Update on TacticsLadder.com

Starting something new is always a bit frightening. What if it goes wrong? That is how I have been feeling about launching TacticsLadder.com. So far, it is going well. After I sent out the mail on 7 December to all of you that the site was open, around 175 users made an account, and over 15.000 puzzle attempts have been recorded. Amazing start and thank you for all the constructive feedback!

Some like the site a lot while others complained a bit about the speed of the puzzle loading. So I have spent quite some time improving the back- and frontend to deliver the puzzles faster. While there are still things to improve, I’m happy with the progress I have made.

While figuring this out I have also gained new respect for the people behind Lichess, how do they deliver puzzles and games instantly. How is that site soo fast!?

2024-25 wrapped

A #chesspunks post from Bluesky

The time of recaps, wraps, and goal-setting is also upon us. I have not formulated many chess goals myself, yet, but I’m considering entering a weekly OTB tournament starting at the end of January. I have felt recently that my chess calculation and focus have been going downhill, so the best cure is to practice this muscle by playing long games again. I miss this to be honest, I just need the last push to make it happen.

For TacticsLadder.com I plan to improve the overall system and fix more bugs, while I’m also working on adding a collection of 10.000 mate-in-two puzzles that are selected based on having relatively few pieces (3-10) and a scoring system I setup that evaluates chess positions based on how much computational effort they require, their tactical richness, and their overall complexity. I have used the dataset used in this series from last year:

Why Nd4 Most Likely Is the Solution - Searching Through 180,828 Mate in Two Problems - Part IV

Finally, there is the newsletter. I have realized that while building and coding the new site I have not also been able to write a weekly newsletter. Building something new and learning new skills is time-consuming, but also rewarding. The plan still is to write to you once a week moving into the new year. Hopefully also with some updates from my own games..

/Martin