I think Chessimo itself repeats enough, you shouldn't repeat it "manually". I've said this in the chesstempo forums too, but I think you're overestimating "structured" training. you don't need a software to structure it for you, you can do it your way. I think Chesstempo is way better and beneficial for tactics training than chessimo and CT-Art, but Chessimo is the best tool I've seen for practicing endgames. it's problem set is very nice, and indeed repetition is a must there, if you want things to sink in.

My ultimate endgame study material in mind was Silman's book for concepts and ideas + chessimo for actually using my brain for the relevant ending. of course I never had the time .

I am using CHESSIMO. I sometimes repeat some exercises manually, until I clearly see the pattern. It helps my vizualisation skills.

you know what, I'm going to say it. I think the benefit of repetition is a myth.

Thanks all for your comments!

Philidor, I see where you are coming from, and I partially agree with you (which is why I keep using CT in parallel). However I think that the idea of "pattern recognition" is not so wrong, and to create that, you need some structure-  or at least you want it to make the learning more efficient.

Thinking 20 minutes to solve a complex tactical problems will help my analysis skills, but it will not help directly to improve my game from a tactical standpoint: in a tournament, you cannot afford spending 20 minutes on every move to see if there is a combination - even if you had the time, that would be an overkill! 

I think it makes more sense to do a lot of low rated problems, so to get them as second nature (which is why on CT I mostly do <1100 problems). Which is why I like the Chessimo approach. I will give it a try, stick with it for at least six months, and see what happens.

Is Chessimo the old Personal Chess Trainer? If so, it is a very bad program. Especially for endings, I encountered many positions where alternative solutions were marked as simply wrong. So, based on my experience with it, I found it way below the tactics trainers available on the web. Not to speak that the program is not free ...

Costelus - yes, it is the old PCT, but I believe they fixed many broken positions...

The best thing about chessimo is that it automatically copies the FEN of the position to the clipboard. It's true that it didn't recognize many alternative winning lines for endgame problems but I always solved them on fritz anyway (without the engine first, of course), it was very convenient to do that.

Would you please share any online problem set for endgames? say, King and pawn endings, rook endings?

HERESY!

But no seriously, this is doubtful considering the widespread use of repetition in advertising and learning.  From riding a bicycle (operational, alike basic endgames), multiplication tables (rote, alike tactics), and pavlovs dog (association) there are various forms of learning that -require- repetition.  How much repetition is needed is debatable.  I always found chessimo a bit suspect.  It fails to fully capitalize on the proven benefits of spaced memorization; and the problem arbitrary says you have memorized a tactic after solving it 6 times.  Regardless, it's still better then any other tactics solution.

I don't know any online collection of endgame puzzles. Besides, such a thing would be difficult to realize, given the large number of alternative good moves. I personally found that it is more effective to take a book and go through basic positions, to understand what is the correct plan in some fundamental endgames, rather than solve hundreds of puzzles based on tablebases.

A partial answer for your question: you can practice as many basic endgames as you want using tablebases. Other resource might be chesstempo. On a higher level you have Convekta (not free unfortunately). Also, the tactics trainer here includes some endgames where the winning moves are unique.

It would be cool to have tournaments on chess.com that start from endgame positions that are equal.  Like a rook endgame position that is unclear.

I find Chessimo very useful. Plus the Convekta software running in the new Peshk@ interface (download and try the demo).

So far there is no one-stop-shop for all my chess needs (though chess.com gets pretty close). One has to pick and choose from several different sources in software, online, CD, DVD and book format.

Thanks all again!

chessoholicalien : I have seen Peshka and it looked very nice as well, in particular the "Chess Course" which is suggested for 1200-2000. I have decided to use Chessimo based on the recommendation of my coach though, and will eventually move to Peshka.

Chessimo will require about two years though, at an average of 1 unit done each day, for 6 days a week, considering there are 12 modules with 51 units each, for a total of 612 units...

That is wrong, so wrong that we dont need to discuss about it.

Without repetition its a very ineffektiv training. Maybe you was never learning another language because you dont made this experience. And you was never reading something about modern systems to learn. Because there is no question about it.

@Andrea Coda:

Chessimo: Endgames very good, Strategy very bad, Opening ok. Taktik: The modules and units have no theme, I dont like that. And there are no alternate moves possible. You have it in CT.

Regards

English is my "other language".

I think repeating the same problem over and over is just not as beneficial as trying your best in new problems, because the patterns repeat themselves in different positions anyway, you don't need to solve the exact same problem for that.

You are a lucky guy, I forgot what I was eating at lunch yesterday.

Regards

Here is a nice endgame problem:

http://www.chess.com/tactics/server.html?id=170230