Originally posted by Khana program for drilling tactics. 1200 problems, not computer checked, bad interface (now there's a shocker considering chess programs), but after you get used to its various annoying characteristics, it's really quite useful. problems range from easy as pie to very difficult. costs about 20 euros.
What is the CT art?
Well what's the point of a couple of errors? It's not like you will memorize every single position in CT Art and know the exact answer and variations, and when you get the exact same position in a game, play out the variation, and get it refuted.
CT Art is mainly to teach you pattern recognition and more importantly calculation skills. I'm sure that the main ideas behind the tactical problems are all correct, probably just a few variations have errors.
ct-arts is overrated. Just like Rapid Chess Improvement which helped popularize it. You might as well get the old Reinfeld combinations book and go through that page by page. You can analyze in bed on the beach in the doctor's office, just put it in your pocket. There's some hard, lengthy combinations to exercise your visualization and cheapos to boost your ego and they are categorized by motifs. The only disadvantages are some smudgy diagrams and pages that tend to fallout over time.
Originally posted by MoneyMaker7I'm going though it right now and it takes hell of a time. trying to spend 1 hours a day for it (today it has been the fifth day) and it's going really, really slow. I suppose it will take more than 1 year, as the problems get harder with each level.
I've almost finished going through CT Art for the first time. I find it has improved mostly my intuitional skills for finding moves in a game, but I still have the need of calculating whatever the variations are. Anyone else use it? Thoughts?
how long have you been studying CT-Art? and how do you study it, do you just look at the position for a few seconds and throw in the check or capture and see what happens, or do you calculate variations systematically until you're positive on a winning certain move?