Has Chess Mentor Improved Your Game?

There are a lot of valuable information in the chess mentor courses, but the interface doesn`t help the beginner to make the right course.

One of the things it does is to open with the "Recent Courses" coming first. What it should do is to bring "Lowest Rating" or "Sequential" first. The user interface there needs a lot of improvement in my opinion.

I'm a regular user o Chess Mentor and I found my way after being frustrated going for the most recent first. It was for 1600+ and I was 800~900 rating... After a lot of courses there I am almost at 1100... a 200 increase in more or less two weeks of study and lots of matches.

Another thing that needs improvement is that on some lessons the tips and helps lower too much the % of success and on others it impacts little. Maybe if it showed how much % would go down before clicking...

In general, I like a lot the Chess Mentor, as everything in the internet it can get some improvements but it does show invaluable information there for a cost that is very little.

Thanks chess.com :)

So far it's been a real help, though I do think it could be improved.

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this worked for me too.  when i was going by rating, or random, or wahtever, one of my first lessons was "you're bobby fischer, how would you play against deep blue".  needless to say i failed miserably.  it was pretty frustrating to try random moves, exhaust all my hints and then still have no idea what i was doing.  

then i just started going through endgame lessons (which is/was one of my weakest points) and it worked better for me that way.  there are "courses" that lump certain things together that way. 

I have been using it for 4 days I think. I found it really helpful. Especially endgame courses are great.

I've played club chess , county chess and in tournaments and congresses for over 6 years now , I have an ECF Official rating of 109 ( approx 1800 elo ) . There is no question that this program will work . Already , just after one day and a dozen exercises I have seen concepts , ideas and new ways to think already . I needed this program as I want to now step up to Master Level in my chess . If I can get to grips , understand and put to memory these 3700 lessons here , then of course , my game will improve . I think an idea here should be to do two sessions of 30 minutes per day for 3 days and then have the fourth day of training off . This gives your mind time to reflect on the ideas , concepts you have studied . Little is much more with this training tool . At 10 exercises per day , you will be able to understand the 10 lessons , and after 1 year the course will be completed and the knowledge you have accumulated will be set to memory . Playing chess itself won't improve you that much and you will only ever reach a certain standard and remain there , study will lead you to Mastery .

I'm a Military Veteran, but not a veteran user of Chess Mentor...if that's what you mean. I've been using it for about a week. The only thing I've learned so far is that I'm probably not a Chess Player.

It is good if you dont use see hint too often.

If I don't use "hint" I'd be sitting here all day staring at the screen saying wtf.

You have to use it obviously,but only when ur truly clueless and cant find the solution even after pondering for a while.

ok thanks Likhit1, I'll give it a shot.

You're welcome!But only do the courses which you think are right for you and which you enjoy.Forget that sequential nonsense.

Didn't know I had a choice. thanks

Click on view courses and then select!Good luck!

I have not given up on study, but I find it difficult to translate it into wins.  I have used books, chess mentor, videos and tactics trainer.  What I find is I am getting better at study.  I understand what higher rated players are talking about.  I can solve more puzzles.  I can follow annotated games, GM commentary, and videos better.  But it rarely translate into wins.  Occasionally something will happen that is clearly something I recently learned about and I might be making a few less errors, but I am not seeing the results I expected.  One weird anomaly is my percentage on tactics trainer.  It is higher than some titled players but my tactics trainer rating is still much lower due to the time I spend.  I think my skills are very unbalanced and I may need some help figuring out my weaknesses.  Who knows.

@phoenix - try a check-up with a coach

@Phoenix

I think pretty much all of us share your experience at one time or another.  The answer is obvious and not what you want to hear: forget about your rating and just enjoy studying (which you seem to do a lot of) and playing.  Ratings will happen.  All of us under 2000 have crazy unbalanced skills.  At the lower end people still blunder pieces even in 3 day correspondence.  At a more mediocre level we blunder away positions.  I think the stage where you prove bad plans are sometimes worse than no plans is fun.  And fun is what's important, right kids?

NickYoung5. You say that's it's improved your positional play. Which courses did you study and in which order?

I studied the endgame courses. They were fun and helped my game. I prefer chess mentor format for endgame because the language explanations help more than just giving the right move.

chess mentor is a chess book. just through internet

Well its a bit more interactive than most chess books.  Its sort of like those books where you decide what path you take and then the story changes.    Plus you have a chess board with the pieces set up as you go which makes studying much more convenient. 

 

Orangishblue, Yes maybe chessmentor and those "choose your path books" are from the 80s.  The 80s were a fine decade.