Credit
These settings all come from the excellent blog post by Alex Crompton called How To Learn Chess As An Adult. For more details on why to use these settings, start there. That also has a list of great tactics courses to study.
Seriously, you should go read that article.
I just made this “cheat-sheet” for quick reference for myself when I am starting a new tactics course on Chessable. All of the great tweaks from Alex, without all the details.
Course Settings
| Setting | Value | |
|---|---|---|
| Study | Key Moves | |
| Review | Whole Variation | |
| Reps | 1 | |
| Depth | Full Depth | |
| Soft fail | Retry on alternative good move | |
| Time | 60 seconds | |
| Tactics | Solve problem | |
| Schedule | see below |
The only one I’ve changed from the original recommendation is the time, from 8 seconds to 60. I found 8 seconds was too fast for me.
For the schedule, use these settings:
Level 1: 1 day 16 hours
Level 2: 4 days 16 hours
Level 3: 10 days 16 hours
Level 4: 24 days 16 hours
Level 5: 56 days 16 hours
Level 6: 128 days 16 hours
Level 7: 296 days 16 hours
Level 8: 681 days 16 hours
Move Trainer Settings
For these, start learning a variation and click the gear (on the web) to get to settings. I think these apply to all courses
| Setting | Value | |
|---|---|---|
| Time up action | stop timer | |
| Enable retry | on | |
| Max retries for a mistake | 1 | |
| Retry action | stop timer | |
| Time up action for retry | stop timer | |
| Highlight legal moves | off |