Chess Software - Tactics
Chess Tactics for Beginners
Very well done chess tactics training program by Convekta. Graphics and interface are good, not great. The course material, however, is excellent. This, in conjunction with Convekta's "Advanced Chess School," is a good start for entry level players seeking to raise their chess knowledge and skill level before moving on to Chess Tactics for Intermediate Players. It shows a graph of your tactical elo, useful in figuring out if you are improving or not. Also, it gives hints that help you but are never to revealing. Finally, the order of puzzles makes it so a particular pattern is chiseled into your mind, and even when you think you've got it, it give you more so the patterns are completely burned in your brain.
Very well done chess tactics training program by Convekta. Graphics and interface are good, not great. The course material, however, is excellent. This, in conjunction with Convekta's "Advanced Chess School," is a good start for entry level players seeking to raise their chess knowledge and skill level before moving on to Chess Tactics for Intermediate Players. It shows a graph of your tactical elo, useful in figuring out if you are improving or not. Also, it gives hints that help you but are never to revealing. Finally, the order of puzzles makes it so a particular pattern is chiseled into your mind, and even when you think you've got it, it give you more so the patterns are completely burned in your brain.
Chess Tactics for Intermediate Players
This CD can be seen as a follow up to the program "Chess Tactics for beginners" from the same publisher. The CD includes a total of 1,180 tactical positions to solve, and they are classified by themes. You don't find the same amount of exercises in each category though. The amount actually range from 1 (one! - Blockade) to several hundreds, but most of the time you get more than 50 exercises to solve.
The main readership should be players with an ELO between 1600 and 2050 although there are some tough nuts to crack! One of the exercises I tried had an solution of more than 27 moves ;-) To solve the exercises you usually get 3-6 minutes and for the tough ones you get 12 minutes. I have looked extensively at the products from Convekta before, and this product is similar to these products. It is easy to use and I will recommend it as a companion to some of the books about chess tactics. I think that this combination is one of the best ways to develop your tactical ability.
As usual the program saves your results and Crafty is always ready to play against you if you don't believe the solution or having problems to see why a move doesn't win.
This CD can be seen as a follow up to the program "Chess Tactics for beginners" from the same publisher. The CD includes a total of 1,180 tactical positions to solve, and they are classified by themes. You don't find the same amount of exercises in each category though. The amount actually range from 1 (one! - Blockade) to several hundreds, but most of the time you get more than 50 exercises to solve.
The main readership should be players with an ELO between 1600 and 2050 although there are some tough nuts to crack! One of the exercises I tried had an solution of more than 27 moves ;-) To solve the exercises you usually get 3-6 minutes and for the tough ones you get 12 minutes. I have looked extensively at the products from Convekta before, and this product is similar to these products. It is easy to use and I will recommend it as a companion to some of the books about chess tactics. I think that this combination is one of the best ways to develop your tactical ability.
As usual the program saves your results and Crafty is always ready to play against you if you don't believe the solution or having problems to see why a move doesn't win.
