Thursday, March 29, 2007

CT-ART #379

I've heard it before that CT-ART has its flaws. To be honest, I haven't noticed that many. For the most part I am satisfied with the explanation given. But I came across #379 tonight and I'm not sure I agree with the explanation.



Number 379 is from an actual game (Rashid Gibiatovich Nezhmetdinov vs Vladimir D Sergievsky, 1966). The game ends with 20. Rxf6 gxf6 1-0 (see below).



CT-ART has the position continue with 21. Ne4 Qa7 22. Nf6#. What threw me off was I was expected 21 ... Qe7, not Qa7. Even if Qe7, white will still go on to win, but it's better than letting the game go with Qa7.

For what it's worth, I've seen lots of problems in CT-ART where mate could have at least been avoided, but it is not. It's not big deal, but since I put a little research time into this one, I decided to blog it. Go read the kibitzes on chessgames.com for this game ... they proved to analyze better than CT-ART.

2 comments:

Montse said...

It depends on how you look at it. Indeed Qe7 is better but remember CT-art is a learning tool. So what is the best way of making your point accross.

Qa7 shows that black performs an absolute pin on the Queen. It total blocks Qxc6, Qxa8 in the case of black playing Qe7. It leaves the second threat installed, the mate threat. So in this way you learn that a mate threat is more important than a material threat. Also would you have find Qa7 if Nf6 would not be possible to play. I think they deliberately showed that sequence as it raises questions and it exposes immediately that black had to meet two threats at the same time. Both threats cannot be meet adequately.

So both moves qualifies as possible continuations. Furthermore educational speaking It would be wrong to give all possible continuations on every exercise. It would overwhelm a beginner and it is quite depressing to go through every subline. You must focus on the possible main lines as this is the most effective (speaking for myself) way of learning. If I have another solution I check muy idea.

rockyrook said...

Monte ... very good points. I especially agree with what you said ("educational speaking It would be wrong to give all possible continuations on every exercise. It would overwhelm a beginner and it is quite depressing to go through every subline.")

Like I said, I've seen other problems in CT-ART that are similar in that the response is not "the best move" but it does show the key reasons.