user-1: I have been floating around the 800-900 tactical rating on chess.com for a while. A few things I've noticed

For a beginner I'm having giant swings in rating based on if I get a series that I can identify or not. It's not unusual in a single session for me to see a swing of up to 150 points between 820 and 970.
For the tactics I fail on, I feel discouraged because repeating them doesn't teach me anything. Many of them have 3-5 steps that if I spend more than the alotted time I don't get any points, and if I fail I lose even more points.

I don't feel these types of tactics are instructive to tactical beginners.
Is there a better source of tactics? I feel entirely discouraged with these giant swings where I feel like I'm getting it, but I'll miss a sacrifice or something two moves in and be completely obliterated in rating. My strategy of doing each tactic I fail 3 times to get the idea doesn't really help.
What can I do here to improve? More tactics is obvious but how do I improve seeing so far down the road? 

user15089: Don't pay too much attention on your rating right now. As far as I can tell, you are having troubles identifying key "motifs". Even if you do a hundred problems your tactical ability won't improve ( your pattern recognition might improve though).
http://www.chesstactics.org 
This site might be the thing that you are looking for. The author goes into detail explaining the reason for the occurrence of a particular tactic and how you can find them on the board.
Good luck.

user1193: I have 2200+ tactics on chess.com and I found two things to be the most useful:

Take your time. Really solve the puzzle, even if it takes time. You will naturally get quicker as you get more familiar with different tactics. Don't worry about the points.
http://www.chessimo.com/ is an absolute killer app for mobile (maybe for desktop as well), where they start with very easy tactics and repeat, repeat, repeat until you memorize them well. This is what took me from probably 1400 to 1800 in my tactical strength.
Bonus item- don't get discouraged and try to do it daily. I saw massive improvements after about 2 weeks rather than straight away.


user14202: The site chesstempo.com has tactics training puzzles you can try, but you might benefit from a more structured approach.  1001 Winning Chess Combinations by Reinfeld is cheap and organizes the tactics by theme.  Encyclopedia of Middle Games is more advanced but also by theme and is a must in my opinion.

user12523: I've only made it to 1500 on chess.com, but here are some suggestions I found helpful.
For "tactics theory", you could consider reading a book such as Winning Chess Tactics which goes over each basic tactical theme systematically.
I also recommend CT-ART (available as a mobile app for $10 from the Google or Apple app store, or as desktop software from Chess King). Level 10 (the easiest) in particular consists mostly of composed problems which focus on a single motif at a time. Practice it repeatedly until you can spot the basic motifs quickly. Level 20 is also great practice and it starts combining motifs a bit more. The higher levels are probably too hard at this point. I find that level 30 is already harder for me than chess.com's puzzles rated 1600.
One advantage of CT-ART over chess.com as a learning tool is that if you answer wrong, it shows you the refutation, and it gradually gives you hints as you try again.
Within chess.com itself, you can try using the analysis feature that becomes available after you answer the puzzle. It can help you figure out why certain moves don't work, especially when the move you tried was wrong and you can't see why no matter how hard you try, but also when you guessed correctly but aren't sure why some other move didn't work.

user11629: First of all, don't worry about your rating. Particularly beginners will have large fluctuations in rating and in the end who cares about that number anyway?
Regarding tactics training, doing online puzzles is a very good way. Many websites offer these for free. I like the ones on lichess, because they are taken from real games and therefore tend to be a bit more realistic/messy than composed problems. However as a beginner you probably prefer cleaner problems focusing on just one or two motifs. But in any case, any good website will present you problem close to your level so that should not be a problem.
When you solve these puzzles (or fail to solve), I suggest to not stop there, but analyze each puzzle a bit more. 
Particularly you should figure out which tactical motifs are relevant in this puzzle. Chesstempo can help you here, as once you solve (or fail to solve) a problem it will show you the motifs as "tags". Make sure you can see all of the motifs in the solution.
Another thing you can try is to take the starting position and remove all pieces from the board that are not necessary for the problem. This will give you a cleaner/clearer image of the tactics.
The aim of tactic training is to store certain patterns (positions of relevant pieces) in your brain and associate them with a tactic. You only store the relevant pieces, not the complete position, because this way the patterns are re-usable for many situations. As an example, a simple pattern could be: two pieces on the same row, two squares apart (e.g. on d5 and b5). This pattern would be associated with a "pawn fork".
When you solve puzzles later, you can quickly check whether the problem matches any of the stored patterns. Often it will match more than one, giving you more than one candidate move.
At this point it is time for concrete calculations in order to find the best move among the candidate moves and also to make sure that the tactics works (that there are no defenses). This involves for instance checking whether there are any additional pieces (compared to your stored pattern) that defend essential squares or whether the opponent has intermediate checks, etc.
In summary my suggestion is to:

do tactics puzzles (online or on computer or from books) and analyze them
try to find and name all the tactical motifs in the puzzle
remove pieces from the problem to get a clearer picture
memorize the relevant piece positions
re-check whether the tactic works


-1: <p>I have been floating around the 800-900 tactical rating on chess.com for a while. A few things I've noticed</p>

<ol>
<li><p>For a beginner I'm having giant swings in rating based on if I get a series that I can identify or not. It's not unusual in a single session for me to see a swing of up to 150 points between 820 and 970.</p></li>
<li><p>For the tactics I fail on, I feel discouraged because repeating them doesn't teach me anything. Many of them have 3-5 steps that if I spend more than the alotted time I don't get any points, and if I fail I lose even more points.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>I don't feel these types of tactics are instructive to tactical beginners.</p>

<p>Is there a better source of tactics? I feel entirely discouraged with these giant swings where I feel like I'm getting it, but I'll miss a sacrifice or something two moves in and be completely obliterated in rating. My strategy of doing each tactic I fail 3 times to get the idea doesn't really help.</p>

<p>What can I do here to improve? More tactics is obvious but how do I improve seeing so far down the road? </p>
 15089: <p>Don't pay too much attention on your rating right now. As far as I can tell, you are having troubles identifying key "motifs". Even if you do a hundred problems your tactical ability won't improve ( your pattern recognition might improve though).
<a href="http://www.chesstactics.org" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.chesstactics.org</a> 
This site might be the thing that you are looking for. The author goes into detail explaining the reason for the occurrence of a particular tactic and how you can find them on the board.
Good luck.</p>
 1193: <p>I have 2200+ tactics on chess.com and I found two things to be the most useful:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Take your time. Really solve the puzzle, even if it takes time. You will naturally get quicker as you get more familiar with different tactics. Don't worry about the points.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://www.chessimo.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.chessimo.com/</a> is an absolute killer app for mobile (maybe for desktop as well), where they start with very easy tactics and repeat, repeat, repeat until you memorize them well. This is what took me from probably 1400 to 1800 in my tactical strength.</p></li>
<li><p>Bonus item- don't get discouraged and try to do it daily. I saw massive improvements after about 2 weeks rather than straight away.</p></li>
</ol>
 14202: <p>The site chesstempo.com has tactics training puzzles you can try, but you might benefit from a more structured approach.  1001 Winning Chess Combinations by Reinfeld is cheap and organizes the tactics by theme.  Encyclopedia of Middle Games is more advanced but also by theme and is a must in my opinion.</p>
 12523: <p>I've only made it to 1500 on chess.com, but here are some suggestions I found helpful.</p>

<p>For "tactics theory", you could consider reading a book such as <em>Winning Chess Tactics</em> which goes over each basic tactical theme systematically.</p>

<p>I also recommend CT-ART (available as a mobile app for $10 from the Google or Apple app store, or as desktop software from <a href="https://chesskingtraining.com/ct-art/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Chess King</a>). Level 10 (the easiest) in particular consists mostly of composed problems which focus on a single motif at a time. Practice it repeatedly until you can spot the basic motifs quickly. Level 20 is also great practice and it starts combining motifs a bit more. The higher levels are probably too hard at this point. I find that level 30 is already harder for me than chess.com's puzzles rated 1600.</p>

<p>One advantage of CT-ART over chess.com as a learning tool is that if you answer wrong, it shows you the refutation, and it gradually gives you hints as you try again.</p>

<p>Within chess.com itself, you can try using the analysis feature that becomes available after you answer the puzzle. It can help you figure out why certain moves don't work, especially when the move you tried was wrong and you can't see why no matter how hard you try, but also when you guessed correctly but aren't sure why some other move didn't work.</p>
 11629: <p>First of all, don't worry about your rating. Particularly beginners will have large fluctuations in rating and in the end who cares about that number anyway?</p>

<p>Regarding tactics training, doing online puzzles is a very good way. Many websites offer these for free. I like the ones on lichess, because they are taken from real games and therefore tend to be a bit more realistic/messy than composed problems. However as a beginner you probably prefer cleaner problems focusing on just one or two motifs. But in any case, any good website will present you problem close to your level so that should not be a problem.</p>

<p>When you solve these puzzles (or fail to solve), I suggest to not stop there, but analyze each puzzle a bit more. </p>

<p>Particularly you should figure out which <a href="https://chesstempo.com/tactical-motifs.html" rel="noreferrer">tactical motifs</a> are relevant in this puzzle. Chesstempo can help you here, as once you solve (or fail to solve) a problem it will show you the motifs as "tags". Make sure you can see all of the motifs in the solution.</p>

<p>Another thing you can try is to take the starting position and remove all pieces from the board that are not necessary for the problem. This will give you a cleaner/clearer image of the tactics.</p>

<p>The aim of tactic training is to store certain patterns (positions of relevant pieces) in your brain and associate them with a tactic. You only store the relevant pieces, not the complete position, because this way the patterns are re-usable for many situations. As an example, a simple pattern could be: <em>two pieces on the same row, two squares apart</em> (e.g. on d5 and b5). This pattern would be associated with a "pawn fork".</p>

<p>When you solve puzzles later, you can quickly check whether the problem matches any of the stored patterns. Often it will match more than one, giving you more than one candidate move.</p>

<p>At this point it is time for concrete calculations in order to find the best move among the candidate moves and also to make sure that the tactics works (that there are no defenses). This involves for instance checking whether there are any additional pieces (compared to your stored pattern) that defend essential squares or whether the opponent has intermediate checks, etc.</p>

<p>In summary my suggestion is to:</p>

<ol>
<li>do tactics puzzles (online or on computer or from books) and <em>analyze</em> them</li>
<li>try to find and name all the tactical motifs in the puzzle</li>
<li>remove pieces from the problem to get a clearer picture</li>
<li>memorize the relevant piece positions</li>
<li>re-check whether the tactic works</li>
</ol>
