Thursday, January 3, 2008

Chess Tactics for Beginners

I bought Chess Tactics for Beginners. This a program in the Chess Assistant Family by Convekta. It's pretty much what I hoped for in that it offers a lot of basic tactical problems that can be quickly reviewed and it keeps some basic statistics. It's much easier to practice tactics on the computer than over the board because you don't have to spend time setting up positions. This particular program starts at a complete novice level with 1 move checkmates and works up. As a case in point, Richie went through the first 50 tactics in about 20 minutes. That's about 10x faster than he was doing with me or with Michael over the board. I'm pretty sure this is the best way to review tactics even for young kids. My only gripe with the program so far is that it arranges the problems by piece to move (e.g. rook checkmates, then knight checkmates, etc.) Even Richie figured out that this was happening and it sort of eliminates the need to think about which piece to move, you just need to find the right spot for it. Maybe I need to spend some time with the program and see if there's a random mode or something.

No comments:

Wider Two Column Modification courtesy of The Blogger Guide