Applying Dan Heisman's Guide to using Chess Tactics for Students

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OldN1ck

Hi @Citric0740, V1.9 looks great... many thanks

Citric0740

Hi @OldN1ck, glad you like it. There are a lot of changes in this new version as well as a lot of polish and bug fixes. If you check out the example PGN files in the Github page you can see the new functionality in action. My personal favourite is the Reset Mate happy.png

Pretty cool how much can be done with just a PGN.

OldN1ck

Hey @Citric0740... V10 just caught me by surprise :-)
Running through one of my Bain sets - warming up for league OTB this evening - when strange things started happening!
I figured it was Variations of some of the puzzles (which I did include when creating my .pgns) > then noticed that there were more puzzles that I was expecting > then noticed "1.10.0" in corner of the screen > and guessed what you've gone & done wink
Many thanks, Nick

Citric0740

Hi @OldN1ck
You got it. Variation support is finally in the app! You no longer need to break each variation into a separate line. It will now read any number of variations (and sub-variations, and their sub-variations, etc.) so your PGNs can be much simpler/smaller. So, after looking at all the paths through the a single game/puzzle in the PGN, if there are 10 possible paths then you will get tested on all 10.

I had been working on that problem for a long time and had parked it in order to work on a bunch of other pieces. Once I released 1.9.0 I went back and with fresh eyes basically solved it overnight. It was too useful a feature to delay so I released it along with a couple of updates to the annotation component.

Enjoy! 

Grand_Trier

Hi Citric

First of all thank you for putting together this valuable thread. Going back to your original post from July '23 it's amazing to see how this method works.

In there you had mentioned that this is less about the book and more about the method. Along those lines, given how it's not that easy to get John Bain's book in all formats, are there any other alternative books that you can recommend that have easy tactics and can be used for this 7 circles method?

Citric0740

Hi @Grand_Trier,

I'm definitely a fan of the method and while I still use it for puzzles, I also apply it to openings, defenses, endgames, and even full games that I want to learn. The method is remarkably flexible.

As for me, after Bain's I picked up Peter Giannatos's "Everyone's First Chess Workbook". I enjoyed it and it definitely added to my knowledge. To do the method with this book, what I did was as I completed a puzzle, I put it into a PGN. After I finished the book, I had a PGN of the puzzles so I just used the app to drill it in random order until I got my recall to the level I wanted. Every so often I go back and re-run it to see if I've forgotten anything.

If you are looking for PGNs you might want to give Bill Wall's site a look as he as thousands of PGNs. There even is a section called "Ebook PGNs" and you're bound to find something that would work for you. I tested several at random from there and didn't encounter issues with most of them.

Good luck!

Grand_Trier

I'm sorry but can you tell me which app are you referring to and is it available for phones as well as computers?

I've also heard that people use chessable for this very purpose (including the Peter G. book).

Citric0740

Hi @Grand_Trier,

I had made a small web app to do this method and published it on Github. You can find all the details (including source code, documentation, examples, etc.) here. If you just want to use the app itself you can visit the live link here.

It originally was built for the desktop but I've since updated it to work on my phone. I use Chrome and on my phone I was able to save the link to my home screen and it looks like any other app. Just know that I don't know how it works/looks on iPhones though since I don't have one to test against.

Grand_Trier

Thanks for clarifying!