Mikhail Tal World Champion CD by Convekta
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Mikhail Tal 8th World Champion CD
Updated on 01/05/99
I have to admit, this is one offering that I've been eagerly
awaiting since it was announced by Convekta many months
ago. Mikhail Tal was one of my favorite players. People that have been
visiting my web site for a while know that I used to have a picture of
Tal in the left hand frame of this page.
This CD contains about 2600 of Tal's games, with nearly every game
annotated (I counted less than 5 without annotations). The annotations
themselves are languageless, in the form of Informant-style codes, and
are extremely deep and detailed. The annotations were done by a team
of Grand Masters (Khalifman, Kochiev, Makarichev and Yudasin) and
International Masters from Petersburg, and are not computer generated.
In addition to the annotated games, there is also a selection of about
250 quiz positions. For accessing the quizzes, you use an interface
that is very much similar to that used in the other Chess Assistant
tutorial packages. I would suggest you look at my review of Chess Tactics for Beginners to get an
idea of what features are present. The quiz positions are organized
into the following categories: attack on the King (uncastled, castled
on same and opposite sides), intuitive sacrifices, tactical blows,
strategic methods, and endgame technique. The exercises are not
"easy", and will require a bit of thought. You can also play
out positions against the built-in chess engine (Dragon or Crafty).
You can export any position to a variety of external chess playing
programs (Hiarcs, Genius, MChess, Rebel, etc.).
You have your choice of interfaces for accessing the games. There is a
nice chronological browser that shows pictures of Tal at various times
in his life. Once you select a particular year, you are presented with
a list of tournaments that he played in that year. You can then select
particular games from the tournament that you are interested in. The
CD uses a version of Chess Assistant lite to browse and examine the
games. Thus, you can use Chess Assistant's search capabilities to
find any game you are interested in (i.e. if you are using it in
conjunction with a book, for instance). This means you can search by
player, year, result, opening, position, etc.) If there happens to be
a variation that you want to examine that was not explored in the
game, you can use any of the previously mentioned chess engines for
analysis.
There are a full range of printing capabilities, and you can add
diagrams, etc to any printouts that you make. This is handy for when
you are analyzing over a real board. There is also the ability to make
html printouts for web pages.
The bottom line: Tal fans will want this CD. Even if you are not a Tal
fan, I would recommend this CD - it really is a tremendous value for
the money. Not to mention that it also makes a good adjunct if you are
studying any of Tal's Books (for instance Tal vs. Botvinnik,
Attack with Mikhail Tal, Life and Games of Mikhail Tal - every one of
these books is a classic).
Note: since I wrote this review, I've had a chance to work with
the program a bit more. I've had no problems, and my
recommendation still stands - it's a great buy.
Copy Protection
Must be installed from the CD.
