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Comment by danmaz74 | Hacker News Reader

Spaced repetitions for openings make a lot of sense, but in my experience they work better for tactics. I improved a lot with a hacked up solution combining puzzles and spaced repetitions, and then created a website to make it easier for anybody to adopt that approach: https://chess.braimax.com

Lately I've been very busy with my day job, but I'm almost ready to get back to developing that website. Suggestions are welcome.

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I'm curious how spaced repetition is applicable to tactics? I don't dispute it, it's been popular since The Woodpecker Method [1], but I never quite got the point. Intuitively, spaced repetition helps memorization, but tactics is about learning patterns and maybe generalizing ideas. What's your take on what it brings to tactics?

[1] https://qualitychess.co.uk/products/2/327/the_woodpecker_met...

It's a common phenomenon - you look at a puzzle, fail to solve it, then look at the solution and move on. Then come back to that same puzzle some days later and still can't solve it/remember the solution.

So it's questionable whether you really learned anything the first time. If the exact same position showed up in your game, you'd probably have missed the correct move.

That's ultimately the purpose of repetitive training systems like spaced repetition and the woodpecker method (which is somewhat different from spaced repetition, actually).

Our brains are great at generalizing. Seeing (and recognizing )the same pattern several times makes it much easier to spot it later. And I found out that this works even better if you focus on a specific pattern for some time, working your way from easier to more difficult examples. I definitely improved a lot with this.

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