A Review of Sorts

I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to go deeper after one of Jeremy Silman's lessons on Chess Mentor this weekend. This extra work led to a blog post: http://chessskill.blogspot.com/2017/01/researching-rook-ending.html

At the end of the post, I offer some critique of how Chess Mentor functions on this website.

Some Thoughts on Chess Mentor

Chess Mentor was developed several years ago as stand alone software. It remains available as such through their website. In addition, at some point several years ago, the owners of Chess.com purchased the rights to this product. The entire package is embedded within Chess.com's "Chess Lessons" (version three), where it was called "Chess Mentor" under versions one and two. It is available to premium members.

Embedding stand alone software into a web-based format was not accomplished seamlessly. Comments such as Silman's reference to "Variation Five" do not reference anything that can be found under that name in the web version. Sometimes, as in this particular exercise, the carefully crafted teaching modules of Chess Mentor break down.

The original Chess Mentor also offers a "hint" feature, but Chess.com's site design does not implement this feature.

In general, the lessons in Chess Mentor are well designed. I am finding it useful to go through elementary level lessons in search of ideas to use in my teaching, and more challenging lessons as an aid to my own improvement. The lack of an embedded hint feature often leads to blind trial and error until I stumble across the correct move. That groping in the dark can provoke frustration.

Chess.com also gives users a "Lessons" rating. One would not expect to gain rating points from a lesson rated far below one's current rating. However, I have made every correct move in dozens of easy lessons only to discover that I scored 94% and suffered a rating loss of 10 points. I care little enough for the rating, but the logic of 94% for a string of correct moves mystifies me.

It seems to me that Chess.com could invest some of the money it collects from premium users to hire people who can edit the comments to remove references that lead no where and to debug the rating and evaluation system. On the other hand, maybe the technical difficulties of such a task are overwhelming.

The "Lessons" on Chess.com are useful with a few caveats.

Sadly, the technical difficulties of such a task probably are overwhelming.

Eh, I'm relatively happy with Chess Mentor.  Naturally, if there were serious developers, the whole thing would be better.  However, I do have to point out that the stand-alone software of Chess Mentor absolutely, and to no end, sucks, because it is horrific to look at.  It looks like someome with an expertise in DOS from 1990 tried to make a chess interface.  As soon as I found out that chess.com had it as one of their benefits to members, I sold the software and got a subscription to chess.com.

I agree with you, James, and there are problems with Chess.com's Tactics too.  It drives me nuts that no partial credit is given for the same number of moves but different move order that is equally valid.  Got docked one time for moving the "wrong rook" when either rook would do; I checked it thoroughly afterward to confirm this.

The scoring is unbalanced as well.  For example, if you take too much time on a difficult combination you receive a mere +1 for a correct answer, but if you select a less than optimal move anywhere in the variation you might end up -10 or more down.  You have to be inordinately quick, even on deeper, more complicated combinations, to get a decent score.  Oh, and no sidelines or alternate, instructive variations are given.

I'll stick with combination books and encyclopedias, of which I have a slew.

Thanks for that tidbit. I have not used the stand alone software. I have used other products that offer good content, but are unusable because the chessboard and pieces are horrid.