Excellent resource for Board Visualisation

[LostTactic]

Encountered this piece of software last night while I was watching one of Peter Lalic's chess youtube videos (he did an excellent series on Board Visualisation btw). Anyway though it's called Chess Eye and was created in 2004, if you follow the link you can dowload a demo of the software which in itself contains a great deal of excersises. And to upgrade to the actual software is less than $25, I haven't yet bought it as I'm still working my way through the demo, however if anyone does have or buy it, please post a review as I would be interested in seing what more we get for the $25.

Here's the link: Chess Eye

And here's a youtube clip of Peter Lalic using it: Chess Eye being used

[Blue Devil Knight]

Good for the tactics part of the course for sure....

More resources here:
http://chessconfessions.blogspot.com/2006/11/chess-visualization-web-and-software.html

[PawnCustodian]

Looks interesting, but if all it does is what's in the video I know I'd get bored pretty quickly. I do that kind of training in my head when I do my running exercise.

If you ever decide to subscribe to chesspublishing.com they have a blindfold training program they say (I haven't tried it yet) has a voice interface for practicing, and works with chess engines so you can practice blindfold play. Subscription is about $90/yr but you get a lot of commented games and opening surveys as well for the money.

[BorgQueen]

Seems like a good drilling program for me to start/continue. I downloaded it, but I haven't installed it yet. What are the limitations for the demo?

[PawnCustodian]

I tried the chesspublications.com software and IMHO it's buggy and clumsy.

Chess Eye looks pretty good. Fairly easy to add new exercises, I added a couple of endgame studies (can White promote a pawn). But, it appears to need exact string answers, so ICS questions like "tell all the squares controlled by...." cannot be structured in a user friendly way.

If anyone has some experience with the program and has found a way to handle the ICS type questions I'd like to hear.

[BorgQueen]

I've been drilling with ChessEye and now I know what colour each square is, but I still don't know what advantage, if any this would yield ^.^

[PawnCustodian]

I doubt there's any real value until you start into ChessEye exercises 7 and up.

One thing I've noticed is have no problems doing the verbal positional assessment in the ICS exercises, but I often miss the best defense, or some in-between move in the solutions.

I think ChessEye visualisation exercises could help with these types of problems. More importantly it can provide a challenge to speed up the calculation thought processes, something the ICS visualisation exercises alone can't do.

Months 7&8 (and 9 I hope) are light in content, so it's a good time to put some emphasis on visualisation to get ready for "The Art of Master Analysis" that begins in month 10.

To answer LostTactic's question, the only thing you get when you buy the software is some additional exercises within the 11 already provided. I tried the repository and the english one at least is a joke. I plan to collect some easy piece coordination exercises which I'll make available once I've got 50 or so positions.

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