Practicing tactics.

Hi everyone,

I am looking to practice my tactics and which would be a better option?

A) chess.emrald.net
B) CT-ART by Convekta

Any idea or perhaps more suggestions?

you could try this website...

http://www.chessebook.com/

you can get a 14 day trial to see if its your thing....

CT-ART is well known, and highly regarded. I've not heard of the other prior to this thread.

Originally posted by stanloh
Hi everyone,

I am looking to practice my tactics and which would be a better option?

A) chess.emrald.net
B) CT-ART by Convekta

Any idea or perhaps more suggestions?

I like the chess.emerald.net site. Good for a quick, free brush-up. What I don't like about that site is, if you don't answer a question quickly enough, even though you got the problem right, it degrades your score significantly and then you get easier problems--too easy. I get most of them right, just not in the 6 "free" seconds the site gives you. Sometimes I'm feeling a bit sluggish, especially in the evenings, and I just don't get the problems answered quickly enough, so I get stuck answering lower-rated/easy questions. It's a great site though, and I'm thankful for it, especially since it doesn't cost anything.

I like John Emms' book 'The Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book' for the explanations it gives in the answers and for the fact that it's not a "Find the mate in x"-type book.

I will have to take a look at Chess Tactics ART.

Originally posted by pinkthunder
I like the chess.emerald.net site. Good for a quick, free brush-up. What I don't like about that site is, if you don't answer a question quickly enough, even though you got the problem right, it degrades your score significantly and then you get easier problems--too easy. I get most of them right, just not in the 6 "free" seconds the site gives you. Some ...[text shortened]... ind the mate in x"-type book.

I will have to take a look at Chess Tactics ART.

I recommend Ct-art 3.0. Is about $40 but I think its worth it.

I did the la maza program and was dumb enough to collect 1000 puzzles online and I spent 90 hours just collecting them from books and online instead of paying $40 for ct-art. Dumb me, I save $0.4 a hour!

Anyways I put my tactic la maza results on my blog. The address is under my profile, but I don't suggest doing this. Just do 5 problems a day everyday and that should be the same.

Originally posted by RahimK
I recommend Ct-art 3.0. Is about $40 but I think its worth it.

I did the la maza program and was dumb enough to collect 1000 puzzles online and I spent 90 hours just collecting them from books and online instead of paying $40 for ct-art. Dumb me, I save $0.4 a hour!

Anyways I put my tactic la maza results on my blog. The address is under my profile, but I don't suggest doing this. Just do 5 problems a day everyday and that should be the same.

Or you could buy the John Emms book that pinkthunder mentioned above, The Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book. It meets DelaMaza'a requirements (ie: 1000 puzzles, arranged by difficulty, computer checked) and is portable. I hit tactics study in spurts, and I do play better when I have been doing the puzzles regularly. I admire Rahim for being able to complete the DelaMaza program, it is far too tedious for me. I agree with him that you can probably achieve similar results by simply doing some puzzles each day, I think 10-20 would work out well for most people.

i find ct-art pretty hard though, even at level 2 (out of 10) it expects you to calculate an 8 move variation

Originally posted by BLReid
Or you could buy the John Emms book that pinkthunder mentioned above, The Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book. It meets DelaMaza'a requirements (ie: 1000 puzzles, arranged by difficulty, computer checked) and is portable. I hit tactics study in spurts, and I do play better when I have been doing the puzzles regularly. I admire Rahim for being able to complete the Dela ...[text shortened]... sults by simply doing some puzzles each day, I think 10-20 would work out well for most people.

Thankz, if you visited my blog and saw my results then you must have noticed my massive month off from the program. But that is life.

I don't know about the book, but I know Ct-art puzzles are difficult. Some of them and there is about 1200 puzzles I belive and plus it keeps track of all your stats so you don't have to write them down.

I had a stop watch with me and would write down how long it took me for each problem set. That takes time and unneccersary effort. Plus $40 is pretty reasonable I think. Most books are around this price also though.

CT-ART is a great collection of puzzles, but it's slow interface can be very annoying. I personally prefer puzzle books which I can take anywhere. I currently do a couple of puzzles from Reinfeld's One Thousand and One Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations which is plenty hard for me.

Yeah I tried practicing from a book, wasn't really my thing. I think I will go for CT-ART. Actually I am going for Pocket CT-Art.

Originally posted by pinkthunder
I like the chess.emerald.net site. Good for a quick, free brush-up. What I don't like about that site is, if you don't answer a question quickly enough, even though you got the problem right, it degrades your score significantly and then you get easier problems--too easy. I get most of them right, just not in the 6 "free" seconds the site gives you. Some ...[text shortened]... reat site though, and I'm thankful for it, especially since it doesn't cost anything.

I disagree with the assesment that this site significantly degrades your rating if you don´t answer quicklky enough.

As you solve and fail to solve more puzzles your Ratings Deviation is reduced, meaning that your rating doesn´t jump around so wildly.

Also, It´s not as black and white as solving the problem within the first 3 free seconds, your change in grade is based on the length of time to solve. It´s true that your grade can go down if you solve the puzzle slowly, but not significantly, especially if you´ve solved several puzzles already.

I recomend that you register as a user and give the site a good going over!

www.instantchess.com

fast games that will allow you to practice new or used tactics on real opponents