Tips on training questions

Answer

ChessBase is used by many chess trainers. One popular form of chess training consists of the possibility offered by the program of creating Training questions. A training exercise requires the person playing through the game to find the next move on his or her own. The program offers all the elements needed for the setting of a question and the follow-up.

In the present version of the program, setting such training questions is particularly simple. One of the special aspects is that it is now possible to make the content of training or training exercises directly available to other users via the Internet by using the Cloud functions. Additionally the new analysis function “Tactical analysis” automatically inserts training questions into the notation.

Let us take a look at the process with an example from practice.

Paulsen, Louis - Morphy, Paul

1857

Position after 17.Qa6

In this position Black came up with the queen sacrifice 17… Qxf3. Now for example, it is easy to insert a training question for this position into the notation.

Right click on the notation – Special annotation – Training annotation. A faster way in any specific position is via the hotkey Ctrl + Alt + M.

The dialog box now enables us to enter the actual question, specify thinking times, allocate points, add hints (Help1, Help2), etc. However, there is no need to make use of all these elements. Let us now take a look at how the game notation appears after the insertion of the training question.

The key position is now illustrated by a diagram and the user must now try to find the correct move independently.

Whenever the user loads the game he or she must first ensure that the training function is activated, which is done via the menu item Training – Enable training. This setting is a precondition for training questions being displayed.

When the game with the training question is loaded, the game notation is shown up until the first training question and at this point the rest of the notation is hidden. By clicking on “Solution” users can have the correct solution displayed and then see the remainder of the notation. This simple way of doing things is not subject to any time pressure, however no points are awarded. You will find specific information for all elements of the training dialog in the documentation within the program.

The classic method of passing on the prepared training material was to issue it as hard copy in the form of worksheets. Printing these is simplicity itself.

Mark the games you have worked on in the list view of the training database and choose Output – Multiple training.

The program shows a preview of the page(s) and all the marked positions with training questions can be printed and passed on to the student.

The way the diagrams are printed is based on the settings you choose under Page setup - Print diagram.

This option was already available to you in previous versions of the program. This new version now offers trainers the possibility of making available to their students the games including the training questions directly via the Internet. In addition they also no longer need to have any special software; all that is required for getting access to the material is an internet connection with a browser!

For this the database or the individual game is copied into a cloud database. A right click on the list entry followed by Edit -> Copy... And the game from the list is copied into the clipboard.

The next step is to turn in CB 14 to the Cloud databases and set up a new database there. So a click on Cloud databases links you to the Cloud server and shows you the available cloud databases. Then via File – New – Database a new database can be set up for training material and the student can access it.

Give a meaningful name to your training database. Copy the game from the clipboard to the newly launched Cloud database – the simplest way being the key combination CTRL-V.

For your next step start in Cloud the entry “Database sharing” and you get a dialog box in which you allow access to the database only to selected users. But the dialog box also offers the option to make the database generally available on the Internet.

To do so, click on “Make Public in Web” and then on “Open Web Site” and then it will appear as follows:

The browser is started and the game, including its training exercise, is displayed for the student and can be played through!

The address of the training database is shown in the input box of the browser and all you have to do is to simply pass this on to the circle of people for whom the content in the database has been set up!

You can see the result of all this straight away at http://cloudserver.chessbase.com/NDE2MTcx/replay.html!

Since what we are dealing with is a Cloud database all that needs to be done when you have prepared new material as described beforehand is to keep on saving it into this database.  For the student’s part, he or she can always access it via the same URL.

The CB Replayer offers the student numerous attractive options: for example analysing on the graphics board or plugging in a chess engine in order to acquire further hints about the position. In addition, students can enter their own variations and textual annotations and with a click on the diskette symbol save the game notation to their own hard disk in PGN format.

Hints and tips

If the training questions are not displayed within CB 14, check in the board window whether under Training the option “Enable training” has been switched on.

You certainly know from previous versions the option of having a chess clock check the thinking time used to reach the solution. It is our opinion that training should be freed from the stress of time pressure. The time constraint is usually set arbitrarily by the author of the training questions.

As a general rule, we are there dealing with simple questions which are often created automatically by CB 14’s own automatic provision of commentary. In training databases by authors who have also set the relevant flag for a "Training database", the known training dialog box appears and the thinking time which has been set is also active.

 

 

 

 

 

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Created on
09.05.2017
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