Will 14 Days of Puzzle Rush or Storm Help Your Chess?

Results, diagrams, shared thoughts, and prizes!

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Will 14 Days of Puzzle Rush or Storm Help Your Chess?

150,244 puzzles have been solved in 6,389 runs of either Puzzle Rush or Puzzle Storm by the 89 participants in the 14-day puzzle rush/storm challenge. That is 1688 puzzles each ~ 31% of the Polgar book (much harder). 50 out of 89 stayed all 14 days and can say they completed the challenge.

14-Days of Puzzle Rush (Storm) Challenge

The rules for the challenge were the following:

- Do a minimum of 1 puzzle rush each day, but aim for 30-60 min.
- Register your results in a Google Sheet with the other participants
- If you do not use chess.com you can enter and do the challenge with Lichess Puzzle Storm

Key Results

• 56% of the participants managed to complete the challenge.

• The group that solved Puzzle Rush saw their results improve more compared to the group that solved Puzzle Storm.

• The participants that solved the most puzzles during the challenge did not improve their results as much as the rest. The Puzzle Storm solvers got worse results toward the end.

• The challenge did not seem to improve the ability to get stable scores.

• The day with the highest scores in the challenge was on day 3, while the worst day was on day 1 with many low scores.

The Results

During the challenge, the participant completed on average 5 runs of puzzle rush or puzzle storm per day. As you can see on this diagram the eagerness to solve many runs was highest on day 2 and then dropped towards the end.

As mentioned 89 participants started out. However, as we all know making room for a new habit takes time and it can be hard when the rush of the first days of the puzzle rush is over and it starts becoming a grind. One takeaway from these charts should be to repeat the mantra “Chess improvement is not a sprint - but a marathon”. We need to ration our resources and not use them all on the first days or weeks.

But did we get any better from taking part in this daily struggle to find time for puzzle rushes? The next chart shows the average score across the whole group of participants for each day. In my opinion, it seems fair to say that there was a progression in the averages.

However, for the Puzzle Storm group, it seems that the progression was minimal!

I find it interesting that there is a difference between Puzzle Rush and Puzzle Storm, but I’m unsure what explains it. It seems like that time is more predominant in Puzzle Storm, since there is added time and substracted time. This may enforce bad habits like guessing.

While Puzzle Rush starts out with easier puzzles compared to Puzzle Storm they also get harder towards the end, which might help you calculate. However, I would like to get your input about this.

My next idea was to check if the results were affected by those participants who did the most runs, and whom we should expect to improve the most due to their efforts. Therefore, I have made two diagrams with the data from the participants who completed more than 100 runs during the 14 days ~ 7 runs per day.

The results actually show that the top performers gained a lower average improvement in Puzzle Rush and for Puzzle Stormers it went negative. That the results went the wrong way might serve as a caution for making Puzzle Storming your only chess activity. It suggests that mere volume might not be as important as the quality of practice.

Another thing I have calculated is the average score difference per day for the whole group. So what is the difference between the highest score and lowest score reported by participants, and then taking the average of them?

As you can see there does not seem to be any change. So doing many Puzzle Rushes or Puzzle Storms does not seem to make your performance more stable.

Finally, let us check out when the participants scored their top 3 highest and low scores. I made a new high score on day 3 or 4, and so it seems like many others did as well. While most had their worst score on day 1 and managed to become less rusty throughout the challenge.

Before we go on I would like to say that it's important to remember that while these results might hold for the particular group that was studied, they might not generalize to all chess players, particularly given the short time frame (14 days) and the fact that participation was self-selected and not all completed.

Some Thoughts From The Participants

”I joined because my coach recommended doing many "simple" puzzles to help raise my floor, and I had just bought Chessable's 1001 Exercises for Beginners when you announced this. Though I don't consider myself a beginner, I do feel that both have really helped my board vision. 

Right around the time I started this Puzzle Rush challenge, I joined a 3-day tournament and ended up doing pretty well, despite a recent lose streak prior to that tournament. Overall, I've enjoyed it, and I will probably try to keep up daily with Puzzle Storm. I don't feel like my actual PS score improved much over the 14 days, but that may just be my own bias; I'll be very curious to see the data.”

”I completed most of the challenge, but missed a few days. I really enjoyed it, but there were a few days that got super busy and I was exhausted so I didn't complete those days.

I really liked following along on Twitter and Substack. It helped me stay excited as my chess journey is relatively lonely since I play primarily online and only when I can make some time. The challenge and the social aspect also helped to raise my confidence with puzzle solving and chess in general.”

“My first day was wildly high, so I removed it to show the following graphs. I'm definitely on an upward trend for mean score, but more importantly (and what I wrote in substack) is that my standard deviation is going down. This was mostly from having a mix of lower scores and higher scores, and working on not missing easy questions. Now, I'm consistently getting over 20 and my scores are closer together. 

Other thoughts:

• I definitely have to be in a calm quiet environment to do well. If there are minor distractions, it affects the score.

• When I had 30-40 seconds on the clock, I often got flustered and started making quicker moves, which led to getting questions wrong and stopping. But later in the 2 weeks, I was calmer, which usually got me another question or two right and I finished the 5 minutes without 3 errors.

I hope that helps! This was fun - thanks for organizing.”

“I apologise for not sticking with it.  I found it to be extremely frustrating and in the end, detrimental to my enjoyment of chess.

After a brief uptick, where my average (and maximum) scores improved… things got rapidly worse as I found the whole process was actually “training” me to rush the solving process and make bad decisions (particularly around puzzle 15 onwards).  I stopped recording because my scores were, I felt, not reflecting my ability or effort. 

I’ve gone back to survival mode, and this has helped me a bit. 

I hope that the experiment yields some interesting results, and that you found it useful yourself.  For me, trying to beat a score led to both bad process and lack of enjoyment.”

“It was fun to have something to work toward every day. I mostly do puzzles outside of puzzle rush (rated ~2200 on chess.com), but when I do puzzle rush it's almost always Survival mode on chess.com. I focus on getting every problem right, even if it takes several minutes to solve.

I believe I hit my all-time record in 5 min puzzle rush toward the beginning of the 14 days (28 in a run). Since then it was much more variable, around 15-21 per run I would do.

I'm a working father of two young kids, and it has been a tough couple of weeks for sleep. I think I missed a day or two because I'm so busy. I would often do the runs later in the evening after a full day when I was feeling tired. I found it hard to calculate at the end of the day, and probably caused some erratic scores. I was also only able to do a run or two most days, but on days where I would do three, or four I felt I had time to warm up a little and set a better score.

Anecdotally, I would sometimes get one or two "simple" problems in the 200-500 rating range incorrect early on which would put me one one remaining failure for the rest of the run. I wonder if I'm just primed to look for some multi-move combinations based on the puzzles I'm usually served, as opposed to a capturing hanging piece during puzzle rush.

Very curious to see how everyone else did!”

“I had never done Puzzle Rush, and I didn’t like it. It took me a week to realize that after three mistakes you’re out. I was surprised how quickly 5 minutes felt sometimes. If I had known that, I would have taken longer on some puzzles, instead of rushing them. But then again, I thought that rushing them was the point. I don’t think I improved in any way, either my chess play or my puzzle-rushing skills.

But I think I’ll continue doing it, if your evidence suggests that it can help to improve.”

“I’m not sure it improved my overall score or affected my pattern recognition *much*, but there were some motifs which I became familiar enough with to instantly recognise.
I competed at least 2 or 3 puzzle storms each day, sometimes more, usually on my phone out of necessity, but would have a preference for the laptop when possible.

The only comment I would have is that I made sure to go back over the failed puzzles on each run before starting another. For me, this was an important part of the learning.

Sometimes I would get lucky and spot the ideas immediately and other times I could get off to a bad start and lose a lot of time, often through rushing too much.

Another observation I would have about my play is that when I was initially slow to spot the idea, I would often get it wrong once I made an attempt, thereby losing on the double.”

“I dropped after 10 days because my chess.com sub ran out; since they raised the prices I'm not interested in re-newing. Also my scores didn't improve, and that wasn't super motivating. 

So, a couple of things I noticed: Like I said, my scores didn't go up at all. In fact, my average dropped. I think this is because I made myself do the Rushes even when I wasn't particularly focused, and moving on instinct more than actual calculation. So now I know my first instincts aren't particularly good ;). 

Which brings me to my second point: My range is huge. I average 20 on an okay/average run, with the highest being 30, but my lowest was 9 (oops), with also several 11 and 13's thrown in there. Just moving too fast and snap-taking things without properly checking the board. Normally I would ignore those 'bad run's or just stop after the first mistake, but having to keep track for the challenge made that impossible. 

I still do my one daily puzzle rush now, because I want to break my record of 30; and keeping score made me realize that I really need to take my time and properly check the board before moving.”

I hope you found it interesting to read from the others competing in the challenge.

Most Completed Runs

Puzzle Rush wolfpawn,220 🥇 krolth45,158 🥈 speelcheck,134 🥉 nvisel,131 dromm,105 ddonddon,102 towngas,94 jenesuispasdave,82 gardinersbay,74 kiwipete,73 curiousjackdaw,69 classicfilmfan,65 horvok,59 jeremykeillor,59 southernrun,58 say chess,58 sonsie,55 vincentraia,51 e4e5hashtag_jr,51 oriah11chess,48 diogoudmijn,48 edhans,46 adburn,40 sholom90,40 mwakanosya,39 trishl38,38 chavezo,35 derbyknight,33 gg,33 desouzabobbr,30 plagegeist ,27 st3ptro,26 eoinl,24 thebowtieclub,22 irishiain,21 derbyknight ,21 ubikdojo,19 gardinersbay ,19 fredr,18 mr-sigma,18 lbroekman,18 garethc75,17 ckbega,16 dadlifechess,16 benji,15 sahope ,15 randomtask45,14 southernrun ,9 funnyfella32,8 garethc75 ,8 banawalikar ,7 jenesuispadave,6 banawalikar,6 vincentraia1@gmail.com,5 andrewrimmer,4 mentosovitz,4 skakikaki,3 plagegeist,3 jeremykeillor ,3 trishl38 ,3 ianrossstewart,2 stoppedclock,2 curiousjackdaw ,1 prawnsbro,1 edhans ,1 lbroekman ,1 mwakanosya ,1 Puzzle Storm spensercode,310 🥇 dothemath,220 🥈 thinkerteacher,210 🥉 retirado,168 tim43,160 medvezhonok,158 jk_182,158 mkac,136 mmott01,130 basilhenrick@gmail.com,125 figgeous,122 chessilla,119 chess_vegan,113 hugo,109 steve p,107 bebetter14,107 tone_fresh,104 yar_33,102 eaintree,100 kiwipete,98 sahope ,93 theonozone,90 rufusson_dufus,86 tiagofernandes,80 fattah1987 ,79 pelegri1,79 lepad,69 johnsb50,51 michelevski,48 art_of_fugue,46 johnsb50 ,45 humbug,41 mainsequence,38 oldguy67,37 dmac91,32 totaltoast,28 eydun,25 chesswurmotb,20 randomtask45,16 ttm,15 lucas236,15 kapibarr,14 jekatas,11 spenercode,10 jordi,10 chesspersontrying,10 harsha_s,9 airymountain,7 miskobgd,6 goujonan,6 galenmortlock ,6 totaltoast ,6 humbu,5 basilhenrick@gmail.com ,4 retiradpo,3 art_of_fuge,3 bebette14,3 tiago fernandes,2 basilhenrick@gmail,2 banawalikar ,1

To honor those who managed to put in many hours I have decided to give a 1-year paid subscription to the no. 1 finishers, a 6-month paid subscription to no. 2 finishers, and a 3-month paid subscription to no. 3 finishers.

I’m planning to do an interview with Ono, who has taken part in the challenge as well to talk a bit more about the results and the experience.

#7 Interview with Ono about blunders, how to avoid them, and coaching chess beginners (Podcast)

Finally, I just want to say thank you to all who participated and contributed by filling out the report form. I hope you gained something from the experience.

/Martin