By Georgi Castaneda The idea of the article is as follows: it is very important to study tactics and it is better to do so with the software of our company. Why shall we study tactics? One of the most important components in chess player’s skills is tactical vision. It’s impossible to achieve high results without mastering this art.

You can have a great advantage in openings, understand main strategic ideas of the position, know methods of realizing your advantage in endings. But without so-called tactics all these can be not enough.

At any moment you can overlook an opponent’s combinational strike or can’t notice a winning opportunity for yourselves. Tactics is a chess-player’s toolbox that is used practically for each move. One can’t help mentioning that a huge percentage of chess games is decided by a tactical action or combination. It means that a chess-player who has decided to improve his level should study tactics first of all, learn to use his/her opportunities in a position and watch opponent’s threats.

But how to do it?

There are many tactical methods, typical operations and ways. The best progress way is to learn them step by step and solve as many special exercises to remember the studied material as possible. In this case tactical operations start to be done automatically and one can say for sure that the studied method will be used successfully if the standard situation appears in the game.

Where can we find the necessary material and how to work at it?

There are a lot of books with exercises on tactics and combinations but nethertheless it is recommended to work with specialized computer programs. Among them there are the following ones: Chess Tactics for Beginners, СТ-АRT 3.0, Chess Tactics for Intermediate Players, Chess Combinations Encyclopedia.

Why is it better to work with just these programs?

It is explained by four major advantages that are possessed by this software if compared to books. Dialog at working on a position: while solving the particular task we have an opportunity to enter a move that seems the strongest one to our opinion. If we answer right then the program responds with the strongest move for the opponent or offers several possible variants to us. If we answer wrong then the program offers us the system of tips explaining the main idea, shows variants that will explain why our variant is wrong.

Thus we make training much more effective and fascinating. Statistics, tracking the results: depending on how many right answers are given by us, the program evaluates our level and shows our rating according to the FIDE scale. All the results shown by us are saved and there is an opportunity to see in what topics we have succeeded and where we should work harder. But the most important thing is that we see the objective picture of our skills growth, as the program has no «prejudication» and «favourites».

An opportunity to play any position with the program. If any position raises doubts, if you wish to study it deeper- then you have such an opportunity! The built-in playing program becomes your ideal sparring partner and helps you to fix the material in your memory.

Thus we make training much more effective and fascinating. An opportunity to systematize the material. The program allows to select positions according to various criteria: difficulty, topic, tactical method, colour and so on. It helps to save a lot of time and to work just on what material that is necessary for the set task.

How shall I start? It is extremely important that you estimate your own level objectively and start working from the necessary level. If a chess-player just starts the career then the best choice is the program Chess Tactics for Beginners. It is based on the course of excellent Soviet coach and methodologist S. Ivaschenko. It won’t be exaggeration to say that several generations of chess-players have been taught by this method.

This program has 4 difficulty levels and about 1300 carefully selected positions. Working at this course will allow you to develop your tactical vision to the level of 1800 ELO FIDE very quickly. But it is quite possible that a chess-player has reached a certain practical strength and is at the level 1800 – 2200. In this case the best choice is working at 2 programs: Chess Tactics for Intermediate Players and СТ-АRT 3.0.

The first of these programs is also based on the course of S. Ivaschenko, the second one is CT-ART 3.0 with chess material developed by grandmaster M. Blokh who trained many strong chess-players. The offered didactic material is excellently systemized, it covers the main aspects of chess tactics and is proved in the work at training strong players many times. Working at these two programs will give an opportunity to practice more that 2500 exercises and reach the master level in tactics.

And at last there is the program Chess Combinations Encyclopedia containing more than 4000 problem positions and devoted to chess-players of any level. It allows to check the results of the done work and revise all studied topics. By Georgi Castaneda