After reviewing some of Wolski's earlier material in Chess Mentor, I
could not resist and did indeed order the Chess Mentor Sicilian
course. It is of very high quality - In its 41 challenges, Wolski
cover quite a bit of terrain in the most often played Sicilian
variations (Though I did not notice anything on Accelerated Dragon,
one of my favorites).

The best feature of Chess Mentor is the way in which it make it
possible for all wrong moves to be explained by the author. If you
make a move not suggested by the author then it is usually because the
move makes no sense or loses in an obvious way. Other moves outside
of the moves required by the author for you to solve are often
explained thoroughly by the author as alternatives that do not work
ideally for the explained reasons.

Though there are only 41 challenges, there are dozens of explanatory
sections within each challenge. This makes the course very
interesting to go through as you will not encounter every explained
item the first time you go through it.

Chess Mentor makes you repeat these challenges in order of how well
you solved them on previous occasions - It is by this repetition
process that insures that you will absorb the written material over a
period of time. (Assuming of course that you don't lose patience &
stop utilizing the program completely.

The only thing I was somewhat seriously disconcerted about was that
there was no way to scroll through the Author's analysis of variations
in the text - In this way the Chess Mentor reminds one of a book where
you have to have a chess set to go through the moves nearby. The
up-side to this is that it can also 'force you' to use the vacillation
skill within your own head to try to see the variations that the
author is covering.

My own rating is 2008 USCF & 2196 Fide, so at first I thought that
perhaps the quizzes & questions would be too easy for me, but this
turned out not to be the case. I continue to find the Sicilian
challenges very good reading & not overly simple to understand the
strategic underpinnings of many of the positions without looking very
carefully at the positions & reading the text explanations completely
through. Since I use Chess Base Opening CD's extensively to teach
kids with, and find their training questions within games to be of
first-rate quality, it will be interesting to use this program in
sessions with the kids to teach them even more about the different
Sicilian structures.

I am still not sure that you get the same value for money spent, that
you do with Chess Base CD's, but this is one of the finest Chess
Mentor modules that have yet been produced.

Hopefully Chess Mentor will continue (after-all, it has been more then
2 years since the last chess mentor module came out!), to produce
chess mentor courses, and it would be especially nice if they are on
the openings, as this module is.


Larry S. Tamarkin
Chess Software addict!




(Larry S. Tamarkin) wrote in message . com...
This is way overdo; over the years I have purchased every Chess Mentor
module as they came out and have generally been satisfied with their
quality.

That being said, I find them less useful then Chess Base software,
especially the companies individual opening CD's, of which I have
many.

I have also bought much Chess Assistant software, which is also
extremely good, but for the purposes of this posting will use Chess
Base Opening CD's as an easy point of comparison.

There is also the question of value for money; with a Chess Base
Opening CD, you generally get the following:

·A chess tree consisting of the moves of the featured opening which
you can use in Fritz and other ChessBase playing engines to train in
that opening.

·A custom annotated games database with many opening reports by the
author.

·An even larger games database with 20 ? 70,000 thousand games with
many hundreds annotated by different contributor's out of the even
larger Mega Database.

Finally & most importantly (to my way of thinking), you get a training
database of 20 ? 50 games with a number of timed training questions in
each game.

The price of these CD's (of which now number 20 or 30) is around
$24.95.

It would seem that you get a lot more for the money then Aficionado
can (currently) offer ? I wonder if it is reasonable to ask Aficionado
to take a look at what the market is in the chess world today, and
adjust their prices accordingly.


Larry S. Tamarkin
Also sometimes known as the ?Chess Software Addict!'






"Pete Roberts" wrote in message ...
Aficionado is pleased to announce that a new Chess Mentor Supplementary
Course, "The Sicilian Defense, by FM Thomas Wolski," has just been released.
The course contains 41 challenges chosen from all of the important systems
in the Sicilian Defense and is suitable for players of all levels. Each
challenge has much more extensive commentary than in any previous
Supplementary Course. You will learn all of the basic opening principles for
both White and Black and also come across many original ideas and novelties.

Players with Elo ratings up to 1800 and perhaps even higher will benefit
from this new course. Novices may have some difficulty with these
challenges, but will gain a good introduction to the Sicilian and the main
strategies for both Black and White.

Aficionado will start shipping this course on Friday, the 7th of November;
the SRP is US$24.95, as are all Chess Mentor Supplementary Courses. If you
are not acquainted with Chess Mentor, the most effective computer-based
method for learning and improving at chess for players at all levels and
ages, please visit our site at http://www.chess.com. Download the free Chess
Mentor Demo at http://www.chess.com/demo.html and try it out.

Regards,

Pete Roberts
Aficionado, Inc.
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