Chess Tools

Excellent, very clear program for beginners and not only. Definitely worth the money. I liked it as a beginner learning chess! Thanks to the developer.

The program has a great selection of functions. More tactical exercises would be a welcome addition. The program could use more variants. There are many variants that can be played with standard pieces on a standard board. Examples include Extinction Chess, Knight Relay Chess, Anti-Chess and Three Checks Chess. The games from grandmaster play would be better if more moves required input from the user. The games could be used to estimate the rating of the user. The program is still in development, and I am hopeful that some of these ideas can be added. For starting players the program is already very good. Material for more advanced players would be a welcome addition.

I am a low-intermediate player. The advanced tactics section taught me some useful things I hadn't discovered yet. I plan to go back and look at them again to reinforce my learning. The "extras" includes a mini-game for coordinates practice that you can use to learn the squares' names. You can set the coordinates practice to be easy or more challenging with time pressure. I am looking forward to running some of the instructive masters' games. You can learn the same concepts from a book, but with Chess Tools, it shows you positions with animated moves and explanation text on the side. It is reasonably priced at about the same price you would pay for a chess book. When I discovered this, I bought it for $11.99 without even waiting for a Steam sale. I feel I am getting a lot of value for the price!

the game is nice, i like it and i use it a lot for local game analysis but it shows only the lines, and does not rate the moves. the tutorials are fine, not very advanced and the opening tutorials are not very deep explained. there is game review but i can't change it from the default engine to stockfish and(the default is bad). the bots are nice, the best part in my opinion is the guess the move. sometimes the moves aren't explained very well, but its fine. there are something like 200 puzzles i think, but the algorithm isn't that smart and repeating the same puzzles. the tools are good for beginners nut the move highlighter can see brilliant sacrifices ...