Tactic or Not: a chess pattern recognition drill for Mac and Windows
Every other training mode hands you a position already known to have an answer. Tactic or Not asks the question that comes before that: is there anything here at all?
Yes or no, against the clock
A position appears -- half the time a genuine tactic, half the time a quiet position with nothing in it -- and you have exactly one decision: tactic, or not. No move to find, no board to interact with beyond looking at it, just the call itself, inside a timed run.
Answering "yes" every time does not work: the pool is split evenly between real tactics and positions that only look dangerous, so guessing a pattern gets found out fast.
Where it tells you something the other modes cannot
Your results break down by source, so you can see whether you are better at correctly spotting a real tactic or at correctly waving off a quiet position -- the actual asymmetry this mode exists to surface, not just a raw score.
Questions
Good to know
What is Tactic or Not?
A timed drill that shows a position and asks only one thing: is there a tactic here, yes or no. Half the positions have a real tactic; half are quiet positions with nothing in them.
Does a wrong answer come back for review later?
No. Unlike other modes, a miss in Tactic or Not is not scheduled for review -- being told whether a specific position was a tactic would make it trivially memorisable rather than testing recognition.
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