are playing rapid, blitz, or bullet, without any time increments.
However, and unfortunately, there is a very serious downside that I just discovered after spending hours and solving hundreds of puzzles. What downside? Well, solving puzzles quickly can lead to sloppiness based on responding to positions during competition automatically as one had been easily and successfully doing during practice.
You see, after just having finished a long session of solving such puzzles, I suddenly found myself responding quickly to complex situations, after quick glances. Exactly as I had been doing with the puzzles.
Well, there were no ego-stroking buzzes or jingling bells immediately telling me I had succeed this time around. Instead, this time I was quickly and repeatedly being countered with devastating combinations during which my positions, which I had smugly deemed sturdy, were being easily demolished as if I had been a duffer. .
Result? I lost five games in a row in blitz against players who, very obviously, and unlike me, were indeed accurately evaluating the nuances inherent in double-edged tactical positions.
Well, at first I was both greatly annoyed and bitterly baffled. How could I, the good puzzle-solver, be repeatedly making so many serious mistakes? Then, after finally calming down, I suddenly, realized what was going on. The very skill I had been just recently and so confidently honing was doing me in!
So in order to test my theory, I decided to play at a slower time control, allowed myself some increment, and Voila and Bingo! I finally managed to win one.
So, no mi buen amigo. Unfortunately, and sadly, you are not super-smart for solving all those puzzles quickly. You see, contrary to what your ambitious ego prefers to tell you, such puzzles were either designed, or else chosen to be quickly solved, without offering the opposing side any effective counter play.
In total contrast, the tactical situations encountered in these games were not chosen because they were inevitably winnable by my side. Or selected because there is no effective counter play. They were double-edged, and needed to be approached cautiously.
So what was quickly working on the puzzles, was repeatedly backfiring as I kept falling into what should have been obvious traps, which I had naively assumed were non-existent because, hoist on my own proud petard, I failed to take such a dangerous possibility into proper consideration.
However, and unfortunately, there is a very serious downside that I just discovered after spending hours and solving hundreds of puzzles. What downside? Well, solving puzzles quickly can lead to sloppiness based on responding to positions during competition automatically as one had been easily and successfully doing during practice.
You see, after just having finished a long session of solving such puzzles, I suddenly found myself responding quickly to complex situations, after quick glances. Exactly as I had been doing with the puzzles.
Well, there were no ego-stroking buzzes or jingling bells immediately telling me I had succeed this time around. Instead, this time I was quickly and repeatedly being countered with devastating combinations during which my positions, which I had smugly deemed sturdy, were being easily demolished as if I had been a duffer. .
Result? I lost five games in a row in blitz against players who, very obviously, and unlike me, were indeed accurately evaluating the nuances inherent in double-edged tactical positions.
Well, at first I was both greatly annoyed and bitterly baffled. How could I, the good puzzle-solver, be repeatedly making so many serious mistakes? Then, after finally calming down, I suddenly, realized what was going on. The very skill I had been just recently and so confidently honing was doing me in!
So in order to test my theory, I decided to play at a slower time control, allowed myself some increment, and Voila and Bingo! I finally managed to win one.
So, no mi buen amigo. Unfortunately, and sadly, you are not super-smart for solving all those puzzles quickly. You see, contrary to what your ambitious ego prefers to tell you, such puzzles were either designed, or else chosen to be quickly solved, without offering the opposing side any effective counter play.
In total contrast, the tactical situations encountered in these games were not chosen because they were inevitably winnable by my side. Or selected because there is no effective counter play. They were double-edged, and needed to be approached cautiously.
So what was quickly working on the puzzles, was repeatedly backfiring as I kept falling into what should have been obvious traps, which I had naively assumed were non-existent because, hoist on my own proud petard, I failed to take such a dangerous possibility into proper consideration.