In Praise of ProgramFOX

I haven't written one of these for a while and I'll probably come back and update it later but I thought it would make a change from my banging on about the Crazyhouse Underground if I said something about chessvariants.training (CVT)

It's a brilliant website, brought to you by @ProgramFOX

Pychess may offer more opportunities as to playing variants other than the canonical eight which lichess offers (Zh, 960, KotH, Anti, Atom, Horde, RK, 3+) but CVT offered e.g. Zh 960 earlier and continues to be the best resource for puzzles in that you can make your own and get feedback. The puzzles are rated as people attempt them, so it is possible to get a whole bunch of similar difficulty ones for your chosen variant.

I am aware, of course, that people make puzzle studies on lichess but as with studies per se (which by the way I find hard to navigate) the difficulty kind of depends on the strength of the author, and stronger players may overlook things that consciously or not they feel their students ought to know. Personally I prefer to have an array of puzzles with different authors.

There is also a tagging system so that you can practice a particular motif (your chances of solving the puzzle are greater if you know what to look for).

There's also a backlog of puzzles waiting to be reviewed (a process that depends on volunteers) so if you fancy yourself as an authority on a particular variant you might think about making yourself useful...