In a comment posted here earlier this week, Blue Devil Knight mentioned that he uses “attack training” and “check training” in Fritz as a warm-up before his Team 4545 League games.
I tried this for a few minutes last night. In attack training, positions from a game database are presented to you, and you are supposed to click on every piece for both sides that is attacked by another piece. When you complete this successfully for a position, Fritz presents another position to you.
In check training, for each position presented you are supposed to click on every piece for both sides that can make a move to deliver check.
I found it surprisingly difficult to do these exercises quickly and accurately. I’ll probably try them more.
The Fritz interface and help entries for these features was quirky and confusing, though. The help entries are cryptic. The clock timer doesn’t behave as described in the help, and the “score” that is presented when the clock runs out is not explained in the help and was totally mysterious to me.
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I emailed them about the scoring system, and they never responded. The documentation, as is par for the Chessbase course, is awful. I do each for three minutes, and if I get fewer than ten ‘correct’ (whatever that means!) I keep going until I get it. My best score is 25 units of correctness in three minutes.
It can be very frustrating sitting there looking for the one piece that I haven’t noticed yet that is attacked. I have learned now to look for backwards bishop and queen moves, and long-range moves. Just as in real games, I tend to overlook them even in this simplest of exercises! Also it has forced me to quickly check to make sure a piece isn’t pinned to the King: if you click on a piece the queen attacks, but it can’t actually capture b/c of a pin, it doesn’t give you credit.
Thanks, BDK. I agree with you about the doc for Chessbase products.
What is the theory behind these exercises? What, exactly, are they designed to develop? Just the ability to see checks?
Thanks,
Luc