I used to be able to get to 2300-2400 elo with a lot of patience in the puzzle ratings, now with the new puzzles the solution doesn't give you a clear winning position anymore and it made it much harder for me to distinguish what the correct moves are, I cant even get to 2200 elo anymore even if I think about them a long time.
The new puzzles are often about gaining smaller advantages which I found much harder.
It feels the new puzzles are more about finding good moves instead of winning moves.
I also dropped a lot of points and i probably will drop even more. But i think thats cool. It resembles my strength better. Also i win more/lose less points per solved/unsolved puzzle. This used to be very unbalanced, like win 2 points when solved and lose 20 when not solved. All in all i think its a huge improvement.
I like the new puzzles, but they are indeed much harder. I think we need to get used to this new situation. Everybody's rating is decreasing, I think.
But i agree that sometimes the 'puzzles' dont seem to be real puzzles and they contain no beautiful tactical blows etc. Still they are good for calculation training as these are only moves.
I have lost my ratings as well, my peak rating here was 2360 and my usual was 2200+ but now I am struggling to get over 2150 again.
This is what Chess Tempo has been doing from the beginning btw which is better in my opinion. My highest rating on CT was 2050 so this also proves that more subtle and ordinary moves are a lot harder to find than finding forcing combinations and fun tactics.
Lichess tactics ratings were massively inflated, so yes the puzzles are more difficult but thats not a bad thing.
Something I would like to see is similar to
playchess.com a tactics trainer against the clock (there you have 5 minutes to solve as many as possible), ideally with varying difficulties of the puzzles.
Calculating the long and difficult tactics of the tactics trainer is nice and all, but then you lose the blitz game because you just blunder something stupidly... So if one could play those speedruns I think they would really improve the speed with which one can assess and calculate positions. (and thats also useful for slow OTB games)
@MoistvonLipwig i dont like the against-the-clock idea, but if it is optional im fine with it.
^^ I like to take my time on them, and understand the idea behind them, if it was timed I wouldn't understand it as well and I'd certainly be lower rated.
I think that you can learn a lot more with this new type of puzzles. Previously, it was almost always a check in the first move ...
Now you do not know: Is it about checkmating? Or just winning a knight (which is sufficient for winning the game)? That is much closer to the problem you have in a real game.
Yet, it is still all about finding a winning move. I have not found a puzzle yet where you can force a draw in a weak position or something like that..
@EmEx You would be lower rated in the tactics trainer but not necessarily in the actual chess game. In a game you don't have the time to consider everything fully, such tactics can occur somewhere deep in your search (when you make strategical decisions and such) and if you are too slow solving them you will just run out of time.
@SelfmateMan Sure, there's nothing wrong with making it optional so everyone can choose what they want to do.