Chess Program

Hello. I am around a 1700 player. I have used chessmaster in the past. Are there any other programs out there that are good teaching aids?

I currently have arena with stockfish. Its great at analyzing games, but i dont think it has the capability to improve my game, only to show me the best move. I could be wrong, but im not sure. 

there are a lot of chess engines out there, but stockfish should be good enough anyway, if you are looking for a teaching tool. I use chess books myself. CT-ART is a good for tactics. http://www.wholesalechess.com/shop/chess-software/chess-tactics-software/ct-art-4-0 

again, im looking for a program that does something aside from analyzing my games. like chessmaster:)

I suggest you down load a Winboard, with UCI support. I myself use the Crafty Chess Interface. http://crafty-chess-interface.software.informer.com/10.0/ 

The UCI options will allow you to adjust for player strenght and style; and allow you to create Profiles much lke you are used to from Chess Master.

You will need the Polyglot.exe adaptor to use the UCI options

https://web.archive.org/web/20150504225042/http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/html/details1/PolyGlot.html

http://www.chess2u.com/t7375-polyglot-how-to-use-it 

Basically you load the Polyglot as a Winboard engine, and point its Ini file at the Engine you wish to manipulate. Rebbaca 3 works well with the Crafty Interface for this purpose. And the Delphi chess Engine is also a good starter engine.

As all these progies are privately developed, it takes a lil tweeking to get them to work together. Took me about two weeks to wrap my head around what I was doing. But the effort is well worth it. And the Winboards forum community is most helpful.

The Crafty interface moves smoothly between 2Player and Player v computer modes. I'm sure it will make an Excellent sparing partner, that you seem to be looking for,  and you can easily set up key posiitons in openings you wish to study or Endgames you wish to practice. It is unfortunately no longer supported by the Dev. but it is the 10th Rendition of a long developed app. And you'll find it a useful and well developed tool.

Note: the Death of  Leo Dijksman has left a huge hole in the Winboard hobby/community. You'll find a good number of files are now only available as Cached by the internet Archieve Project but they are fully useable files.

Hope this helps BB.

PS: Rahter than send you running all over the Web, the .Zip linked here should have everything you need to get going. Hope this proves of value to yu. BB.

http://www.chess.com/download/view/crafty-thumb-drive 

ChessKing might fill the bill.  It has around 2k puzzles in ascending order of difficulty and you also get to play against Houdini with odds.  HIARCS chess is fun to play against and is reputed to have very human like play.  HIARCS also has an easy to use database useful to play through master games.  And then of course there is Fritz which is very popular despite being a little unintuitive to learn.  They're all around $50.  I use Fritz to analyze, ChessKing for puzzles and handicapped play against houdini, and HIARCS to learn new openings.  Your mileage may vary...

For playing against the computer in "dumbed-down" mode, Shredder is also pretty good, also Lucas Chess which is free. Plus "Kasparov ChessMate", also free. I think these are all available for download from this site.

thank you blackbird. I will be purchasing an imac soon, do you know if that works on apple or just pc?

YW,

I'm sure the version I posted is PC only, but Crafty has been around along time so you might find a version ported to Mac. And you might find other Mac Winboard Adapts. : ) Im pretty sure the Poly was originally developed on some sort of Linux machine, but its a very powerful tool that will allow you to get the most out of a great number of Engines. BB.

Komodo9 + Fritz 15.

Re Macs - Here's a pretty good site for engines/GUIs for the Mac:

http://julien.marcel.free.fr/macchess/Chess_on_Mac/Engines.html

I'm not exactly sure what the OP is asking. If it's tutorials, I don't think there's anything better than Chessmaster. (Or try the traditional books, videos, instructors, etc.)

Other than that, I'm not sure how a program will help you improve, unless you use it in support of your traditional learning; Analyzing games after you've analyzed them yourself, using a database program to keep track of your games, etc.

I guess you could use a program for tactics practice. Of course, you can also do that online.

Hi, not sure if this is at all the sort of thing you're looking for, but I've been working on a small program to train blindfold play. I'm not yet much good at playing blindfold myself, but I have found practicing it to be quite helpful when it comes to calculating long lines in my regular games (not losing track of which pieces I've moved/exchanged etc).

Have a look here if you're interested - http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/blindfold-chess-app

what im asking is, instead of an engine telling me the best move in a situation, i would like to know WHY that is the best move. I think that is my goal here. 

Hmm engines tend not to be very good at this... One generally just has to sift through endless lines unfortunately. I'll let you know if I come across anything ;)

I don't think a chess program can do that for you, unless you're willing and capable of sifting through analysis lines and figuring it out for yourself. That's where instructors and post-mortem analyses with stronger players come in.

post mortem? meaning post game?

Yeah.

For that specific purpose, the closest computer app I know are SCID and ChessBase Light; both allow you multiple canidate moves/ Threads.

So you can see what possibilities the computer deems best, and of course if your own Canidate moves are not listed test them and see if they are playable or not; besides that I dont really know of any apps that come close to CMs Tutorial features although I know King (mentioned above) has some Coaching built in but I have not yet tested those features. BB

i am thinking its best to have a mentor or teacher

Of course, but in the absense of one; a cybernetic sparring partner is a useful thing; not unlike doing ones Kata in Karate. Builds up the mental muscle memory. But I would suggest using the computer to practice against positions like found in Yuri Averbakhs chess endings. Or Tactical Problems from things like 303 Perplexing Chess Puzzles, and not just complete games. It can be a very useful tool for sharpening ones technique.