Chess puzzles as a tool for changing thinking patterns

I am a senior player and have been playing intermittently for over 50 years. In the last few years I have played online chess at Chess.com then switched to Li-chess. I found I hit a "brick wall" many years ago where I never improved beyond intermediate level. About 6 months ago I became frustrated at my inability to improve and I was enjoying chess less. I think I have good insight into my failings but identifying my flaws did not result in the changes in my patterns of thinking. I decided to stop playing for a while and focus on breaking those embedded and seemingly petrified cognitive thinking patterns. Like a wheel getting stuck in deep ruts I was making the same errors over and over again. I have been using intuition too much to decide my moves with minimal calculation. Magnus Carlsen said in a recent interview that he knows almost immediately the correct move but he said he stills calculates all the variations just to confirm his preferred move. Chess puzzles have helped me reprogram my thinking and I now have improved my puzzle rating from about 1600 to 2300. It has taken thousands and thousands of puzzles. I will be interested to see if improvement in chess puzzle rating translates to stronger play. I will still use intuition to decide candidate moves but will have the self discipline to analyse variations deeper and hopefully reduce inaccuracies errors and in particular, blunders.

27 000 solved puzzles ???? WOW ! Thats a lot ... good job!

Yeah, I knew it had passed 20,000 but I didn't realised it was over 27,000! I generally go through them for about an hour a day. I think the first 10,000 saw me hover between 1500 and 1800. I then increased my thinking time from 10 seconds to about 15 seconds and my successes improved to about 1900. I then changed what moves I was contemplating as initial candidates after watching a YouTube tutorial by a WGM (can't remember her name), She went through a move by move breakdown of how a GM comes to a decision and then eliminates line is a step by step way. It was a tremendous help and I have gone from 1900 to 2300 on puzzles in about 3 weeks. I know this probably doesn't automatically translate to an improvement in game performance but I am hopeful.

I think you can be optmistic about that helping in actual games. :)
Especially blitz chess really is all about the tactics so if you just manage to get you new tactic skills on the board you should do well.

Thank you my friend. You have made me laugh really hard. :))

Who told you to do 1 puzzle per 10 seconds for such a long time?

And only now after 50 years of experience you have raised 300 points in 6 days.

Also if you study 1 hour per day, in your case ( acc. to your stats. on your profile ) rough estimation 100 puzzles / 60min, which is 0,6 min per puzzle which does really mean those 10/15 seconds per move. Mathematically still it can be true what you said.

You must be a genius and dont even know it :DDD

So I can not be 100 percent sure but I think you are lying somewhere.

If you are not lying then it only can mean that it took you 10 000 puzzles to realise that you should use more time when solving a problem. But as this is BS I consider this as a lie.
Why it could not take you such long time ( 10 000 puzzles ) to realise you should use more time?
It is just because you are spending time when you dont know something which means that it is not something which should be learnt...it is something which everybody does naturally.

So the solution must be that your statement is false and it can not be taken into consideration.

Q.E.D.

I never used a stop watch to time my moves so I am only guessing at the exact time. I know that I was running through the puzzles more rapidly in the beginning and often doing the puzzles was in a half-hearted manner and it just became a habit to kill time and as a form of relaxation. I sometimes thought that I never could improve. From time to time I contemplated taking it more seriously and then started watching YouTube videos posted
by such players as Suren, King Crusher and many others. After consciously using more time to decide the initial move I made a little progress but I was still stuck with flawed thinking. The biggest improvement came with changing the way I was solving puzzles by recently adopting the methodical approach recommended by a WGM on YouTube. Sometimes it takes a long time for the "penny to drop" with some people. I am a slow learner but persistent. I posted my contribution in good faith and I think you are very pretentious to make such judgemental and ill considered, derogatory comments about someone you don't know and have never met. Your friend??? What do say to your enemies?

Please droceretik, could you find me the name of the WGM who helped your tactics? I am very interested.
Many thanks in advance

Qe7

ouest.
Powerful Chess Calculation Techniques by GM Nadya Kosintseva [Master Method]
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u8t0aZL3Ew&t=2650s
Not tactics really but methodical thinking process.

Congrats on hitting 2300 in puzzle rateing.
Iv recently started to enjoy puzzles more then playing, I hover around 1800. Some of the puzzles I could sit alday and never come up with correct move.