ChessVibes & Smartchess! team up: enjoy CVO & CVT on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch

We have some great news: from now on you can enjoy our magazines ChessVibes Openings and ChessVibes Training not only in PDF and PGN format, but also on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch! This was made possible thanks to our cooperation with SmartChess!, the best app available for viewing chess games on an Apple iDevice. And that's not all: to celebrate our cooperation, the SmartChess! app is free for three days, between Friday, January 27th and Sunday, January 29th, 2012! Find it in the App Store here.

SmartChess!

SmartChess! puts a vast world of chess knowledge in the palm of your hand. Chess pieces spring into action—accompanied by helpful author comments and explanations—after a simple finger tap on the screen of your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. You can jump directly to any chapter using the always-visible Table of Contents icon and you can easily adjust font size, font color and screen background to suit your reading preferences.

All nested lines and variations are literally at your fingertips—instead of setting up multiple boards to follow the twists and turns of a complex game, just tap your finger to play through each variation at your convenience. You can even play through cited games from start to finish and then return to the main game. Navigation arrows make it easy to “flip” between pages or even to skip pages.

At any point in a SmartChess! book or lesson you can try moves not mentioned by the author. When you are done exploring these alternatives you can return to the main text by simply tapping the action arrow on your screen.

You can build your own SmartChess! library using In-App Purchase in the built-in bookstore; our catalog contains classic books written by many legendary Grandmasters, including Capablanca, Lasker, Alekhine and Réti.

CVO & CVT in SmartChess!

From now on you will also find our own magazines inside the bookstore of SmartChess!. At the moment we offer single issues for both magazines. We've put CVO at the lowest possible price that Apple allows, which is $0.99 or €0.79. A single issues of CVT contains about twice as much chess material, and is priced at $1.99 or €1.59.

The start page of the SmartChess! app, where you can go to 'Bookstore' to browse through the available chess publications	You can see that we're putting the most recent issues of our magazine inside the book store
After purchasing the items you can find your copies under 'Books', where they will stay forever for you to read and read again	Here's a screenshot from the weekly Game Quiz by IM Merijn van Delft in ChessVibes Training - absolutely perfect for reading on a smart phone with SmartChess!

Special offer for ChessVibes visitors: SmartChess! three days for free!

Normally the SmartChess! app is priced $2.99 but during the final weekend of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament you can download SmartChess! free of charge on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch! That's right, go to the App Store and download the SmartChess app free of charge between Friday, January 27th and Sunday, January 29th, 2012!

CVO & CVT

For those of you who haven't see our magazines yet, here's a small introduction. You can read more about our openings magazine (CVO) here, and about our training magazine (CVT) here.

Which openings are hot in top level chess? Which are not? Receive the latest opening novelties right in your mailbox with ChessVibes Openings, a weekly PDF magazine (+ PGN!) covering the latest openings news, co-authored by International Masters Merijn van Delft and Robert Ris and published by ChessVibes.

Every issue consists of a PDF Magazine and the accompanying PGN file. The PDF consists of four pages (A4 size) with the following contents:

• What's hot? A round-up of this week's important opening developments, with statistics about the frequence and score of the week's most important opening novelty (page 1)
• What's not? Which openings are not recommended at the moment, according to the top players? And why not? (page 1)
• Game of the week Each week you'll find the theoretically most important game analysed by our two IMs, with a detailed survey of the opening phase (page 2).
• This week's harvest Four more new important opening ideas from this week (page 3) revealed and described with explanation of the opening and early middlegame (page 3).
• It's Your Move An interactive element: every week two exercises, of which the solutions/explanations will follow one week later. This will improve your understanding of certain opening, middlegame or even endgame themes even further.

MORE INFO HERE

Want to improve your chess? See more combinations, understand middle game plans, hear about useful endgame motifs? Receive the best chess tips available with ChessVibes Training, a weekly PDF magazine (+ PGN!) co-authored by International Masters Merijn van Delft, Robert Ris and Thomas Willemze, and including a weekly column by top GM Anish Giri.

Every issue consists of a PDF Magazine and the accompanying PGN file. The PDF consists of eight pages (A4 size) with the following contents:

• Giri's Grab Bag - A weekly column by GM Anish Giri in which he tells about his tournament practice and his excitement and worries during a top level chess game.
• Guess the move - A weekly game quiz by IM Merijn van Delft that gives you the opportunity to solve problems that GMs couldn't. What move did they play? Can you calculate as deeply? Give it a try and see how many points you score this week!
• Improve your play - An interactive section by IM Thomas Willemze that discusses games from our readers. Yes, that's you! You can send in your game(s) and Thomas will pinpoint mistakes and possible improvements from a number of amateur games every week.
• Tactics, tactics - 12 tactical exercises carefully selected by IM Robert Ris, arranged in increasing level. Regular tactical training is highly important to maintain your top form, and now it will be easier than ever with new diagrams delivered in your mailbox every week!
• Practical endings - IM Robert Ris gives a clear explanation of a recent endgame played by strong players, focusing on text rather than variations. Every week a typical endgame theme is discussed, sometimes with the emphasis on the theory, but always providing you with useful guidelines.

MORE INFO HERE