chessimo

hi ...i am interested in purchasing chessimo software so i am interested is anyone using it already and what is your opinion about it?

http://www.chessimo.com/trainer/index.php?lang=en&val=en

If you have an iPad, that version seems better than the PC version. The system is excellent in terms of the positions that it presents and how it works overall. The PC version seems like an older interface and has a few quirks. Not really bugs, but just ways of doing things that are annoying and show a lack of focus on the overall user interface.

If you want to grind graded tactics problems, it's a fantastic system for doing that. But it's not perfect.

I'm not happy with the program, but I discovered it after one month that many things were not working and couldn't get my money back.

1. There is NO support for the program if you have a problem, and believe me you will have it, they will never answer 1 email!

2. from 30 to 50% of the tactical problems are WRONG! Try to play them against Crafty and you will discover that crafty doesn't get checkmated, and often will be able to win or draw.

3. (I'm speaking for the PC version) the commented endgames rook section doesn't exist, and when the support system was contacted they never answered. (But they told me there is on the Ipad)

4. There are about 800 example games, without any comment, what is the reason I don't know, since nobody improves just watching games, and without being taught to what he/she should watch or understand as lesson from that game.

5. The program works on a kind of flashcard idea, unfortunately often suggest only 1 move, instead of playing others which are as good, and you will discover it especially with the bishop endgames. They should have accepted more than one move, since it doesn't make any different once the bishop is positioned far from the enemy king.

Of course I could continue to write for one hour, my suggestion: don't waste the money, I believe chess.com is more serious for technical support, so maybe it is better to spend the money for following the chess mentor courses here, and watch videos, or read articles, and do the tactic trainer exercises which are as good as chessimo and maybe better, because they correct them, and there is a big community commenting them and explaining them most of all.

I just wasted my money with Chessimo.

I thought I'd respond to the comments Kunihiro_k makes:

1. I have no idea about this as I have not had a reason to contact support.

2. I have only completed the first section of problems, and while plenty of the tactics are not forced wins, they do present the ohter side with a choice between a loss or a forced loss of material. I have yet to find a problem that is wrong within the tactics trainer.

3. He is correct the IPad/IPhone versions have additional material not present on the PC version.

4. Frankly, I enjoy playing through interesting games regardless of if there is comnentary or not. The game selection is, however, pretty much comprised of the standard famous games that everyone has seen a few times at least.

5. This is indeed a problem -- but to me it's one of those quirks that has an upside as well as a downside. I don't mind having to work to "prove" that my own idea is just as good as the system response. It ensures I'm thinking about the problems and not just moving the first idea that comes into my head.

I have the PC version and the iPad version. The iPad version is cheaper and you get more -- and is what I would recommend. The PC version is more expensive, quirkier (as I talked about in my first post) and you get less.

Overall, it's a program that could use a QA team to fix lots of little problems that can get annoying, but it's still the best implementation of de La Maza's 7-circles idea I've seen, and if that's what you're looking for, and you have an iPad, I think it's worth it.

With all due respect, if chessimo is so good, and it best represent Delamaza system, then why you are so positive about it, and you are not a 2000 rated Fide or USCF player? Because, again with all due respect, if I check your profile, see your statistics, then for sure I will never buy chessimo.

marrio_rossi,

One year ago next month I played in my first OTB tournament in about 6 years, and resumed playing regularly after about 10 years of time away from the game.

I had started playing as an adult, and had played only a couple of years with a 'career high' OTB rating of 1485.

In my first tournamnet back, I had a performance rating of 1082.

I managed a draw against someone rated under 500.

The next tournement I played in I managed a performance rating of 642!!

The tournament after that I managed an 846 performance rating.

Now, I am at 1495 (after having had my actual rating drop to 1250 or so!), 10 points higher than my previous lifetime best, and my last 5 OTB tournament results are:

1862 performance rating

1718 performance rating

1669 performance rating

1841 performance rating

1668 performance rating

You can think what you want about what I have to say. I honestly don't care. But, my personal experience has shown itself in my over the board results.

I am playing significantly better after a year of studying chess, a large part of which included time spent on tactics using a variety of tools and sites.

ciljettu -- I understand the sentiment. I'm not a de la Maza disciple, though I do recognize the importance of studying tactics as PART OF a well rounded chess study plan. I do think that de la Maza's observation that problems should be tackled in a reasonable order based upon their difficulty, and that problems should be repeated to effectively drill pattern recognition are both astute.

Kunihiro_k point 2- I wouldn't say 30 to 50% of problems are wrong but there definitely seem to be many problems where there are equally good alternatives (e.g. forced mate in same number of moves) that are considered wrong. This occurs in tactics section but problem seems worse in endgame section and can get very annoying when there are 15 move sequences that you must match exactly when alternative solutions would also work.  

It also takes a lot of time and effort to complete all exercises, a few hundred hours - user interface on PC not designed for rapid moves so a big time investment.

Above are negatives but on positive side I find the repetition and gradual build up from simple to complex themes did help me improve, albeit slowly (Only about 1/3 way through exercises so far) - helps  increase pattern recognition capabilities in a different and complementary manner to tactics trainer such as one here and on chesstempo.

Potential problem is how you use it though - you need to analyze why a particular move that looks right to you is actually wrong and learn from it, it is easy to just complete exercises by memorizing the correct answer so you get it right when it repeats for the next 8 or so times but obviously you don't learn anything that way.