chess mentor is ineffective at teaching

when there was just one right move, it liked my move and said correct, but when there were multiple possible moves it just said "wrong move, try again" ?!  how lame is that?  i tried another move and it said "wrong move, try again".  what a waste of time.  i wonder what the reviews are chess.com were thinking.  i checked the hints and the strong hints and they were telling me to do the very thing I first did but it said I made the wrong move.  chess is not like that.  there are many ways to accomplish the same thing.  IT COULD AT LEAST SAY WHY AND SHOW ME!!  just venting and communicating.

-mike

Can you be more specific? Which move and lesson was it? Maybe we can get in there and add some more info.

          Mike, my cousins race stock cars up in Oxford Plains.  Give it time, I
just finished Chess Mentor after 7 months and I'm rated above 1900 now (my blitz
rating is lower).
          Yes, there are multiple moves but this is trying to coach you into the best
move for each situation.  There are rarely more than two.  If you take the whole
course and enjoy it I think you will be pleased with your improvement.
           I just had some great lobster rolls from Maine two weeks ago.  Good luck.

I think that sometimes, particually in opening study, there are too many possible moves, and the study is inefective if you don't play that opening.

Ive had that problem too

When I used it, it always mentioned reasons why my moves were bad, or in the case of an all right move, what was good about it but that there were even better alternatives. I think your problem must be with a specific lesson.

mike has been a member of chess.com for 1 day and has tried a total of 3 chess mentor problems. i'm not sure that's enough time to make a qualified opinion the 4000 chess lessons on Chess Mentor...

Erik-  I'm new to chess.com, and relatively new to chess as well.  Chess Mentor sounds like a great tool, and this post caught my eye because I am thinking about upgrading to take advantage of it.  In reading this post I was looking for an explanation as to why CM did not offer Mike the analysis he was expecting.  Chessy4000 offered a plausible explanation, however it doesn't appear that he is an admin, so I'm not sure if his comment reflects how CM works.  Your comment, on the other hand, did little to explain the situation.

Thanks for all of the work you have done to put this site together. :)

Cheers!

Mark

Yeah that's one complaint I have, that can be annoying. There should be more "alternate correct moves", because there are plenty of good moves one can play. It's a good idea to make someone find the best move, but when you're making say 2 or 3 moves that demonstrate you know exactly what you're doing yet you lose 10% for each one? Unfair!

Chess Mentor is a fantastic learning tool.  Of course, it's also true that some courses/authors take better advantage of the platform than others.

if that can make you write a lengthy post, you must get really mad for any chess book or puzzle available on earth. How dare they don't tell you why 1.a3 is not the correct move? you can't let them get away with that, can you?

seriously, in 99.9% of those ranting cases (I've been there too, don't worry) I've found out that the ranter is just not thinking enough, getting something obvious wrong and choses to blame the software or site instead.

Chess Mentor is the most interactive training tool I've ever seen.

I think Chess Mentor is a fantastic tool (it's one of the main reasons I've paid for a premium membership) but that doesn't mean every author does a great job with every lesson. Keep in mind it's a new medium -- authors are figuring out how to write for it as they go along and Chess.com is still figuring out what works best and what doesn't. 

I think there should be a way to give Chess Mentor feedback and reviews.

I'm currently working thru:

Pawn Endings: Beginner to Expert
Author: IM Eric Tangborn, FM Thomas Wolski
Category: Endgames

I give this course 5 out of 5 stars! *(and I'm no pushover as reviewer, really) It takes you from basic opposition to the hardcore Smyslov endings and composed studies etc. I haven't mastered all of it and intend to work thru many of the lessons a second time, but this is how to learn pawn endings, I'm convinced. I already understand topics like distant opposition and triangulation far better than I did from studying (good) books. The material is so clearly, thoroughly and thoughtfully presented.  I've been thru 109 of the 117 lessons in this course and I have to yet to find one that disappointed! I think Chess.com should give this course to it's other authors as an example of "how to author Chess Mentor lessons" -- it strikes me as model work.

Of course, I haven't been exposed to the work of all that many other Chess Mentor authors ... mayber there's others that are even better...

 ROFL!!!!

In general, Chess Mentor is a great learning tool. However, yes, there are often situations when I try a move, the program (IM Silman's course on Positional understanding) says "it's a great move, but you need to find another one"...and takes my rating points away! Just an example: not that I cared too much, but once I tried three reasonable moves in a row only to receive comments that they are all wrong. Then I turned on Rybka - they were it's #1,2 and 3 best choice accordingly. So why should I search for a 4-rate move and "enjoy" comments along the lines of "as a student, you must learn that...". That mentor tone from an IM accompanied by dubious solutions (from time to time) can drive one nuts.

Anyway, I'm not telling it to complain or criticize the course. In general, it's great and fun. Just thought you'd enjoy the story.

I have found Chess mentor to be one of the greatest chess education formats I have tried.  The only thing that is consistently better is a book and a board.  (old school!)

For someone at the master level like yourself I would imagine Chess Mentor could be annoying.  I think that sometimes the lesson gets focused on a particular move order because it is trying to teach a particular lesson.  Which is great for a patzer like me.  :)  I need to learn all the lessons that I can!

Yeah, I hate that! I would find myself with 60% on a lesson I totally understood because of move order issues and maybe a small inaccuracy or two that would still be quite good.

But yes overall chess mentor is just excellent if you put in the effort. And in the end, chess mentor points don't matter so much as long as you're getting stuff out of the lesson, and if the rating you're given is inaccurate, it's not like that stops you from picking whatever course/lesson you want.

I partially agree with the poster. Chess is not something that can be condensed to one line. There were many many times that the author(s) of a particular lesson would say that my move is wrong or there is 'better'. Though I feel as if the author is failing to prove his/her point about the particular line they are trying to show because i would sometimes plug in the move to rybka or fritz and the position would be rated about the same as the suggested move. Now I know computers are not always right positionally but the authors should sometimes state and even criticize the so called 'wrong moves' by maybe providing a variation or explaining why the move or moves are bad. Instead they just fail to mention them and I can see why this happens. There are some moves that a titled player just does not 'consider' and others which they don't feel have a worth-while continuation.

Chess-Mentor is a great tool for sure. The biggest flaw I think is that people don't know how to use chess-mentor. When I first started playing about a year or so ago I tried using chess mentor and was frustrated since I failed so much but after a year of learning from a GM i come back to use it and i find that the many many topics and themes i studied were showing up in chess-mentor and i even was learning more but the truth is that as a student of chess-mentor I think it is critical to criticize the moves you are being presented and criticize other options. If you expect to just sit down and have moves bogged down your throat and learn then I do not think you will grasp as much as if you considered the other possible moves and went further on in calculating lines (even if it just says 'wrong move'). Thus, if you don't try to understand the faults in most lines then you will just end up getting frustrated. (in my opinion that is)

Chess mentor is supposed to do exactly this, but you know some moves may have not been considered by the IM or GM. But generally the ones only a little worse than the main move are explained in some way or another. It's probably best though to learn the proper way to play a position anyway; say you're 1800, you solve the position well, you know, like what an 1800 could come up with. However that does not equal master level but if it was just satisfied with those moves you may just stay the same.

I find Chess Mentor excellent and I've definitely improved from it. Some authors are better than others I reckon but that's personal preference I suppose and once you find the authors and types of courses you like it will definitely deepen your understanding of the game and is fun too.

I do find it frustrating to lose rating points when I play an Alternate Correct Move and then can't find the main correct one. However I think I should probably stop worrying about my Chess Mentor rating. I mean, who cares? The main point is to become a better player so my real-life rating improves.

It's the same with tactics trainer. Sometimes I panic into making the wrong move because time is short and I want the rating points, whereas I'd be better off just taking whatever time I need to think my way through the problem, just like you must do in a real game.

no but sometimes you make a move and it's just as good. it says:"alternative correct move" and well, it explains why.

also, in some lessons where grandmaster games were used to teach, you might actually come up with a better move. it would be extremely silly to mark that wrongm right?