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When arriving at the solve tactics page a problem will be presented for solving. You will be first shown the last move of the opponent, then it us up to you to choose the correct sequence of moves. Pieces are moved by clicking and dragging them to their new position. If you decide not to move the piece you are dragging, you can drop it back on its original position. If you select the correct sequence of moves you will be shown your rating change and if the "continue on correct" option is selected you will automatically be given another problem to solve.
If you enter a wrong move, the problem will be marked as incorrect. If the "continue on failed problem" option is not selected you will then be able to move forwards and backwards through the correct moves using the directional arrows at the bottom of the board. You can use the directional arrows at any time, but if you were still in problem solving mode, use of the arrows will cause the problem to be marked incorrect. To move on to the next problem, click the "Next Problem" button. If you click "Next Problem" when in problem solving mode, the current problem will be marked incorrect before moving on.
The color of the knight in the top left of the screen (labeled "To Play") indicates the color of the pieces you are controlling. The board is also rotated if your are playing the black pieces.
The digital time display in the top left corner is the amount of time taken to solve the current problem. This is used for determining your rating change during blitz rated games.
The blitz rating type uses the amount of time taken to solve the problem in order to calculate your ratings change after a win. Standard ratings only depend on correctness and ignores the time taken. You can choose the rating type of the next problem by selecting either "Standard" or "Blitz" for your problem set, which are shown under the move navigation buttons.
For tactical sequences that do not end in mate, the ongoing moves suggested by computer analysis can be viewed. After the problem has been marked, or when in problem viewing mode, you can click on the computer icon next to the forward and back buttons. This will extend the move sequence beyond what was required for a correct problem and show the full analysis of the 'best' line as seen by the chess engine. The moves in the computer line are not checked for ambiguity so should be seen as a suggested line, not the only line possible.
Tags allow users to tag problems with the category they think most appropriate for the current problem. The tags for the current problem are shown under the problem rating in the top left corner of the tactics display. These are designed to characterize the nature of the tactics found within the current problem. If you are logged in , you can vote for new tags, or if you disagree with a tag , you can cast a vote against it. All votes are tallied up and if votes for a tag outweigh votes against, then the tag will be displayed. Each user can only select one tag per problem. When problems are first added to the system, they have no tags.
The rating system is inspired by an idea implemented at the Chess Tactics Server. CTS treats both problem solvers and the problems as opponents with their own ratings and adjusts their rating after problem completion (or failure) based on the Glicko ratings system.
For blitz style games, time taken to solve problems is considered and an extra bonus is given for problems solved quickly. The solver gets a larger rating increase for problems solved quicker than one standard deviation from the average time taken for that problem. For problems solved faster than average but less than one standard deviation from the average, the normal Glicko based adjustment is made. If the problem is solved in slower than average time then the Glicko rating adjustment is reduced in proportion to how much slower than average the problem was solved. Very slow solutions may result in losing rating points, however you will never lose more points than you would if you simple got the problem wrong.
It is important to note that after a recent change to time handling in blitz mode, time taken after the first move is punished more severely than time taken before making your first move. The intention of this feature is to discourage 'incremental' guessing to try and solve a problem, rewarding users who sum up the situation before making their move sequence. Users who prefer to use an incremental approach may still do so, however their rating will be lower than users at the same level who think out the solutions first.
Normal Glicko adjustments are made for standard ratings with no penalty for time taken. Problems marked incorrect cause the rating of that problem to increase and the solver's rating to decrease as dictated by normal Glicko rating calculations.
Each user has a chance of receiving any of the problems in the system. However it is more likely that problems with a rating close to the rating of the user will be chosen. As the user rating increases, so does the probability that they will be given more difficult problems.
The Toga II chess engine is used to evaluate positions from real games and a purpose built application analyses and directs the analysis in order to discover tactical positions and their resulting moves. Finding the positions and moves takes a great deal of computing time, therefore the tactics finder is designed to run on multiple machines with a central controller aggregating the results. Some attempt is made to determine ambiguous positions and these are discarded. The tactics finder application is not perfect and "bad" or incorrect problems can slip through, when found these problems are used as test examples to help improve the quality of the problem generator.
As the tactics are taken from a database of real games, occaisonally games with hung pieces are encountered. These could be eliminated, however it has been decided to leave them in. Some players (i.e. myself :-) ) can still miss these simple opportunites, so it was decided making them part of the problem set may be useful. Those players who don't make these mistakes should have ratings high enough that they don't get presented with these problems very often.
If you think you've found a problem where the solution is wrong or ambiguous the best thing to do is to add a comment to the problem. Providing details and proposed move sequences helps greatly in responding to problem reports. "1. Nf3 also wins" is much more useful than, "This problem sucks." :-)
Depends on who you talk to :-) . Initially Chess Tempo did not exclude mate problems with longer alternatives. For example, problems existed in the set where there was say a mate in 8 but users were marked wrong for finding a mate in 9. Understandably many users found this frustrating and more recent versions of the problem set have removed most of the longer mate issues. Problems with mates where longer mates exist are still allowed , but the criteria for when a problem with a longer mate is allowed in the problem set is now much more strict. The only situation where a mate in N position will have a mate in N+1 is for mate on the next move positions. Users are currently expected to find a mate in 1 even if there is a mate in 2 available. For mate in 2, only problems where the longer mate is at least mate in 4 will remain in the set, for longer mates, the longer alternatives must be at least 3 moves longer for the problem to be deemed valid. This means that if a user finds a mate in 4 the shortest alternative mate would be mate in 7. If the user does find the mate in 7 instead of the mate in 4 they will still be marked wrong. The situation where the user gets marked wrong for say a mate in 6 when there was a mate in 5 as "best move" should no longer happen, as these problems should have all been removed from the problem set.
Computer assistance is not allowed when doing rated blitz and standard problems. When detected, computer use while the problem is live may lead to rating point reductions. Repeated computer assistance may lead to account removal and permanent banning. Note, that users are welcome to use computers to analyse the problem after the problem is complete. The prohibited behaviour referred to here is where the user inputs the live position into a chess engine and uses the computer analysis to attempt to enter the correct moves, thus artificially increasesing the user's rating.
If users suspect others of inappropriate computer use, please do not make allegations in the forum, instead email richard@chesstempo.com with your concerns.
The view problems page has an "All Comments" tab that allows you to see a table of all comments in the system. By default the comments list is sorted by most recent first, but you can also sort by username, problem # and commenter rating by clicking on the relevant column headings. Clicking on the problem # for any of the comments loads that problem and allows you to view the problem, all its comments, and add to the comments if desired.
The view problems page has an "All Problems" tab, this displays a table with all currently enabled problems. Clicking on the appropriate column headings allow you to sort problems by that columns criteria. Multiple clicks on the column heading allows you to change the order of the sorting.
The preferences link in the upper right of the screen (underneath the user detail display) allows users to choose chess piece style and piece size.
The stats page (linked to via the navigation bar at the top of all Chess Tempo pages), shows the user's recent problems, summary stats (current rating, highest rating, highest rank etc) and graphs of the user's blitz and standard ratings.
The users page shows a list of active users. By default an active user is a user with an RD below 80. This value can be changed to see a list of less or more active users. By the default users are included based on being active in either blitz or standard, users can also choose to see users active in only one of blitz or standard or those who are currently active in both. The users list can be sorted by clicking on the column header of the required sort field.
The 'View Problems' page has a 'My Comments' tab which shows all of the comments for each problem you have commented on. The problems which have had comments added most recently are shown first which allows you to see any new comments.
Two main reasons. Firstly having a user's FIDE or USCF id number allows Chess Tempo to verify and display (not implemented yet) any titles the user may hold. Both FIDE and USCF also provide a search interface to see historicaly rating changes for the user. This allows us to do statistical analysis comparing the relationships between real game ratings and chess tempo user ratings. By looking at what is common between users who improve their over the board rating whilst using Chess Tempo and those who don't it will be possible to provide better advice on "best practice" approaches to tactics training using Chess Tempo. Providing your ID is completely optional, so don't worry if you don't have one, or prefer not to enter it.
Chess Tempo was developed by Richard Jones (the guy writing this FAQ :-) ), you can contact me by emailing richard@chesstempo.com
I had become frustrated with the number of tactical blunders I kept making in my own games. After looking at some free desktop tactics training tools, I thought it might be fun to write a web based trainer that others could also use. So I got started coding. Part way through this, I stumbled upon Chess Tactics Server. CTS had done a good job of implementing much of the functionality I was interested in seeing and I considered ditching my own project. However CTS was missing a few features I had on my wishlist and given I had already written at least half of my own application I decided to forge ahead. Unfortunately, coding has taken up more time than tactics solving so I'm still making all those silly tactical blunders :-) I hope others find Chess Tempo useful in improving their game.
Go to the view problems page, click on the "all problems" tab then click on the "Search Problems..." button. Choose your search criteria, then click the "Search" button and the problem list will return with only those problems matching your search criteria.
Follow the procedures to perform a problem set search and then click on the "Create Problem Set" button. The search criteria will be used to create a new problem set which includes only the types of problems specified in the search. These problem sets are dynamic and if problem status changes over time the included problems are automatically updated. For example if you create a problem set which includes problems you got wrong then new mistakes will be automatically added to the set. Similarly if you create a set with a rating range of 1500-2000 and in the future problems have their ratings updated to fall within that range then they will automatically be included in the problem set.
Extended and newly created problem sets are selected using the same interface used to select between blitz and standard problems. Silver and Gold members should see additional problem set options. User defined problem sets can be found under the "Personal" folder in the problem set selection interface.
When viewing a problem in the tactics or view problems page you can view the start position in PGN format by clicking on the "Show Start PGN" button. You can paste the PGN into your chess engine to perform further analysis on the position.