Chess Engines : Strong Trainers

The use of chess engines to help analyze sharp variations is one of many ways computers have made a big impact on chess. Some trainers believe that virtually every strong player who is doing independent openings research is using a chess engine to help sort out tactical issues. The principal service that a chess engine provides is that it sees tactical possibilities extremely quickly. A strong player, studying a position, will sooner or later see the same tactical shots the computer sees, but the time he takes to recognize the possibilities impedes the progress of his or her analysis. Since chess analysis almost invariably requires consideration of many lines and sub-lines, the time taken to see tactics can be a significant impediment to productivity. Thus, much more can be done using computers than can be done without them. And the results will be free of rank blunders, which the analysis even of strong players not always is. The increase in productivity conferred by using a computer, if the trainers reasoning is correct, diminishes as one's tactical abilities increase. IMs and even GMs benefit from using chess engines to help with their researches.