Maxim Blokh The author of The Art of Combination presents a selection of 1,205 best tactical positions, grouped according to their topics. Most of the problems that appeared in The Art of Combination are provided, with a better breakdown and improved analysis. The Art of Combination by Maxim Blokh has also been published as Combinational Art (and is not the same as Combinational Motifs). All of Blokh's books are available in PDF format on various download sites. Blokh's books are the best tactics books around, but paying hundreds of - or one thousand - dollars for them is clearly over the top. How to Reassess Your Chess: The Complete Chess Mastery Course (Expanded 3rd Edition). Summit Publishing, 1993. The Amateur's Mind: Turning Chess Misconceptions into Chess Mastery (2nd Edition/Expanded). Siles Press, 1999. Vukovic, Vladimir. The Art of Attack in Chess. Globe Pequot, 1998. Weeramantry, Sunil.
Maxim Blokh Manual Of Chess Machine
2) A similar thing can be found in the next fragment where I lost track of the function of my pieces. And that while the winning combination was several moves on the board. Fortunately I was still able to win the game nicely.
| White has just played Nf4. How can black profit? |
Finally I also want to show a tactical trap from the last round.
Some strong qualities of the tournament:
- A spacious, comfortable and well lightened playing-room (the tournament was in the best hotel of Skopje)
- A nice and friendly organization (for each round there was transport from the hotels which you could book via the tournament, everybody got each round a bottle of water,...
- Many strong players: except the 18x 2500 players, the middle-field was very competitive. A mix of veterans and young wolves created a lot of competition (of 200 players more than 120 had +2000 rating)
- Cheap:
- plane 180€ (Adria Airways)
- subscription fee 40€
- hotel 120€ à 280 €
Solution of the tactical question:
Black plays Nxe4 and Bf6 follows.
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Total Chess Training
ChessAssistant has collected 5 of their training programs and published them under the name 'Total Chess Training'. All 5 programs can also be bought as an solitary program (prizes 26 - 29$), but here the publisher has chosen to cover all aspects in chess with the 5 programs. The CD covers Opening Blunders, Middlegame (and opening), Endgame, Tactics and Strategy - and this should be about all you have to know about chess! It should be noted that no additional software is needed to run the 5 programs. Before we take a closer look at how it works, let's see what it is all about:
Maxim Blokh Manual Of Chess Player
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- CT-ART 3.0
CT-ART teaches chess tactics and the studies includes positions from practical games, endgame studies as well as the training examples designed by GM ICCF Maxim Blokh. The exercises are arranged in three courses:
1) Tactical methods (1217 main and more than 1000 supplementary examples)
2) Combinational motifs (1209 and 1000)
3) Grades by difficulty (1209 and 1000) - Studies 2.0
Studies program is intended for chessplayers with ELO 1800-2600. Studies includes more than 100 best etudes of the most famous chess composers. - Encyclopedia of Middlegame
'Encyclopedia of Middlegame' & 'Strategy 2.0' are prepared by two experienced Russian Players and coaches, IM A. Mitenkov and IM A. Kalinin. These two programs are for the intermediate and advanced chess players. The program contains 2.000 selected positions.
1) Typical pawn structures
2) Typical plans and methods in the most popular openings (Scotch, French,
Caro-Kann, Sicilian, Dutch.....) - Strategy 2.0
Contains 1.800 selected position, including:
1) 250 instructive examples
2) 450 typical positions
3) 1.100 exercises - Encyclopedia of Opening Blunders
The Chess material for the 'Encyclopedia of Opening Blunders' was prepared by two experienced players and coaches IM Yaroslav Ulyko and IM Aleksey Mitenkov. 'Encyclopedia of opening Blunders' presents a table of contents on common openings and has over 1.200 openings of various difficulty from practical games.
What can you do with these programs?
As an example of what it is all about, I want to take a closer look at the program 'Encyclopedia of Middlegame'. You can see a screenshot of this program beneath.
There is several things you can do with this program, which main purpose is to train the student in handling 'typical pawn structures' and 'openings and middlegame'. First of all you start to create yourself as a new user, and after this the program remembers which exercises etc. you went through so far. This is a good feature both for the student and the coach who can watch how his students are doing in the different openings. After creating a new user you start studying an opening as you can see from the screenshot above. Here I have chosen to learn more about 'Catalan Opening' and I start with the category 'The Plan of c7-c6' in which there is 6 annotated games. I have chosen to look at the first game between Psakhis and Miladinovic, Moscow (Russia 1994). Other games are examined more in depth, but this one suited my purpose to show what it is all about (= a good screenshot).
After some studying (it take some time if you are serious!) of both this and the other category in this opening 'Black captures d5xc4' I'm ready to test my knowledge. I choose to 'Practice' and go on with 45 games where you have to find the right move for both black and white. All the time you can switch to see the statistics and how your ELO is doing! I tried it out in the French Defence to see how it works, and it worked well(!) .... I started with ELO 2100 and finally I got out with an ELO of 2200, so I think I'm a star in this opening ;-) I have to add that sometimes I didn't have a clue of what to play, and still I managed to raise my ELO(!) This was mainly because I all the time got help after making 'a bad move', and this should be disabled if you are trying to do some serious training (Options + Prompts after errors). A useful option is that you all the time can play against Crafty or just use the engine to analyze a position.
Final remarks
I must admit that I had a great time going through this product, and I think that it is a great supplement to the usual sort of training. To get full effect I think it is necessary to have a coach to guide you so you know when and how to study. It is also possible to study by yourself, but it easy to become 'lazy' and just guessing the moves. But..... it is possible ;-) Training with programs is still not fully developed, but Chess Assistant has done a great job with this one. I look forward to the next generation, both from ChessAssistant and other publishers like 'New In Chess' and 'ChessBase'.
| Conclusion: Total Chess Training is 5 programs from which you can learn a lot if you are a serious student with an ELO from 1800 and up to 2300. It is a perfect tool to supplement your usual way of training, and it is also worth using for coaches and chess-teachers. Recommended. |