Beginner Software

I am a beginner who is looking for chess software (preferably free) that can improve my chess game.  Any ideas?

Here! The tactics trainer is a start. Chess mentor is free but includes only a few lessons. If you upgrade you can view the Game explorer and have more lessons and more chances in the tactics trainer. If you want videos of openings check out youtube. They have a chess.com youtube account that can be found here:http://www.youtube.com/user/wwwChesscom Hope that helps! -Kingdom_Hearts

Try Lucas Chess. It's free and comes loaded with training features.

I'm a little leery of Lucas Chess these days, or at least the domain that hosts the program.

WOT indicates that the web site has a poor reputation, and the Zulu URL Risk Analyzer (http://zulu.zscaler.com) gives the web site a malicious rating, mostly due to failing the SURBL Block Test (URL Domain Result: Blacklisted in multiple real-time domain blocklists). Apparently, the web site is on a number of blacklists dealing with URLs leveraged in spam advertising campaigns.

I'm not an expert in this area, but it has me spooked a little bit. Does anyone have any additional information on this?

@EscherehcsE:

Hm, that's odd... admittedly I never paid attention to that. Though, I would be extremely surprised if Lucas Chess or its developer per se had anything to do with leveraging malware.

Anyway, the above is the program website (which seems to have recently moved to the domain it now resides on), but the actual program downloads reside on Google Code:

http://code.google.com/p/lucaschess/downloads/list

I wouldn't have thought to check the LucasChess web site, except WOT threw up a large warning notice that couldn't be missed. At that point, I did the Zulu check.

You're right, it seems the actual program download from the Google code site should be safe. It's only the accessory files and additional information on the LucasChess site that might cause a problem if you access it.

A couple of free programs by Fred Mellender might be useful: Guess the Move Program and YATT (Yet Another Tactics Trainer). The web site is here: https://sites.google.com/site/fredm/

And there's always the Chessmaster 10th Edition program if you don't mind spending a little money and hunting for the program on eBay or Amazon. (It's no longer sold through the normal retail channels.) I wouldn't pay more than $20 plus shipping for it. The learning value in Chessmaster is in the tutorials. I doubt that the engine would really help you learn much.