Chess Hero

A free chess training tool

Latest version: 2.4

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How does it work?

You supply a set of PGN files
The program picks random positions from the PGN files and challenges you to guess the best move computed by a chess engine
On every attempt you are given a penalty (the difference in score between your move and the engine best)

The nice thing about this program is that you will also get very ordinary positions. Positions where not much is going on. If you compare your move with the moves of the game or the engine, you will find subtle differences in the evaluation of the moves. In this kind of positions, if you play moves that are 0.2 pawns worse than the best move, you will eventually lose against better players. That is exactly how this program can help you a great deal: it is as if a trainer is continually watching and commenting on you.

You can configure the program to work with multiple chess engines (it supports both the XBoard and UCI engine protocols).

Click to enlarge

Above is a picture of the program main window. At the bottom right you can see my three attempts at the best move:

My first move was Qxg3+, resulting in a penalty of 10.00 pawns. You can configure the program to accept moves below an arbitrary penalty threshold (by default it is set to 0.25 pawns).
Next I played Bxf4+, but that was another 6.45 penalty.
At last, I got it right with Rxf4.

You can greatly customize the program by simply feeding it different kinds of PGN files, such as:

Master games that match the openings you play
Your own games
Tactical positions from well-known collections
Games of your chess hero

Download

Chess Hero is Freeware. You can download it from here:

Chess Hero 2.4 for Windows (10 MB)

Donations

You can show your appreciation for Chess Hero and support further development by making a donation. Suggested donation is 10€.

History

Version 2.4 (Jan 29, 2012)
- new side-to-move filters
- new pick mode: random + sequential
- new constraint: max attempts
- new option: always allow next
- support for variations in PGN book files
- enable Play for game moves (i.e. non-engine replies)
- archive: record time taken
- new option: minimize to tray
- sound effects
- new translation: Russian
Version 2.3.1 (Oct 9, 2010)
- fixed a critical bug that might crash the program on start
Version 2.3 (Sep 26, 2010)
- new Statistics window
- added Dutch translation
Version 2.2 (Jul 18, 2010)
- new PGN setting: max time to find best move
- new PGN setting: filter moves by half-move ordinal
- new Paste Position command
- new UCI engine configurator
- improved PGN parser
- added new graphics
- added new customization options
Version 2.1 (Mar 27, 2010)
- new archive window to review and replay past positions
- new move modes: drag-and-drop, click-and-drop
- added some more options and settings
Version 2.0.1 (Sep 13, 2009 - evening)
- fixed a bug that caused the program to start multiple instances of the engine when minimizing/restoring the main window.
Version 2.0 (Sep 13, 2009)
- rewritten from scratch
- better-looking graphics
- animated pieces movement
- resizable board
- new game window to display picked PGN. Useful with annotated tactical positions
- new Play button to play a few moves against the engine
- copy and save variations in PGN format for later review
- penalties are now stored per-profile
- switched to TogaII as the default chess engine
Note to previous users: Chess Hero 1.x settings will NOT be imported by the new version, so you'll have to reconfigure the program. The old settings are stored in

%APPDATA%\ChessHero

while the new settings will be stored in

%APPDATA%\Innokuo\ChessHero
Version 1.1 (May 29, 2009)
- included Glaurung as the default chess engine.
- new Reset Penalties command
- side-to-move can now be a player name
- support for non-ascii file paths
- minor graphic tweaks
Version 1.0 (Jan 18, 2009)
- First public version