Author: Fernando Villegas
Date: 11:51:17 08/21/05
As it have been mentioned here convincingly by several members, commercial programs face at least a crisis. In short, why people is going to purchase programs that are matched and even sometimes defeated on a regular base by some exceptional freeware stuff? The Gui alone is not an answer. Even now there are some freeware programs that offer his own gui and, alhough inferior to chessbase standard, I cannot see any reason the programmers cannot create something better, more catchy, tomorrow. Besides, lot of chess computer fans are not interested in gui's. They even prefer spartan programs that can be played from arena or any other already existent platform. In fact some of them even despise pretty guis as something akin and proper of "mass market" programs. I think the only avennue still available is one that has been already walked to a degree by Chessbase and Chessmaster programs: coaching. Coaching until now is based in this: a) flexible strenght of the engine: you can downgrade some of them to supposed intermediate levels. b) openning trainning. The current practice asked for the pupil is, nevertheles, a song to boredom. It takes the soul of an insane guy pretending to be a GM to keep tranning with the actual programming for that purpose. c) the program mark critical points where you missed the point or got crashed. d) stock of millions of games for you to play and study. This is monument to yawning at his best. e) classes about this or that ending technique, middle game tactics and so on. It requires the patience and time of a guy condemned to life imprisonement In fact, there is much to do in this field for intermediate players with limited time and not too much patience, that is to say, for 90% of us. Commercial programs must do it or they will just become antiques. How? How to do it? With a new concept that involves professional kind of programming. I call it the "perpetual companion to chess". What is it? I don't know... Fernando
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