peterk1
Member
I've been doing quite a bit of reading on the chess.com forums lately and one subject I always find interesting is when people talk about practicing against their computers.
One comment I hear a lot is that Chessmaster is not really good for practicing tactics. People argue that it plays super-strong and then drops a piece in a very obvious unnatural way to achieve the desired reduction in rating. People say that computers will always steer the game away from the human player's opportunity for pins and forks and the like, thus depriving us of the chance to practice seeing those moves (for our own sides at least).
I've been paying extra special attention to this in my last few games and have even dove into my database to see if there were any nice games where I had the opportunity to play some nice tactics, and my conclusion is that I disagree completely. CM offers ample opportunity to dig out and make use of all sorts of neat tricks (which I am sure it sees) in a completely natural fashion indistinguishable from a two human player game.
Opinions?
Check out white's move 12 in this one.
Oh yeah, why am I posting this if I said last night I was done with chess? Well, quite simply, I spent some quality time with my Mephisto this morning and changed my mind!
One comment I hear a lot is that Chessmaster is not really good for practicing tactics. People argue that it plays super-strong and then drops a piece in a very obvious unnatural way to achieve the desired reduction in rating. People say that computers will always steer the game away from the human player's opportunity for pins and forks and the like, thus depriving us of the chance to practice seeing those moves (for our own sides at least).
I've been paying extra special attention to this in my last few games and have even dove into my database to see if there were any nice games where I had the opportunity to play some nice tactics, and my conclusion is that I disagree completely. CM offers ample opportunity to dig out and make use of all sorts of neat tricks (which I am sure it sees) in a completely natural fashion indistinguishable from a two human player game.
Opinions?
Check out white's move 12 in this one.
Oh yeah, why am I posting this if I said last night I was done with chess? Well, quite simply, I spent some quality time with my Mephisto this morning and changed my mind!