[HN Gopher] Show HN: Checkmate Champ - a training tool for chess...
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Show HN: Checkmate Champ - a training tool for chess tactics
Author : Tommah
Score : 167 points
Date : 2024-01-20 20:41 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.checkmatechamp.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.checkmatechamp.net)
| tibanne wrote:
| This is quite fun. I tried the first 5 where you seems to just
| sac your queen in each. Maybe adding variation in the types of
| mates could make it more engaging?
| Tommah wrote:
| IIRC, Reinfeld's book groups the positions by theme. If you
| click the dice, it will show you a random position from the
| set, so that should give you a different theme most of the
| time.
| sram1337 wrote:
| Is the goal to give players an engaging experience, or guide
| them through specific chess material?
|
| I had a similar experience to the person above - after a few
| puzzles where the first move is the same I wasn't interest in
| doing more. I also don't want a random puzzle - generally
| puzzle progression goes from easy to hard - will random just
| give me a really hard one?
|
| If you are set on keeping the order of _1001 Ways to
| Checkmate_, maybe giving some context on which chapter the
| user is on would be nice (Queen Sac, Forks). Otherwise as a
| user, if I don't want to do some unknown amount of queen sac
| puzzles over and over then I'm just going to bounce.
| dmurray wrote:
| Even doing it randomly, I found the content is extremely
| heavy on "play the most forcing move, ideally sacrificing the
| strongest piece possible with check". It took me 10+ problems
| to find one where this didn't apply (#659).
|
| This would go down well on Reddit, where that style of puzzle
| is almost the only one appreciated. And it's a good way to
| quickly drill a few checkmate themes. But for chess
| improvement I would recommend a more general tactics trainer.
| IMO Chesstempo cracked the problem of automatically
| generating and rating interesting problems, but if you find
| the interface there too dated, lichess or chess.com have a
| reasonable second-best.
| gurchik wrote:
| > Positions marked "1001" are taken from Fred Reinfeld's 1955
| book 1001 Ways to Checkmate.
|
| How did you enter these positions into the app? Manually?
|
| One idea you can try to avoid manual work:
|
| First, download a game database, like for example a Lichess
| database,[1] or a database of Masters games. After parsing the
| PGN, check if the game ended in checkmate. If so, then at the
| very least you have a Mate in 1 puzzle. Using your engine, you
| can check the last couple positions of the game to see if there
| was a longer forced mate. If the game didn't end in a checkmate,
| it's still possible the resignation was due to forced mate, so
| you can do a similar process to check the final position.
|
| By removing manual entry, you can add a lot more metadata that
| the user can search for to customize their training. For example,
| you could add the ability to train specifically on rook
| checkmates or knight checkmates, or queen sacrifices, or
| checkmates that occur in the back rank, or endgame checkmates
| (positions where there are few major pieces on the board).
|
| ^1: https://database.lichess.org/
| ryanjshaw wrote:
| Isn't that what Lichess already does, plus estimate difficulty
| based on which bot Elo is required to solve the position? (The
| OP's site doesn't have difficulty estimates but it's from A
| curated book so presumably that's captured in the puzzle
| number.)
|
| https://database.lichess.org/#puzzles
|
| > Generating these chess puzzles took more than 50 years of CPU
| time.
|
| > To determine the rating, each attempt to solve is considered
| as a Glicko2 rated game
| kuboble wrote:
| There are some filters in lichess, but you can't easily
| combine them in lichess.
|
| So you can filter problems for queen sacrifice or mate in 3
| but not the combination of the two.
|
| The second quote means that the puzzle rating is dynamic and
| changes every time someone tries to solve it (the puzzle gets
| points for losing / winning the same way the player wins/
| loses rating for solving the puzzle. )
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| Woah! It's been a while since I've seen an HTML <center> tag.
|
| Were you doing web dev way back in the day or is this based on a
| template you modified? It reminds me a lot of a tool I once made.
| It was before I was programming professionally but I had a blog
| and was figuring out bit by bit how to customize things and
| animate them. Fun times!
| Tommah wrote:
| I started my board game site back in 2010 as a set of CGI
| scripts that sent the games to people in HTML emails. Then I
| turned it into a proper website, then I got it running as a
| persistent process, then I added this trainer, then I moved the
| trainer to its own domain. So that <center> tag is probably a
| decade old. I made my first website in 1999 or so.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| Very cool to see you still making progress on it. I love
| board games and even though I haven't played much chess since
| I was a teenager, it was still fun to check this site out.
| jurassicfoxy wrote:
| I love curated checkmate training, and I would disagree with the
| other posters. I would in fact recommend you don't make the
| training "random", but keep them in line with the book.
| Presumably, like Polgar Mates, there's a sequence to it.
|
| The main thing I'd recommend is having illegal moves do nothing,
| and make drag and drop more clear. The "floating ghost piece" is
| actually not the cursor, and that's kinda not very nice UX. You
| might try a "click to place" technique instead of drag & drop.
|
| Is this book out of copyright now?
| Tommah wrote:
| If you don't want to drag, you can click the piece and then
| click the target square.
|
| > Is this book out of copyright now?
|
| I think so. The copyright term back then was 28 years, and
| AFAIK the copyright wasn't renewed.
| Euphorbium wrote:
| I dont want to know exactly how many moves it is in advance.
| Changes the thinking.
| snissn wrote:
| anybody have any suggestions for learning openings?
| psynister wrote:
| lichess has a lot of good free opening courses. chess.com has a
| lot of videos but you have to buy a subscription. Gotham Chess
| on YouTube is entertaining.
| dhon_ wrote:
| Gotham Chess is entertaining, but Levy's not doing so much
| beginner content these days. I like Eric Rosen's "speedrun"
| series. He's got an authorised speedrun account on chess.com
| (meaning that his opponents do not receive a penalty for the
| games) and he has a very calm style and takes time to explain
| the positions. Very educational.
| abjr wrote:
| Eric Rosen is like the Bob Ross of chess.
| psynister wrote:
| Levy's old stuff still holds up IMO. Rosen is also
| definitely good. Also the St Louis Chess Club YT channel is
| usually great if you're looking for something that's very
| in depth and don't mind watching 60-90 minutes of content.
| heythere22 wrote:
| I'm using Chessable (which is owned by chess.com). There are
| some incredible free courses on this plattform.
| RockofStrength wrote:
| Chess.com seems to have excellent opening instruction. It
| actually tells you the opening name as you play. After you
| play, it gives you more. It shows where you screwed up, gives
| you a chance to find a better move, etc. If I was starting over
| (I'm over 2k now) I'd start with chess.com's interactive
| organic approach. Chessable is just rote memorization which is
| in essence trash.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| I wonder what happened to Chesscademy.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| The best app for chess problems I've used is 'Chess Tempo'
|
| Really large set of curated problems, which can be divided into
| particular problem types (e.g. attaction or desperado tactics).
| Further, after you do the problem, community discussion forum of
| that problem becomes available, where they discuss alternate
| choices and their problems etc. It really is high quality.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| They also have clear decision point for the right solution
| (must be 2 pawns or more advantage, and okay solutions that are
| not best do not count against you(alts).
|
| There is another mode (mixed) which includes problems that are
| about defending.
| gokhan wrote:
| For tactics training, one can also check
| https://chesstempo.com/chess-tactics/
| colund wrote:
| Other chess apps have the mouse approximately in the center of
| the piece so that when you drop the piece it's dropped where the
| piece and the mouse is located. I've accidentally dropped the
| pieces on the wrong squares on this page, since the mouse is to
| the right of the piece.
| Tommah wrote:
| Which browser and OS are you using? I notice that behavior in
| Firefox on Mac, but not in Chrome on Mac. When I tested years
| ago in Chrome and Firefox on Linux, that definitely wasn't
| happening. In general, I've found a few inconsistent behaviors
| on how drag and drop is implemented across browsers and OSes,
| and possibly in different browser versions over time.
| cobrabyte wrote:
| Yeah, strange behavior in Firefox on Mac.
| matsemann wrote:
| Firefox on windows as well. As soon as I try to drag it,
| the piece gets much larger and moves left and up from where
| the mouse is.
| nomilk wrote:
| Great tool! I like that the solution puts you in the eyes of the
| defender (so you can see all variations of the solution). I
| didn't really like how the board gets reversed though.
| Vvector wrote:
| Instead of using "<<" and ">>" buttons, with instructions and
| popups explaining these mean next puzzle and previous puzzle,
| just make that the label on the buttons.
| bluGill wrote:
| Can the chessboard be bigger on mobile? My old eyes need to zoom
| in and then the other buttons dissapear
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| One thing I observed during my format analysis was that the
| solution mode was not very intuitive. It is not clear that the
| "Reset position" would restart the animation (which cannot be
| paused by the way), and you can make a move even when the
| animation is still playing.
| elygre wrote:
| I would also like to be able to revert from solution mode to
| problem mode, and didn't find a good way to do that.
| Tommah wrote:
| I usually just hit >> and then <<.
| nurettin wrote:
| I kept sacing my queen, and it kept on working!
| bmacho wrote:
| Meh. There are a TON of good puzzles there, this one is not good,
| the UI is sluggish. I see the mate, then I should enter it as
| fast as I can, and not in 6 seconds or so.
| 0x4164 wrote:
| Cool collection! But I keep right clicking and dragging due to my
| habit in online chess platforms of making circles and arrows,
| instead it just shows context menu.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Why would I use this over the puzzles on chesscom, where the UI
| is much better, where the puzzles are integrated with social
| features, where there are many more puzzles and you have more
| control over the type and difficulty of the puzzles you see, etc?
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