Program Description

This program is the 3rd revised and expanded edition of the ever popular Chess Tactics Art by the Russian GM of Correspondence chess, Maxim Blokh. The material was chosen for a wide variety of player strengths from 1600 Elo to 2300 Elo. The focus of the difficulty of the examples is on amateurs but even masters will find themselves challenged by the hardest ones. Features of the program include: No less than 1217 main examples with over 1000 supplementary ones are classified according 3 criteria: 1.Tactical methods (Annihilation of Defense, Distraction, Decoy, Open attack, Opening of a file, Space clearance, X-ray attack, Interception, etc); 2.Combination motifs (Geometrical motif, Weakness of a file, rank or diagonal, Opposing, A piece is overloaded, Bad position of the pieces, Limited material, etc); 3.Difficulty ? Select the Elo range of the positions you wish to be tested with. -Numerous text and visual hints to help the student find the solution if they don?t at first. Help features include: marking the most important squares, illustration of ideas with more simple examples (more than 1,000 subsidiary exercises). In some cases, an extra board is presented. -Shows the pattern behind the combination, further enhancing the student?s pattern recognition. - Optional change of colors and sides increases the number of exercises four times -Generates the student?s ELO and statistics in easy-to-read bar graphs, based on students' success rate with the exercises, helping them keep track of their progress. - Built-in chess playing program Crafty to learn with or play against. - Multiple user profiles are possible, with independent ratings and all other individual information. - Good for teachers: keeps track of the time and score of each position for each student. Several languages are supported: English, French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish. No additional software is required.