Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Personal Chess Trainer's recommended method

After reading the following (which can be found in PCT's helpfile's);

The number of studied exercises refers to the amount of exercises you have seen for the first time. And the learnt exercises, to the ones you have already studied 6 times, which is enough to memorize them.

I lead myself to believe that i should go over each and every unit of the Personal Chess Trainer 6 times, in order to having learnt them. So that's how i went about. Now, with the Personal Chess Trainer, you can also check your training history status, which tells you the number of studied exercises, as well as the number of learnt exercises. After going over tactics module 1, units 1 to 7 six times, the history window showed nothing except the studied exercises. I then decided to write them (the Personal Chess Trainer developers) an email, asking what the deal is. I guess it must have been my simple brain that i didn't get it, but here's how it works according to the developers (this is coppied from the email i got in return so don't pay attention to the spelling as they're Brazilian);

An exercise is considered Learnt after it has been studied at least 6
time through the training process. I mean, for example, an exercise appear in the Unit 1, after in the Unit 3, Unit 4, Unit 7, Unit 11 and Unit 15. After you see and solve it at this 6 times, the program will consider it Learnt.

To make a long story short (and if you are using or planning to use PCT), don't be going over units 6 times like i did. The program itself will have you repeating previous positions as you will encounter them again in each new unit. Just go over them once. That is what i am going to do from now on. Also, i can finally show you some of the results from a statisticians point of view, as the previous results were unusable. Also, fulfilling the task of finishing PCT seems a whole lot less gruesome all of a sudden :)

4 Comments:

At 06 October, 2005 01:12 , Blogger Edwin 'dutchdefence' Meyer said...

Actually no, not yet. But i have only finished a mere 7 units of the first tactics module. And in the full version there are 6 modules. I am pretty sure there will be "win a piece tactics" along the way. Or maybe they categorized those as "strategy", thus to be found in the strategy modules.

 
At 06 October, 2005 06:07 , Blogger Edwin 'dutchdefence' Meyer said...

But we're still talking about the first modules here... Maybe they want to give you a good drilling first where mating paterns are concerned. My guess is that new stuff (like "win a piece tactics") is bound to show up atleast in the following modules... I am going over TAC 01 Uni 08 myself at this time. It has the most positions of the units i've done so far... 135 to be exact.

 
At 06 October, 2005 06:11 , Blogger Edwin 'dutchdefence' Meyer said...

Come to think of it, some can be seen as "win a piece tactics" depending on what your opponent plays. I mean, if he chooses not to be mated (considering he/she has the possibility) and doesn't play the mating move, you end up winning a piece :)

 
At 08 October, 2005 08:18 , Blogger Edwin 'dutchdefence' Meyer said...

Mating paterns have many faces. And i bet most of the Knights only know few. Believe me... Going over them will do wonders for your game. You will become able to end games to your advantage sooner, where before you just kept moving and not having a clue you missed a chance.

 

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home