I’ve been getting a few tactic problems under my belt in recent months but haven’t really been happy with the progress feedback from the various systems I’ve been using.

Chess Tactics for Beginners & CT-Art are good programs and very good for learning tactics, but I find the scoring a little bit hit and miss and the difficulty a bit off for some problems. It only gives you a percentage score for each set, but at least you can see if you’re improving each time round.

Chessimo, again is very good for learning tactics using the in-built repetition, but there is no system for tracking progress which is the one major let-down in this software.

I’ve played around on the Chess Tactics Server (CTS) from time to time, but didn’t really get on with the blitz style of solving as it doesn’t give much time to study the position before feeling compelled to make a move – it doesn’t really motivate me to lose rating points for solving a problem correctly. Also the interface doesn’t make it easy to review the problem. I do like the problem rating system though which gives a rating based on how difficult other users found it.

I tried ChessTempo.com last year, but wasn’t overly impressed and only tried it again a few days ago. They’ve updated the interface, making it very easy to review the problem. There is a ’standard’ style (as well as blitz) which gives you as much time as you need, really allowing you to understand the position before making a move – much closer to the OTB matches I play. The rating system is basically the same as CTS, but the ’standard’ rating swings it for me.

I’ll be keeping up with the other programs, but will try using ChessTempo.com to track my progress. I’ll let you know how it goes – currently I’m about 1700 rating.

This entry was posted by Dave on Sunday, 30th November 2008 at 10:01 pm and is filed under Chess Improvement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.