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Chessville
Chess
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A Review of the "Great Players Kit" by Kevin Bidner This is the second installment in the the series of Convekta software product reviews. The review is on the “Great Players Kit”, which is a collection of the games of former World Champions Capablanca, Tal, Botvinnik, Lasker, and Alekhine. The products are sold separately (see the Convekta site for international prices) for $29.95 US each or $99.95 for the complete set of five collections. These products are aimed at intermediate and advanced players. Everyone knows that all serious chess players must study the games of the great masters. The problem is… How? The key to learning from master games is to be able to first see the alternatives they saw, and second understand why they made the decisions they did, and then third, transfer that knowledge into our own decision making. That is is the goal, right? Well, we have books available, those are good, but playing out games from books is painfully slow - setting up positions, resetting the pieces for every variation… I have spent hours like this, only to realize that at least 1/3 of my invested time was spent setting up and moving around chess pieces and yet another third trying to remember where I was in the maze of variations. So yes, books are good, but in this day and age of magical chess software we can do much better right? OK so we have our chess software, and we can load up entire libraries of free game collections (see Chessville's own Games Collections or the Game Collection Links). Yes, here we can study the games of the masters, and play out the moves easily, but with no variations, comments, etc. Now maybe its just me, but when I play through a Capablanca game, I’m just not sure I’m getting all of the subtleties of the game… in fact most of the time I am scratching my head wondering what the hang is going on! Needless to say, plodding through the books starts to look good again. But, lo and behold, there is a terrific solution to maximizing your time and learning experience in studying the games of the masters. Convekta software has published a set of programs facilitating the study of Capablanca, Tal, Botvinnik, Lasker, and Alekhine. The programs are a terrific value to any serious student of the game. Here’s why... Content Each collection has over 1000 games in the set. The biggest value that sets these collections apart from the free collections is the rich analysis and annotation by a team of GM’s and IM’s. In my opinion, if the product contained only these annotated games it would make these collections well worth the money. The ability to play through games, and easily look at all the variations on critical positions allows us to understand the critical thinking behind the moves, and makes the learning experience meaningful and powerful, not to mention fun. To be able to answer “I wonder why he played that move, and then to be able to quickly and easily see the different outcomes of the alternates… well that is powerful stuff. Here is an example of a typical game:
As you can see, these game collections contain a massive amount of added value, which will translate to time saved and better comprehension in studying master games. The material is well organized, by time period and also with a small thumbnail of critical positions relating to each period of the player’s career. Play as … Another fantastic feature are hundreds of exercises for each of the five masters, based on critical positions taken from the actual games, where you are challenged to think as the master did. Many of the exercises are on the difficult side, however they are still of extremely high value. Struggling to discover, and then working through the answer step by step is a great way of deepening and applying the learning process, and is a rich compliment to the game set. One really gets a feeling for the particular style and strength of each of the very different personalities represented in the set, and of course each has a different approach we can learn from. Also, being able to convert the exercise into an actual game against the program allows you to test your own variations; alternately you can quickly flip over and play through the entire actual game (with all those annotations) to make the experience complete indeed.
Important to note, the material is organized by motif, so you can practice specific skills, “learning from the master” as it were. Also, the program keeps track of your progress and assesses your playing strength as you go along. Extras The CD’s also contain many extras such as biographical details, anecdotes, photos, and tournament cross-tables.
Conclusion At the price this program is sold for it
is a true bargain, delivering the best that technology can offer.
Interactive, rich in content, and powerful in the presentation and
management of enormous amounts of information, Convekta has delivered, in my
opinion, the absolute best product in the world today for any serious
student of the game who wants to learn from the masters. |
The Chessville
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