What Can Chess Software Do For You?

by Steve Lopez

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In my opinion, the single biggest thing which held me back as a chess player was the lack of playing opportunities during my formative years. When I was a child in the 1960's and a teen in the '70's, the only way to get a game was to talk somebody else into giving up an hour or two of their time. The local chess club was a hit-or-miss affair (when there was a club, they tended to frequently change the meeting night and location). I was a fair bit better player than many of my casual-chessplaying peers; there wasn't much challenge in beating the kid around the corner for the umpteenth time. And, no matter what, I didn't have anyone available to look over my games and tell me what I was doing right and wrong.

I've had occasion to think about this recently as I came across a book from my childhood. It's a slim volume about computers and robots, which was published in the early 1960's. I remember reading it with fascination as a small child, marvelling at the room-sized computers with their acronym-based names (UNIVAC, ENIAC); the book mentioned a future time when a computer as big as a building might be built and it possibly might even be able to play chess.

Chess Playing Computers

A chess playing computer - that was a pretty big deal nearly a half-century ago. It was considered to be a preposterous notion by some pretty smart people, since such a computer would potentially be so large as to require enough electrical power to run a small city. Needless to say at that time the idea of a computer which could play a decent game of chess was just that: an idea only.

Chess playing computers for the home market finally became a reality in the 1970's, but had two problems: they were very expensive and most of them played really awful chess. The first problem was solved with the introduction of a chess cartridge for the Atari 2600 video game system; that cartridge was very affordable. But the second problem remained: the Atari 2600 still played horrible chess. But well into the 1980's it remained my only option for getting a game when no human opposition could be found. It wasn't until the 1990's, when home PCs became reasonably inexpensive while at the same time commercial chess playing programs became decently accomplished chess players, that the problem was truly solved.

Play Chess

See, the real problem (which we all share, as I stated in my opening paragraph) is this: you can read chess books and study great games of the past 'til the cows come home, but without a chance to put that knowledge to practical use (i.e. without the chance to play some games yourself) that study is basically just wasted time. I had a small stack of chess books as a kid and I loved reading them, but without practical experience those books didn't matter much. It's a cycle: experience helps you to understand the chess books you're reading (because you can apply personal context to what you read), while the knowledge you gain from reading/studying helps you to find the right moves (or at least halfway decent moves) in your games. But without the chance to play chess, those books (interesting though they were) didn't do me much good. If nobody wanted to play a game of chess back when I was a teenager, I had to content myself with artificial substitutes, like Al Horowitz' "Solitaire Chess" column in Chess Life (which I owned collected in a treasured paperback edition).

I loved playing chess, but I could seldom get a game against another person. And that void really hurt me as a chessplayer; I'd be a far better player today if I'd had more opportunites to play chess as a youngster.

Chess Partners

That's why things are better now for chessplayers than they've ever been. If all you want to do is play chess, the options are limitless. In addition to the "old school" method of sitting across a board from a live opponent, you can also play chess online in real time against people from around the world. If you want to play against a computer program instead, you have a range of choices which include handheld chess computers, tabletop chess computers, and software chess playing opponents which run on a PC. There's no shortage of opportunities to play chess these days, and that's a very important point - if you want to become a better chessplayer, you need to play more than just an occasional game; you need to play as much chess as you can.

Chess Software

This is one of the things which chess software programs can do for you: these programs give you the opportunity to play as much chess as you're able to handle. Chess playing programs not only give you the chance to play the game whenever the mood strikes (even at 3 AM on nights when you can't sleep), they're also very configurable. You can select from a variety of time controls (in fact, most chess software programs let you just type in the time control you desire), which usually include "sudden death", "Fischer" (incremental), and traditional "open ended" games (such as "forty moves in two hours"). Not only can you select a nearly infinite variety of time settings, you can also select your level of opposition. Most chess playng programs offer a wide range of "handicap" modes which allow you to make your opponent as weak or as strong as you choose (many even offer "adaptable opponents" whose playing strengths change depending on how well or poorly you've previously been faring against them). Another way in which playing strengths can be changed is though the use of different chess "brains", that is, different chess programs which can be "plugged into" a user interface. You see the same menu commands, the same chessboard, the same screen layout, but you can play against different chessplaying "brains" of different strengths.

But playing chess isn't the only component involved when you're trying to become a better chessplayer. There's also the issue of feedback, getting advice from a stronger player.

Few of us are blessed to have a chess Grandmaster living in our neighborhood. Even players who are chess club members sometimes have trouble getting advice or feedback from stronger players in the club, either because the stronger player is trying to avoid the possibility of hurt feelings or else is apathetic toward the weaker player and just plain can't be bothered to help.

Getting Better at Chess

Offering feedback is another area in which chess software really shines. Almost all chess programs offer game analysis modes, in which you can "feed" one of your games to the chess "brain" to have it point out the places in the game where you could have made a better move. These analysis modes also tell you what the better move would have been, how much better it is, and show what would likely have happened thereafter (assuming best play for both sides).

The importance of such feedback can't be overstated. Over time, as you continue to have your chess program "double check" your games, you'll begin to see patterns emerge in your play. You'll be able to tell not just the nature of your errors (be they tactical ones, in which you overlook combinations which let your opponent win material or ones which would have let you win material from him, or the more subtle positional mistakes which involve improper piece placement or overlooking control of key squares), but also the timing of such mistakes (the phase of the game - opening, middlegame, endgame - in which your errors tend to occur).

Both of these factors will help you shape your course of chess study; by determining where you're weak, you can figure out what you should study in order to become better. If you're discovering that most of your mistakes involve losing material, you'll know to study chess tactics and perhaps spend a portion of each day solving chess problems. If you see a tendency to do well through most of a game but then make mistakes toward the end of the game, mistakes which cost you victories, you'll know to concentrate on endgame study.

Here is all teh Chess help you need

Quite a few chess playing programs offer tutorials or training exercises which let you learn and/or practice against the computer. For example, a particular chess playing program might offer "drills" in particular openings or endgame types; by repeatedly practicing these drills, you can improve your play in that phase of the game. A number of chess playing programs also have "add-on" training disks which are available separately - these use the program as a medium for interactive audio/video instruction. And still other programs don't actually play chess at all, but instead contain literally thousands of chess problems which you can solve interactively on your computer: you make a move and get instant feedback on whether or not your solution was the correct one.

Playing, analysis (feedback), and training (study) are the important facets of improving your chessplaying skills. No longer do players have to "rely on the kindness" of others (as I had to do in the days of my youth); these days chess players can have easy (and inexpensive!) access to a master or grandmaster level teacher anytime of the day or night, a teacher which can also be configured to play at a lower strength. Your chess playing program can act as a friend and sparring partner when playing games, an advisor when analyzing games, and a teacher when offering you chess problems and instructional materials.

All of this constitutes what a chess playing program can do for you. Now's a great time to be a chess player, and it's also time to ask yourself, "Am I taking advantage of the opportunity?"

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© 2009, Steven A. Lopez and ChessCentral. All rights reserved.