BOT.vinnik Chess: Opening Traps

Good

The Botvinnik Opening Traps didn't just teach me moves. It taught me motives and causes. Through rapid repetitions and natural traps, I started recognizing typical blunders, strategic ideas, and middlegame transitions much more intuitively than through traditional variation memorization. Looking foward to play the rest of the collection and patiently awaiting for the Chess Masters Academy! +Quick to learn the "boring" opening theory. Most of the openings carry concepts that make learning new ones natural. +Useful to beginners and intermediates alike, u get both sides of Openings and Gambits. +U get genuinely funny roasts from a scummy bot with a mustache.

Nice but literally only about a number (50 or so) combinations in set positions. No explanations how to get there, just the puzzles of solving them.

Chess puzzle game. It won't really teach you chess if you're a total beginner, its more about illustrating basic techniques - and even then it doesn't really explain the logic behind these moves, it just steps through them and asks you what the next move should be in the technique. I'd say its useful for training your board-awareness in being able to pick out which pieces are best at producing advantages, but I wish it was more in depth. You should probably play these vinnik games after playing a few rounds of actual chess, though.

My Steam Deck crashes when I quit this game.

It is by all accounts a tool with which you can learn some openings. I don't think it's a good one. It does not do much to convey the information it tries to teach you beyond throwing you in the deep end and going "Alright, find the best move." Eventually I find myself resorting to brute forcing moves from a lack of understanding what it is I'm trying to achieve. An explanation I only get /after/ I have "found" the best move. For this price, you can do a lot worse. But as a teaching tool, you can do a lot better as well.