"Terry" wrote in message
ups.com...
On Oct 25, 10:06 pm, "John Sloan" wrote:
"Terry" wrote in
ooglegroups.com...

Go into the database and do a position search for those moves.
Chessmaster
will bring up any games that have that position and you can play through
them to see how other people handled the game from there.

I was looking for your suggestion, and I found something. It might be
the same thing you suggested but I am not sure. I know it is just what
I am looking for.

I found it by going LearnOpeningsOpening Book Reference. This gives
each answer to the current position. This could be very useful.

This is a different part of Chessmaster than what I meant, though a useful
to learn some of the main lines.

What I meant was to try LearnDatabasePosition Search.

I like to learn an opening by watching how strong players handle it, by
following their games move by move, seeing if I can figure out what they're
going to do next, looking for the tactical threats, etc in the position
before I look at their next move. One of my weak areas is knowing what to
do after the first 8 or 9 moves. I end up with a position on the board and,
"Now what do I do?" I find this position-search feature very useful for
getting ideas about how to take a particular opening/position into the
middle game.

Another thing I'll do is go to PlaySetup Position and set up a particular
position and then have Chessmaster play itself in the position on the
highest level to see how it comes out. Or, you can play one side of the
position against Chessmaster and learn from that. Not as good as going
through master games from the same position, but helpful.

It is a shame that such a great chess tool like this had left out the
ability to pop the chessboard over all the useful help screens.

Some of those help screens can be resized by dragging on their outer
boarders and pulling them inward to make them smaller on one side, leaving
more room for the chess board on the screen. You can also resize the chess
board by left-clicking on the background behind the chessboard and then
using the wheel on your mouse (there's a way to do this without using the
mouse, too, if your's doesn't have the wheel, but I'm not sure how to do
it - I know you can rotate the 3D boards using the arrow keys).

The chessboard is after all the main feature. Having to move all
these useful information boxes out of the way to see the chessboard
sucks.

I turn most of the windows off, except for the game status window, myself.

JS