I've done a lot of experimentation with chess engines, and I've always been looking for ways to learn from them. Well, I've discovered a program that allows humans to be actually taught by them!

The name is Chess Hero: it can connect to any chess program, allowing you to learn from any 'tutor' you want. I recommend Houdini and Stockfish -- Stockfish for its aggressiveness and Houdini for its solid play.

What it basically does is selects positions from a set of PGN files, and then allows you to test you on that position. The chess engine tells you how well you've done, and whether or not you selected the move it thinks is best. You can feed Chess Hero your own PGN files, allowing you to study from your own games, or from games you find inspiring, or, if you don't like full games, from random tactical positions.

Impressed yet? You can find it here: 

http://innokuo.altervista.org/chesshero.html

Sounds good, thanks for sharing.

Sounds interesting.  I wouldn't want it to fault me though for a 2nd or 3rd best move that is perfectly playable just because its engine move #1 is different.  I can see how it would work well for tactical positions though.

If the 2nd or 3rd best move is playable, Chess Hero does accept it most times depending on how well it is scored against the best move... :)

Cool :)

Another setting, however, allows certain loaded positions to have a 'solution', so that only that move is accepted... I've found this helps with memorizing opening theory, along with tactics.

Maybe I am missing something, but can I not force it to play from move 1 in a game and then play through that game until the end?

A few other random things that this program can do:

1. It keeps track of how well you play, from the opinion of the chess program;

2. It stores information on which positions you do the worst in (again, it only uses the opinion of the chess program you load!) and lets you view that information whenever you want to see where your weak points are;

3. You have complete control over the PGN files you load and the chess engines you use, meaning you can change the way you study whenever you want to.

4. It does support multi-processing options, so that chess programs that can use mutiple cores will be allowed to do so;

5. From what I've seen, it has no trouble handling extremely large PGN files. Also, it will load from as many PGN files as you want, so keeping everything in one PGN file isn't needed. I recently studied from a blitz chess engine tournament that involved over 680 games, and the loading speed was slightly less than a second.

6. It is awesome.

7. If you want, you can play through the game it loaded the position from, or you can play against the chess engine from that position... whatever you feel like doing, it is possible.

In other words, I would rather strongly recommend this thing.

Try using the Settings: Options: General, and turn on the option "Always show game". I think that'll do it, Nygren :)

Just tried it out; seems like it's a great program.

If anyone knows any good PGN files to train from, post 'em...

Speaking of which, I'm not a subscribed member of chess.com. I would love to have a PGN of my games as a birthday present on September 5th... XD

Will give it a go, thanks for the heads up :)

It just told me my move was 'better than the engine'. How can the engine tell you yours is better than the move it thinks is best? 

Very interesting.  I did not know about this program before I wrote my own version, which is also free, called GuessTheMove, which you can download at https://sites.google.com/site/fredm/ and see a video on at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZgWSCHxJHI.  It is also in the download section at chess.com, but that is not the latest version.

Can anyone explain how it chooses the moves, and how your moves can be better?

is there a version for macs?

Scott, that's what I wondered. It told me I had a bonus of more than 1. Maybe incorrect phrasing.

Using chess engines on chess.com is considered cheating.

I love this program.

Yes, but this is not used on chess.com, jason17. If you want to make an accusation feel free, but that would just be dumb...