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Are Tactic puzzles good for improvement?
There are several purposes for doing tactical puzzles:
a) to increase a scope of tactical patterns and tactical ideas;
b) to enrich own games with learned patterns and ideas;
c) to deepen and to improve calculation skills.
Doing puzzles is necessary, if you want to develop your own skills. However, there is one thing which many coaches misses to mention: solving puzzles does not ensure that you will able to create own tactical plans in the games.
I believe many players would confirm that generation of tactical plans demands much efforts and that the majority of players are not born with that gift. I have to say that there are othermeans for increasing tactical skills. There are some board games where a player must generate tactical plans for winning, therefore, these games can orient your thinking process towards tactical play.
For draughts players I do recommend to practice halma games (including Camelot, Suffragetto, Chinese checkers) and Kōnane (sometimes called Hawaiian checkers). Halma games will help to build proper structures, but Kōnane will help to use in-between moves. A good site for these games is glukkazan.github.io/ .
Tactics, just like chess study in general, is about quality over quantity. It won’t matter how many tactics you study, it won’t matter how many hours a day you put in. If you don’t thoroughly understand the problem you’re working on, it’s a waste of time. If you aren’t understanding the theme, pawn structure, position, weakness(es), piece placement, moves that lead up to that position, you’re not going to fully understand what you’re studying. This is why the idea that you need to solve tactics as fast as possible so your "online" rating doesn’t suffer is bull.
Thanks,
𝗔𝗻𝗼𝗻𝘆𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗡𝗲𝘄𝗔𝗰𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁
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