Chess Mentor Plus?
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CT Art 3.0 is a great product! Have you tried the demo?
farbror wrote: CT Art 3.0 is a great product! Have you tried the demo?
That's one of the products I bought the last time I tried to unretire. It took forever to ship over here, and by the time it arrived I'd kind of lost interest in the process. I'll get it dusted off and give it a try after I finish the Chess Mentor tactical sessions. Thanks for the recommendation.
Sorry about your shipping torture! I think Chess Mentor is almost as great. Being able to access your Chess training Gear at the office can be a good thing.
1. Chesslectures.com as a way to get more instruction.
I think $12.95 is a steal to be able to watch dozens of lectures relevant to your level of play, study interests, and opening repertoire. But they add new content slowly and don't offer discounts for long-term membership... so I recommend signing up for a month or two, watching all the relevant content, and then cancelling. Repeat every year. :)
2. Instructional material other than Chess Mentor on this site.
Chessbase and Personal Chess Trainer are certainly worth considering.
likesforests wrote:
2. Instructional material other than Chess Mentor on this site.
Chessbase and Personal Chess Trainer are certainly worth considering.
Chessbase is a bit pricey. I'm not looking to throw that much money at this right away. I'm not likely to get chessbase unless and until I get all the way back into playing at a reasonably high level. Maybe much later. I appreciate your advice on Chesslectures.com. I think logically that would be the next step, along with dusting off CT-ART and the Total Chess Trainer from Chess Assistant.
I think that chess assistant 9.1 (which you can get a download version for $80 on the convekta website) is pretty good. It's buggy, but it has some amazing features. The killer feature for me is that you can play on ICC (the internet chess club (chessclub.com)) and let it analyze your game for you while you are playing and immediately after the game is over you can have it paste the analysis and you can see what blunders you made or what tactical shots you missed. Somehow getting this information immediately without waiting while the game is still fresh in your mind is really great imo.
Ct-art is GREAT. I love this program. I really think you can become much stronger if you use it effectively. I remember when I had difficulty solving the level 40 problems and now I can solve much higher ones without nearly as much difficulty. And solving the level 1 + level 2 problems is a nice refresher in basic tactics, that I go through every once in a while. It only takes me a couple seconds to solve each one so you can zing through them all in an hour. It blows my mind that at one point in time the level 1 tactics in ct-art would have been difficult for me. Hopefully in a few years the problems that are giving me trouble will seem just as easy! =)
If you're going to get chess assistant, I also recommend you get the rybka chess engine. It's the strongest chess engine nowadays and it also plays very human-like chess and doesn't get all weird and tactical like fritz does. It's strange, I like both, but fritz always crushes me quickly while rybka games last alot longer yet I've just been beat positionally (usually its pieces have become so active that I have no chance anymore).
I'm a former tournament player whose highest rating was 1824, but who hasn't played in a very long time. I won't tell you how old I am, but Bobby Fischer was World Champion when I played in my last rated tournament. I have a $100 budget and a top-notch 1970s chess library as assets. I've started out with Chess Mentor, going from the easiest lessons to the hardest, as a good way to review and get used to the board again. (A one month subscription, in case I lose interest again or get interrupted by real life. I'm prepared to renew as necessary). In addition, the last time I tried to unretire I got a number of Chess Assistant training products.
What do you guys think of:
1. Chesslectures.com as a way to get more instruction.
2. Instructional material other than Chess Mentor on this site.
3. CT-ART, the World Champion series, and the other Chess Assistant products.
4. Any other suggestions?
I hope to be able to start playing again without embarrassing myself right around the time live tournaments are added to the site. Thanks for any thoughts you have.