hate of puzzles

I honestly think that the puzzles are going to destroy my life. Primarily because I take rating way too seriously and think rating is what defines you as a respectable person or a low life nothing. That is because I cant get respect in any other activity in my life except for Tanki Online. Anyways, the other reason is puzzles are hard, you don't know if its checkmate goal or take queen or rook of the opponents goal, and most of the hard ones that I play (all of my puzzles) are not right, the right thing to do is to go for a queen rampage or quick checkmate, instead of something wacky like checkmate in 15 moves with an ultra rook/queen sacrifice and a pin. Finally, the last reason is that I know that I am actually really bad at these puzzle and its not all the puzzle's fault.

I console myself with the belief, that most of the situations where these puzzles arise from are completely artificial and would never be reached in a real game.
Becoming proficient in them will certainly help you in your everyday Chess, can't deny that. But almost none of what I ever played even resembled those wacky positions, where a seemingly pointless sacrifice resulted in a , let's say, Checkmate-in-4 or my opponent's queen getting captured by the end of it. Obsession about them will make you feel miserable ... ooh, you already admitted that! :)

Except that all the puzzles are directly taken from games in the lichess database, so every one of them has come from an actual position in real games played on this website. ;)

#3
The logic is that one would almost have a zero chance of reaching the specific position in their own games.

I have never reached this position in a chess game: http://en.lichess.org/LINfMDVv

However, because of my knowledge of tactical chess, largely developed through puzzles, I would instinctively spot that I have a perfect set up for a smothered mate. This is because I have recognised the rough position I need to make one: http://en.lichess.org/PKl0mRp4#0

From there, it becomes a simple matter of just checking black can't block the mate.

But I would only spot the mate because I recognised the pattern of the pieces from doing puzzles, not because I had calculated it that far (for me, that comes after recognising the pattern of the pieces).

So it doesn't matter if you meet the specific position in the game, but only if the ideas, patterns, and tactics in the games can be adopted and reused in other games.

#4 pretty much what #5 said. It doesn't matter if the specific position is reached, it's about recognizing the concepts so that similar ideas can be used to accomplish the same result.

I do agree though with the OP that it is a bit obtuse sometimes what sort of solution the puzzle is looking for. So it goes.

#7 Except that... in a real game, we don't get told if or what kind of tactical motif is available in a position. :P Maybe there is a mate, or a tactic... or nothing.

I don't think it makes sense to rely on or train with that information.

#8, that's where pattern recognition comes into play.

There's plenty of times when I will make a move because I have played a similar pattern of moves before and roughly "feel" intuitively almost, what is the best move for me in that situation.

I don't need to think of the particular tactical motif, the position is just recognisable as having been advantageous to me in the past (either through playing lots of games or lots of puzzles) and I can then have something to work with; a starting point to calculate with.

Puzzles work twofold, they train you to recognise everyday tactics at the simplest levels, to more unusual mating patterns and endgame tactics. Once you do them enough though, these tactics and patterns also just become part of your pattern recognition repertoire, that feeling of "Oh, I know I should check this, because once I've calculated it more properly, the position means I could win a pawn/mate in 3/capture a piece."

#8, yup, was agreeing with you :)