Chess Program Review Archive

STUDIES 2.0 is a win95/NT program from the makers of Chess Assistant. It is a program for intermediate to advanced level players that deals with endgame studies. Functionally, the program is quite similar in format and operation to STRATEGY. So, if you liked STRATEGY, you will probably like STUDIES too.

If you have no experience with this kind of instructional material, then I would suggest that you check out books like Averbach's Tactics for Advanced Players for some examples. Simply put, endgame studies are usually fairly intense problems with a reduced number of pieces on the board. While they are composed problems, they do help you in over the board situations, and they will help hone your visualization skills to the maximum.

I think that fans of Blokh's or Averbach's tactics books will find a lot of good material in this program. Those of you with limited computer power (i.e. DOS) should check out STUDIES 1.0, which is very similar to STUDIES 2.0, with the main differences being that there are fewer problems, and no support for chess engines.

The primary differences in program operation between STUDIES and STRATEGY are as follows:

1. STUDIES only has practice and test modes (there are no lessons per se, as there are in STRATEGY)
2. It appears as though there are no text explanations in STUDIES. There are some positions with colored boxes and arrows on the board though, and they only appear at the beginning of some sections.
3. For some problems, STUDIES has a small 5x5 hint board that pops up when the user has trouble.
4. More engines are supported in STUDIES, including: Rebel 7-9, Genius 4-5, Hiarcs 3-6, Mchess Pro 5-7 and Crafty. You can also interface with just about any program that can process EPD files.
5. You can access the problems in STUDIES by difficulty, composer, themes, and pieces involved. I have included a table listing the various ways that the problems can be accessed below. Within non-composer themes, exercises are also put into subcategories by composer. In STRATEGY, there was only one set of themes.
6. Different time controls are available when playing a position on the board. In STRATEGY, you were unable to change this.
7. An indication of the objective of the problem in given i.e. (win/loss/draw)

Check out the STRATEGY 1.0 Review for more information.

Strengths

1. The program contains a lot of good endgame studies for a bargain price. It really helps to have a chess engine handy when studying some of these problems.
2. There are a wide variety of ways to access the problems contained in the program (see table).
3. The examples that are presented are generally quite good at illustrating the theme in question.
4. The user has complete control over the board, fonts, animation speed, etc. The program is very pleasant to use in this respect.
5. Multiple languages are supported: The manual comes in German, English and Polish (!). Game annotation can be shown in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, or simply by piece symbol.
6. Results are tracked and the user can choose to do problems that he/she has seen before, or do problems that were not seen before.
7. Hints are provided so that you get a little mental nudge if you don't get a problem right the first time. The first time you miss a correct answer,a piece or square(s) is/are highlighted. The second attempt results in thepiece to move flashing on the board.
8. It took me a while to discover, but STUDIES also has the capability to display a small 5x5 hint board with a related key position on it. I like this feature alot.
9. Multiple users are supported, and the results of each user are available for review. This program is a good choice for a computer at your local club.
10. The built-in DRAGON playing engine is always available to do what-ifs (see program description above). After playing over a position, you can save themoves in a PGN file.
11. You can export any board position to an external program for analysis if you wish.
12. The program is thrifty on HD space - it only requires about 3 Megabytes.

Weaknesses

1. You cannot have free running analysis while you are replaying a game - thiswould be a nice feature to have. You only have the choice of playing againstthe computer - you cannot move for both sides.
2. Time is not used as a factor when scoring the user, however it is recordedfor later review if desired.
3. When playing over a position with the built-in dragon playing program, youcannot export PGN files with variations in them (only a single main line).
4. I think that there should be a way to practice those exercises with whichyou had trouble in the past. As it stands now, you need to look at the statisticsfor a user, and manually select the exercises you had trouble with.

Copy Protection: Must have CD to install,. The CD is also needed at some point afterwards for refueling,

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