What's the best way to get better with Chess Mentor?

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MountainMan1984

What should I begin with? Should I keep up with one course until I'm completely finished? I'm not sure what my strengths are but I want to use my time to it's fullest potential and....well, "know" that I'm doing a course (or paying not paying attention to the right and better course), or a variety of courses, going back and forth between these courses, I just don't know what to do. So should I stay with one course? How hard should the course be in comparison with my rating to be fully effective? Thanks for any tips. And anything else you might add. I appreciate the help

Bye

notmtwain

I don't think that there is a best way. You've done 122 Chess Mentor lessons at this point, which is a fair amount of time invested.

One way to monitor your progress is to play some games and see what kind of rating you get now and watch whether or not that improves as you continue your chess mentor courses. After all, the point is to help you learn how to play actual games.

It's time to see if you've learned anything.

baddogno

Yeah you have to play some too or you're missing 2/3 of the magic formula to improve: study, play, and review your games.  That said, I'd hit the tactics courses hard.  GM Patrick Wolff has all those courses on forks, pins, skewer/Xrays, interference, etc.  Hard to think of a more productive way to spend your time than learning tactics.  Learning tactics, as opposed to testing your knowledge of, which is what the Tactics Trainer is best for. My $.02. Laughing

JFK-Ramsey

I've struggled with this and finally just sorted the courses easiest first and then went through them in sequence. The adaptive mode, by definition, is probably what you are looking for but, for me, the jumping around never seemed to cover any particular area in depth. You might also just scan the courses for one you want to cover and go through it. You can also customize your training plan within Mentor.

Have fun and good luck.

MountainMan1984

Thanks JFK-Ramsey. I think I'll play that adaptive mode you were talking about OR......think about tactics and more tactics like baddogno pointed out. I haven't played many games so far so....I'm not quite sure what my true rating is when it comes to actual games unfortunatly. Thanks for the advice all of you.

Good luck in your games.