Tactics training: PNG instead of PGN
If you are a chess addict living in the digital era, or even worse, a Knight (á la de la Maza)you probably know full well what a Pgn file is. Maybe you even take a healthy dose of it, every day, just to stay sharp tactically, or to review that opening trap in the King's Gambit. However, you can take your training to a new level, just by switching two letters: use png instead of pgn.

Ok, now seriously: I had an idea a few days ago: what if I had all those positions I used to review in Scid, also as images? Load up a few hundred positions into my favourite viewer (IrfanView), and browse through, one position at a time.

So, I wrote a script that extracted the FEN's from the PGN file of Lev Alburt's 300 most important positions, and converted them into PNG images - using the excellent converter of Jean-François, available here. (BTW, have a look at the rest of the site, it is certainly worth your while)

Thus, I now have a set of 300 PNG images ready to review.

What are the advantages? I don't have to use a PGN reader, or Chessbase Reader, I can switch very fast from one position to another, and I'm not tempted to just look up the solution, because the solution isn't there :) Just the initial position, telling me (in the image title) whose move it is. Since I've already gone through these positions using Scid and Crafty, for most of the time, the solution just pops in, filling me with a nice, warm, rewarding feeling :)

If any of you wants to try this at home, here are the files.

Sorry about having to download two different files, it seems I'm not allowed to upload files larger than 1 MB :(
- posted by Időbeosztás-guru @ 1:59 PM