Puzzles are fundamentally flawed

So many of the puzzles are designed so that you can only "win" by throwing your Queen at the opponent's King, with no defending pieces. You get mate, but not checkmate, and the king (in the real world) would just take the Queen and be like "Meh". How is that teaching good strategy?

No real puzzles work that way, so that means you're missing the reason why it's not a mate but a checkmate, or why it leads to checkmate (if it's a queen sacrifice to open up a key weakness in the king's position, the puzzle will generally require you to make the next move as well).

Got any examples of puzzles that you think are wrong in this way? Next time you come across one, post it here and people can explain it to you.

Anyways, for mine there are 2 fundamental flaws in puzzles.

1. You know there's a winning move, somewhere. So you keep looking until you find it. In a real game, you don't know that, so it's way easier to miss. The hope is that by doing the puzzle you'll recognise that pattern if the situation ever does arise in an actual game, but you need to do a lot of puzzles, and it may be a bit of a chicken & egg thing: you need to know the pattern already to solve the puzzle (at least, that seems to be what Hikaru does when he blazes through puzzles at the rate that he can & does)

2. They make you find the best move and won't accept any other winning moves. Who cares if you force checkmate in 4 moves rather than 2? If I miss a checkmate but win their queen, is that really that much of a big deal?

People put far too much stock into how much puzzles actually help with chess development. Yeah, they're good for basic pattern recognition when you're an absolute beginner in easy positions. But not for more complex positions because with puzzles you know there's always a winning move. In a real game you don't get that luxury.

One of the ideas of puzzles is getting to the point where you can recognize patterns. So, you may not have the exact position, but one similar enough that might give a nudge to calculate more deeply. There's not always going to be a tactic there but it can help make that determination.

There's also instances where if you have never seen a tactical idea before and the opportunity arises in a game, you're less likely to find it.

Don't forget that hard puzzles also help train your calculation

Me who actually got to checkmate someone due to it being the exact same mate as a puzzle sequence.

I've done over 200 puzzles now and I've found some solutions were just to find a slight advantage rather than checkmate, e .g. after four moves you loose a knight for a rook.

Might be a better strategy than creating a new account just to post this.

ComeOnNowThisIsReallySilly

In general terms, the point is to find the best continuation.

Of course, checkmates are only a fraction of what the puzzles are about. Usually the point is to find moves that give you either an immediate win or an advantage that is winning, whatever opponent does.

In some cases, the point is to find a solution that saves you from a loss AKA to find the only move that draws the game (though those are rare).

I think the idea is to teach us boldness and vision, but yeah, in the real world, the king’s reaction would be, 'Cool trick, now what?' Maybe they’re secretly prepping us for cinematic chess where style points matter more than strategy. 🎥♟️