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john nunn probably put more effort in writing the forward of his checkmate book, than kosteniuk put in the interface...

I mean ok to be fair the puzzle of chessking is good and i might be too picky, but im really really dissapointed

you know the convekta software is like 10 years older and it can do all the stuff, why cant chess king do it??? what was so hard in copying the interface if you copy the puzzles too?? i mean i just dont get it, it could be so awesome if they only cared for some small details

Just buy the first book. It will keep you busy for some time. Then you can negotiate the second one...

If your wife complains about the cost, just ask her how much she's spent on shoes lately.

Just followed my own link and realized it doesn't answer your question about # of exercises.  I think they all have 3 levels: learn, practice,and test.  Learn steps through the exercise.  Practice has you do it, and test gives you a rating.

Level 1 tactics is for up to ELO 1000 and has 1000 mate in 1 or 2 exercises.  This is the kind of very basic stuff Coach Heisman recommends to burn in pattern recognition.

Level 2 tactics is for up to 1800.  224 theoretical positions and 291 exercises.

Level 3 is for 1800 to 2400 and has 1145 exercises.

Chess Endgames is for 1500-2400 and has 300 theoretical positions and 350 exercises.

Chess Strategy (largely pawnstructure) is for 1800-2400 and includes 73 theoretical positions and 473 exercises.

Chess Openings is really another encyclopedia.  They say for 1000-1800 and 300 positions and 350 exercises.

More than you wanted to know I'm sure. 

@TetsuoShima:

Not sure why not being able to resize the board is a deal breaker, but OK.

I find the "no answers given" figure it out yourself charmingly Russian old school, but the modules don't follow the main Chess King program in this regard.  They do show you answers (at least the ones I've tried). 

but not in test mode right??

I see that the books are designed to be studied in the following order:

1.) Orange 2.) Blue 3.) Green

My USCF chess rating is 1920 although I haven't played in over 15 years.

Can someone with a higher rating (expert or above) that has read these books let me know if I should skip the Orange series and start with the Blue series?

Thanks.

in convekta you can choose the speed of the piece movement, you can choose the language of the notation, the board size everything.

in chess king you have no options at all...

with some moduls you only have the choice between practice and training and in some you have a third option learn

ok i try not to hijack the thread anymore

I'm 2030 and doing the Orange books.

If you have done something similar before, you may not see much new in the tactics chapters, they'll be a refresher for what you already know. However, calculating all the variations to the best of your ability is still a good exercise.

There are 3 or 4 positional chapters per book that you'll find very tough.

The endgames chapters depend on what you know already.

I decided to do all of them so I started with the orange ones. Probably starting with the blue ones also works.

I've started with the Orange books too and learnt a lot.

Thank you kikvors and hicetnunc for your replies.

Hicetnunc, just to clarify, did you read the Orange books when you were rated in the 1800 - 2050 range or were you lower rated at the time?

I want to make sure that there is something for me to learn from the Orange books. Thanks.

No, I was already over 2000 FIDE.

I would agree with kikvors' overall assessment of the contents : I was also more at home in the tactical chapters (though some of them are quite challenging anyway) and found the strategy chapters more difficult.

If you're not sure, you can also start with the blue books - there's a lot of interesting material there too.

Here are samples of medium (**) exercises in the first orange book :

Thanks for the clarification hicetnunc. I will start with the orange books.

man im bad.. ratings here are really inflated

posting just to bookmark this discussion

I should check this out.