Reviewing Chess Tactics?

I haven't been practicing chess in ages, but every now and then I help my friends and play just for fun. Now I need to get serious and get my mindset back together, because my school hosted chess tournament is coming up in 6 days (Saturday, the 16th).



I do not and will not read chess books, because they are a pain and I really don't have the time for it. So please do not recommend them to me. Yes, I know they're helpful, but I don't to spend a lot of time studying chess when I could be studying for homework.



Recently, when I play random people online, I no longer have some of the skills I use to have and easily fall for some simple mistakes and traps. I want to change this.



Now my question is:

Does anyone know a chess computer (for free and to download) that has an in-depth database/history of openings, such as the London, Ruy Lopez, Accelerated-Dragon, and etc?



Please do not tell me chess websites with their database. I rather move the pieces and see them move myself and a chess board on the computer. I also do not need another chess server to play other people against. Thanks!!~Reviewing Chess Tactics?
You could search on YouTube about those.

Popular videos come from jrobichess, ChessBaseGMbH and others. (ChessBaseGMbH's channel features Garry Kasparov and some world champions, really.)



BTW, here's the links to some of them:



--Ruy Lopez(Classical Defense)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1qgxLYZGKA%26amp;feature=fvsr



--Accelerated Dragon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76P54jH800o



--London

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVnWH7Bs61s
That's cool... from your question, it sounded like you were dropping pieces in the latest games you were playing, which is why I said what I did.



Best of luck to you in the tournament!

Report Abuse

Reviewing Chess Tactics?
Sorry if I sounded mean and thanks! Everyone gets rusty when they don't play an a long time and people do make easy mistakes like what you think. I mean, think about how the scholar's mate got created and so forth.

Report Abuse

Rust never sleeps. The only way to stop "rust" is practice.



http://tim-mann.org/chess.html

You'll need an interface. Winboard comes with gnuchess already installed.



I know you said no books, but have you considered a notationless thing like Ault did?

http://grandpatzerchess.blogspot.com/200鈥?/a>



It can help you practice by proving positions with a solution that is more natural than a mate in 2 with it's artificial crap.Reviewing Chess Tactics?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bmhjf0rK鈥?/a>
If you've lost as much skill as it appears, studying the openings isn't going to help. You need to sharpen you tactics. Fine, you can play a few memorized openings, big deal, but then you're going to end up dropping pieces and that's not going to be good. Openings only matter at advanced levels (Expert and above). At your level, tactics are going to decide the outcome of the games.



Der Bringer is a good chess playing program, it's available for free as a download. It allows you to set up problems and play them out. That's what you need to work on. Winboard will also work.