Analyze your chess games with Houdini , Includes 5 million game GigaKing Database Prepare for your opponent, opening and custom trees, 1500 puzzles and 100+ quest games. Classical and random playing modes, hundreds possible levels of play
This is a package that includes a chess engine, chess games database, and also a collection of tactics problems.The point of this review is to introduce Chess King software to the readers, discuss its features, talk about its “pros” and “cons”, compare it with other available chess programs and of course be as objective as possible in this review. This is part 1 of the two-part review series and I will talk about the basic things Chess King has to offer.
 
What does an average user expect when he or she shops for chess software?
First of all, it should fulfill the main purpose of any chess program.. well that is play chess. Let’s take a closer look at Chess King’s menus. It has “Quest mode”, “Chess puzzles”, “Random games”, “Custom games” and “Classical Chess” buttons. Let me briefly talk about each one.
 
Table of contents:
 
Quest mode
Chess Puzzles
Random Games
Custom Game
Classical Chess
Pros
Cons
Wrap up
Quest mode
This mode allows to play quick games against pieces and/or pawns handicapped Houdini engine. The time control is 10 minutes for humans and 3 minutes for engines. There are 25 playing levels that differ by the material difference between human player and computer opponent. On the easiest level, you are offered to checkmate Houdini 2 with 2 Rooks and Queen vs. King.
 
The ability to complete this task corresponds to 100 ELO. On the hardest level, the material difference between humans and Houdini 2 is just a single pawn. You need to be about 2800 ELO to win that against the engine.
 
Chess Puzzles
This is a pretty self-explanatory section. The goal is to improve the player’s tactical vision by solving a series of chess problems that starts with basic chess rules and captures and ends up somewhere in mate in 3 categories.
This type of exercise is the most effective way to get better at chess. The only problem while going through the puzzles is that you are forced to go through very easy basic things like chess rules and simple captures in order to unlock more difficult (and useful) ones.While it is a good idea for novice players to go through fundamentals, it may be a waste of time for class players, who might like to skip a good first half of the problems.