Pretty sure there are still chess teachers who insist that you get out a board and work through their exercises. Digital revolution of course means most folks walk through the moves with a mouse. Even a $100 tablet can have a killer database. Here's a link that may prove useful. I've done the courses and they're well done. Enjoy and study however you wish; whatever works.
https://www.chess.com/blog/webmaster/free-chess-mentor-courses
Definitely I will go through the Mentor courses, thanks for the link! So much stuff on chess.com I haven't explored yet.
Mammoth looks like a great book, I'm excited to start working through it. I suppose I'll try it both on a board and on the computer and see which works best for me. I guess my insecurity is simply about whether I "should" be able to just do it in my head.
hi all
Well, this is my second forum post in as many years; after all the great advice and support I got, I dove right into playing (and mostly losing!) online games, met some great folks, had plenty of fun. Now after a lot of dancing in place, I'm ready to start actually reading up. My first book purchase (today, in fact) is Graham Burgess' Mammoth Book of Chess which I'm happy to see has a good reputation--I was looking for one of the Pandolfini books but didn't find it--and started skimming through it. Looks like a lot of great info! BUT...
I'm running into a problem that I've also had with the articles on Wikipedia, for instance, and probably all other chess books: I can't seem to follow printed, static chess positions and list of moves on their own. I don't know if printed diagrams just too small, I have a hard time visualizing notated moves in my head, or if I just need something I can grab onto and move around. Perhaps setting up the illustrated position on an actual physical board and working through it with the pieces will work for me, but part of me wonders if this is a sign of some debilitating handicap that strong or even normal weak players don't have, whether they can just mentally play though the moves. It's weird because I have a visual arts background and thinking visually is usually no problem for me. So basically I don't know if using a board to work through positions is standard procedure. Any thoughts on this? I know this is utter stupidity on my part, but I do value your insight on effective ways to study the literature. Thanks all...
cheers
Billy S.