Chess Mentor Opening training

OK, I've been a paid subscriber to Chess mentor for two weeks now, and have been extremely happy...

...until I met the sections on openings. This is a nightmare frankly.

At the moment I am on the lesson called "The hypermodern Grunfeld Defense". I am black and the board has opened with d4. THe accompanying text says "Though conventional wisdom tells us that giving the opponent a full pawn center will hurt our chances, the Grunfeld Defense welcomes the advance of the White center pawns under the theory that these very pawns will turns into weaknesses that can be attacked by Black's pieces!"

So now what? I don't know what the opening move should be, although I am guessing it isn't d5 based on what the text says. So Nf6? Nc6? f6? g6? b6? c5?

If I don't play the correct move I will be penalised. But short of jumping on the web and going to look up what the correct move is (which I am about to do) I fail to see how I am actually learning anything here. Being forced to go and look up the opening on another resource seems a bit pointless, but I don't see how I have been given enough information to make the correct choice.

Far from impressed.

Understood.

My point is how is Chess Mentor supposed to be teaching me if the only way I can learn is by going to some other resource?

I am no longer a subscriber of Chess Mentor due to a serious shortage in free time.

Anyhow, I liked Chess Mentor very much but I avoided the Opening Training after a few attempts. I totally agree with "manning" that the Opening Training by far is the weakest part of the excellent program.

My view of things is that reasonable suggested solutions get penalized a lot for not being, say, an XYZ opening move but a move fom an opening with another name (did that make sense?). 

Agreed Farbror.

Up until now I've been delighted with it. I think I am it's ideal candidate - I am a dabbler with a basic knowledge of the game who has decided to improve. I know a few very basic openings (eg. Lopez, Giouco, QGD, French), but am largely unfamiliar with anything beyond that.

Thus finding myself continually under demand to try and guess what I am supposed to do is very frustrating. I'm now on "The Nimzo-Indian Defense" which I know absolutely nothing about, yet I am required to make the first move.

There has GOT to be a better way to educate people about openings.

OK, now it's just gotten silly. I skipped a bunch of openings lessons, and wound up at this:

"Spassky-Torre, Hamburg, 1982"

All I have is a fresh board and "Your move". No hint of the opening to employ, and if I play the wrong move I'll get penalised. So somehow I am supposed to know what a former World Champion did in a match, despite having nothing to go on.

I'm not trying to be a smartass, but I'd really like someone from Chess Mentor to explain exactly how I am supposed to benefit from this. I'm just getting very frustrated. ANyway, I'm skipping through the lesson and trying to go back to something on tactics instead, where Chess Mentor has been excellent so far.

Hi all, new guy here. 

I'm thrilled to see Chess Mentor reborn on this site, especially with a couple of new modules.  I reviewed the old 1.0 and 1.1 versions for Computer Games/Strategy Plus many, many years ago.

If it's opening training, especially memorization you're after, Bookup is probably the better way to go.  However, for an all around chess training tool, I prefer Chess Mentor to anything out there.  To be a total fanboy though, the explanations of the correct/incorrect moves in Chess Mentor's opening modules are excellent.

I've spent money on chess coaches over the Internet and face-to-face and it would be hard to decide if they helped me any more than spending daily time with Chess Mentor.

Have you tried the two new lessons by Eric Schiller? 

I've been a CM user for about a month and have been overall happy.  However, I jumped ahead to the opening training and could see that it wasn't what I wanted.  The Shiller lessons were closer because he went through the variations on one opening.  I think it was the Quiet Italian for white.  I don't really care, I just want to understand an opening enough to get out of it intact so I can start using some of the other stuff I'm learning.  I really think that understanding openings comes down to memorization and playing a lot of games to see how it works.

I hope that they get blitz games here sometime.  Blitz games can give you lots of opening practice. 

Hi Sword,

 I only skimmed the new modules.  I was excited to see them though since it's been several years, I think, since anything new has come out for Chess Mentor.

Bookup is still my choice for straight opening training.  I'm more concerned though with tactics, strategy and endgame study now.  I play correspondence chess almost exclusively and sort of do my opening study as I go along in the games!  :) 

..chestmaster has countless opening and vriations....

..........stttaggering........

Know this is a bit of an old topic but I have to agree that the only negative I have with CM is the Openings tutorials. I have learned a lot from CM but hate the crap shoot that is guessing what move next to make in an opening I have no idea of. Am sure there must be a better way for CM to teach openings?

 how do i find them

and swampdragon wrote "I guess the difference between us is that I don't take the rating system seriously, and I'm just trying to learn things I don't know. If I'm penalized, I really don't care."

The key seems to be "don't take the rating system seriously". If you use the "Key Pieces", "Key Squares", "Correct Piece" and, if totally stumped, "Correct Move" together with the notes and the notes on wrong moves, that seems to me to be good opening training.