Does Chess Mentor really work ?
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It works. I can say that with 100% certainty.
i dunno really
Chess mentor makes is a _easy_ to study. You get all the lessons set up for you on a test board, you have 3 levels of hints for each move, you get information before and after each move and the system rates you on your progress.
Here are 5 main items you are rated on and each main item has from 2 to 34 sub items.
Rules and Basics (2 sub areas)
Endgames (12 sub areas)
Attacks (8 sub areas)
Tactics (13 sub areas)
Opens (5 sub areas)
Strategy (34 sub areas)
Chess mentor gives you a elo like rating and you can set up your training to be adaptive so the system will give lessons basic on our ability.
Changes I would like to see in the chess mentor system.
1. I would love to see them add all the 5334 Problems, Combinations, and Games from Polgars book. Tactics are so important and it would be so nice to be able to do chess puzzels online.
2. The elo system needs to be tweeked as it is to easy to get a way higher rating that you are. I am an average club player with a rating of around 1650 to 1750. But my chess mentor rating is now over 2200 which is silly!
3. With lessons from real games I would like to see the mentor system give you the option to view the game from the start of the game to the position where the lesson starts. Its always nice to see how the game got to the current lesson position. (I requested it and they said no can do.)
4. The test drive should give you more than 1 hour and should allow you to create an account. I would suggest 10 free hours. Once people start using it and have got an elo type score I think they would see the value and continue to use it and pay for it.
I think this product should be used by every one that has a personal trainer as at least part of your training. Right now they have one year for $149 and one month for $15. You also get to take the sysem for a test drive to see how it works.
how many problems is there on chess mentor, because if im going to pay for a years subscription i dont want to play all the games in the first month.
Jan 5, 2008
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#6
There are over 2500 lessons gateman. And we just added two new courses each with over 25 lessons. We will be adding 1-3 new courses each month. :) Thanks for the feedback also, we'll look into all of these.
Jan 5, 2008
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#7
thanks guys! good questions! we're always trying to improve everything.
also, just remember that Chess mentor is a LOT of work to create! each course costs us a LOT of money to put together as we try and get the best coaches, writers, etc. and it isn't cheap!! :D
chess mentor works?? i guess that depends on the one who use it. But for me, it was a great aid to improve your skills.
Jan 5, 2008
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#9
Bobmutch:
We are launching our tactics trainer VERY soon, which should help you to focus solely on tactics if thats all you want.
We are constantly trying to tweak the rating system on chess mentor to make it as accurate as possible, but its difficult to know exactly the right variables to use for the various hints. Remember that its a mentoring/training software first, and the ratings are there simply as guidance. The more and more people use it, the more accurate the lesson ratings will become, and the more accurate your own rating will become as a reflection of your performance on those lessons.
Regarding your #3, this is actually something we have discussed and may be possible with future enhancements. However, it is not an easy change/fix, so it's not something we can implement right away, but I agree that it would be nice to see the whole game sometimes.
It's frustrating, at least the free version here. I hate it. It takes me like 10 moves to make the move that they want and my % approaches negative infinity very quickly. I'm rated like 1600 here... but it's very difficult to play a game that's beyond you. I guess it has to do something if it's so well received though...
Chessmentor works. It gives great feedback, and helped me learn to analyze positions quickly and accurately.
Well, I ordered a month before the holidays since I knew I would have some time off work to spend on the chess lessons. So far I have spent 20+ hours and have finished 1000+ lessons. I don't know my real life rating but I think the more you study on chess mentor the closer to an accurate rating you will recieve.
Right now I mostly only play chess with one person, a friend I work with and we play on our breaks. We were pretty evenly matched but since I have been doing the lessons on chess mentor I have won the all five of our games in the last two weeks. I feel like I am learning a great deal from the chess mentor program.
Jan 8, 2008
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#13
Personally (and I'm disclosing that I do work for Chess.com and built Chess Mentor, so you may disregard my opinion as biased), I studied quite a bit of Chess Mentor before the holidays and then went on a 10 game win streak on Chess.com, playing some of my best chess ever. Then I stopped studying it, got kinda lazy and just lost 3 outta my last 4. :)
It seems to me that the most clear benefit of chess mentor is that it provides a structured (and fun) avenue for you to THINK about chess. You want to get better at chess... spend time with chess. But I think we all understand that simply playing a bunch of chess games is only going to take you so far. Often times in our chess games we are too close to the mistakes we make to learn from them. Unless we are breaking down our games and doing deep analysis, we don't even know where we went wrong in our games, and we make the same mistakes over and over again.
Chess Mentor is fun, so it will make you want to spend time with it... and it breaks down chess principles which, the more you spend time with them, you will inevitably implement them quite naturally into your games.
I have not yet taken advantage of the chess mentor, but I hope to do so at some point. I did the free lessons and was very impressed. I don't think one should expect magic from the mentor... but I think logically one can see that there would be a natural progression of learning with it, and a lot of enjoyment from it.
This is a genuine testimonial by me, Makavelian. I played the demo version as soon as it was released here on chess.com. I hated it I must say. It was beating me, and in my opinion not teaching me anything.
That was until I got the full version. My original rating was around 1300 on chess.com. It is now nearly 1500 in a month and my rating on chess mentor went from a 900 to 1646 and still climbing!!!!
I find my mind can find winning combinations; in essence that is what chess mentor is all about. And just think you can get unlimited play for $15 a month!!! Thats about £7.50 to us brits, less than a round of drinks.
It's got everything, opening traps, openings, endgame technique etc etc. Very good product and will improve everyones play. For further info feel free to message me.
well this q. is for those who tried this chess mentor i really want to know does chess mentor really help in a game or is it just some is it some junk ?