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Chess Position Trainer 3.
2 - Manual
by Stefan Renzewitz & Gregory Prentice © 2004-2006
CONTENT ...........................................................................................................................................................2 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 2 3 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 4 4.1 WHAT IS CHESS POSITION TRAINER ABOUT? ..........................................................................5 FEATURES ...............................................................................................................................................5 DIFFERENCES TO CLASSICAL GAME DATABASES ....................................................................................7 HISTORY AND BACKGROUND INFORMATION ...........................................................................................8 NEW FEATURES OF VERSION 3.2 .................................................................................................10 WALKTHROUGH FOR CHESS POSITION TRAINER ................................................................11 THE CONCEPT OF CANDIDATE MOVES ..................................................................................................12 GET THE EXAMPLE FILES AND START CHESS POSITION TRAINER ...........................................................13 NAVIGATING THROUGH THE REPERTOIRE AND ENTERING NEW MOVES ..................................................14 ADD INFORMATION TO POSITIONS .........................................................................................................16 LET'S START THE FUN: TRAIN YOUR REPERTOIRE!.................................................................................18 LEARN FROM YOUR GAMES ...................................................................................................................22 CREATE A REPERTOIRE WITH SUB-REPERTOIRES ...................................................................................24 CREATE MIDDLE- AND ENDGAME POSITIONS .........................................................................................26 MENU ITEMS DESCRIPTION ..........................................................................................................27 REPERTOIRE .........................................................................................................................................27 4.1.1 4.1.2 4.1.3 4.1.4 4.1.5 4.1.6 4.2 New ..........................................................................................................................................27 Load.........................................................................................................................................27 Close ........................................................................................................................................27 Delete.......................................................................................................................................27 ZIP Repertoire .........................................................................................................................28 Exit...........................................................................................................................................28
SUB-REPERTOIRES ................................................................................................................................28 4.2.1 4.2.2 4.2.3 4.2.4 Save..........................................................................................................................................30 Add...........................................................................................................................................30 Separate...................................................................................................................................30 Delete.......................................................................................................................................31
Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 - all rights reserved 4.2.5 4.2.6 4.2.7 4.2.8 4.2.9 4.2.10 4.2.11 4.2.12 4.2.13 4.2.14 4.2.15 4.2.16 4.2.17 4.2.18 4.3
Close ........................................................................................................................................31 Properties ................................................................................................................................31 Refresh.....................................................................................................................................31 Restart......................................................................................................................................32 Copy from here on ...................................................................................................................32 Split into two (from here on) ...................................................................................................32 Merge with… ...........................................................................................................................33 Import PGN-file into................................................................................................................33 Export PGN .............................................................................................................................34 Import EPD .............................................................................................................................35 Export EPD .............................................................................................................................35 Remove Marks for....................................................................................................................36 Reset all Training Scores.........................................................................................................36 Backsolving / Min-Max-Calculation ......................................................................................36
POSITION ..............................................................................................................................................37 4.3.1 4.3.2 4.3.3 4.3.4 4.3.5 4.3.6 4.3.7 4.3.8 4.3.9 4.3.10 Edit Position ............................................................................................................................37 Delete.......................................................................................................................................38 Previous Branch ......................................................................................................................39 Next Branch .............................................................................................................................39 Goto Previous / Next Position .................................................................................................40 Copy to Clipboard ...................................................................................................................41 Paste from Clipboard ..............................................................................................................41 Reset Training Score ...............................................................................................................41 Switch Side...............................................................................................................................41 Take a Snapshot.......................................................................................................................41
MOVE ...................................................................................................................................................42 4.4.1 4.4.2 4.4.3 4.4.4 4.4.5 4.4.6 Backward.................................................................................................................................42 Forward...................................................................................................................................42 Up ............................................................................................................................................42 Down........................................................................................................................................42 Delete.......................................................................................................................................42 Copy Moves to Clipboard........................................................................................................43
..................................................................6....................................1....................46 Little walkthrough ...................57 4..........61 TIPS FOR THE INTERFACE.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 ..............61 SUB-REPERTOIRE LIST .....3 4....................................................................................................................................3 5..................................53 Options .....................................................................6......................................1 5............................................................................................................................................49 EXTRAS ......52 Move Games to Archive......6..................................................................................2 5...6....................59 POSITION COMMENT .......................................................6..57 Language ........................1..................................................................................................................52 Mark Positions of Missed Moves ......................................................................50 4..............6...9 6 7 8 HELP .....1....57 Reset Layout ........................................................................................5 4...................................................................1 4....5 5...............5.........................................................................................................58 POSITION DATA .4 4.......................1...............................................................................................................................................................................................................57 Data Integrity Check ...............................................................................................................................8 5..........6.............................................................................................................2 4...................5........3 4.........................................................all rights reserved 4....................4 4............................................................59 MOVE LIST .................................2 4..............................6 4 The idea of using the flash-card concept for a chess program ....................................7 5 5.....................6..............................................................................................................6........................................58 POSITION LIST...................................................4 5.............5....1 4..........................................44 Training Wizard......47 Close Training ....................6 5...........................2 4................................................................................4 4...................60 REPERTOIRE SCORE .......................6 My games.........................50 Show Novelties.................64 ............................................................60 CANDIDATE MOVES LIST .............................................................................................................................................................................................45 Main Window.......................7 5...............58 POSITION TREE ..............50 Update Training Scores ...........................................................61 XBOARD ENGINE .................................................53 Xboard Engine...................................................................................1 4....................57 WINDOWS DESCRIPTION..................................................................5.................................63 SHORTCUTS ............................................64 CREDITS ............5 4.............................................................3 4....................6.............................5..................................................................................................................................................................................
. Train your visualization skills by using the blindfold mode. The best of all: It's absolutely for free. • • Comprehensive support to enter and navigate your own repertoire with ease. books and databases) in a more efficient way you do today no matter whether you are already using an opening specialist software or game database. You'll go with confident into your next match! • • Unique concept of organizing your repertoire by dividing it into unlimited sub-repertoires. 1.all rights reserved 5 1 What is Chess Position Trainer about? Chess Position Trainer (CPT) is the perfect solution to manage your chess material (CD's.absolutely unmatched by any other chess software. • • Unique training wizard to get your perfect training settings with a few clicks. It fills the gap which chess databases don't touch and has the features which commercial repertoire-management software is missing. • More than 70 training parameters of which most can be combined freely leading to almost infinite training options -.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . because the key information is no longer more than one click away -.g. Innovative repertoire score let you not wonder how well you know your repertoire yet. Listed are some features of CPT: • Innovative implementation of the time-proven flash-concept which you might know from learning a foreign language.1 Features Since the first release of CPT in June 2004 many innovative features have been invented by CPT to an already for years stagnating market. internet chess server). Learn from every game you play (e. This concept ensures the most efficient way to study and memorize your personal repertoire. There is no second chess software on the market which let you train your own repertoire in blindfold mode.defeat your laziness! CPT will show you right away the novelties of your games which are not yet covered by your repertoire and you can even right away train exactly those positions where you missed the right move without any effort! • Import any PGN files to fill-up your repertoire quickly (don't miss the free downloads on the homepage of CPT).
you will soon appreciate this chess tool if you ever were looking for a more efficient way to manage and study your chess material: Chess Position Trainer is the perfect choice and all you need to achieve this. The original motivation for this project were the training capabilities of CPT. learn from your played (online) games and train it in a very efficient way. EPD-Import and -Export.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . Before CPT was released chess software would test you randomly in your repertoire. divide it into sub-repertoires for each opening (i. 6 Full chess engine support. However. The best of all: It's for free! You can easily enter your repertoire. State-of-the-art user interface. On its own CPT won't teach you how to play better chess though this might change in the future once there are more training eBooks available.e.). . CPT is proud to have invented this concept to the chess software market already in June 2004! Chess Position Trainer is aimed at ambitious and serious chess players who already study or want to study chess books. Pirc etc. Scandinavian. Your hard work is not bound to CPT. • • • • Backsolving / Min-Max-Calculation based on informator symbols or centipawns. CD's and use chess databases as well as chess engines to improve their chess skill. Addictive sound for training to reflect whether you are doing good or not. The idea of the whole training center is based on the time-proven flash-card concept you might already know from learning a foreign language: CPT will always test you in your worst line or position based on the training settings and training scores. Dragon. It will become probably soon your perfect addition to these other chess tools.all rights reserved • • • Export your repertoire at any time. Use the free engines like Crafty or the very strong Spike to analyse your repertoire. Configurable auto-color-coding for candidate moves.
but not a repertoire which is rather position and variation based. To know these candidate moves becomes more important the higher the level of your opponents is. Certainly not an efficient representation of a real repertoire. If you want to play certain variations it becomes clear that for each position within these variations there is only one move for your colour to make if you want to stay in the variation. but they don't support you to really study the presented material in an efficient way. So far chess tools and material focus on teaching you the grammar (the strategies behind openings.2 Differences to classical Game Databases Game databases let you only manage games.all rights reserved 7 Learning chess has several things in common with learning a new language: You need to know the grammar and the vocabulary.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 .). but how do you study only these variations afterwards? There is not really an efficient way to do so. but not on concrete games (with the addition of model games). middle games or endgames) and often they show you also the vocabulary (opening theory. move orders etc. For example: you have a +300p book about your favourite opening which covers all lines including all sidelines. This mis-concept leads to so called repertoire databases which are in fact just a more or less loosely collection of games. . This move is called the candidate move in CPT. Now you study the ideas behind all variations and make decisions which one you want to play. 1.
This little number will soon become a major motivator for you and at the end learning the vocabulary of chess will turn out to be a lot of more fun than you ever thought it could be and far away from a dry job (heck.3 History and Background Information At my real job I have to create new services and products for our customers and clients based on information technology (mostly internet solutions). Once configured this information is available with a few clicks. Tactic and endgame knowledge is more useful. With Chess Position Trainer I tried to achieve the same and I hope it will not only help me to improve my chess skill. You get to the critical position by one click and a configured chess engine will analyze it right away. Actually you will probably no longer waste useful information for example from played games. The unique training mode will be a feature you don't want to miss anymore. but yours too and at the same being fun to use.all rights reserved 8 Against players below an ELO rating of 2000 you won't need much opening theory (your opponent is not playing theory after the third move anyway). because you were too lazy to lookup where you or your opponent went wrong or played a novelty. but even then this tool will be of great help for you. In combination with the very handy support to run your played games against your repertoire database you will quickly realize how much more efficient your chess study will become. My own chess history in short: I never read any chess book for many years and reached in the last two tournaments before I became more or less inactive a performance of >2150 DWZ (ELO rating would be higher proba- . I studied information management and have been always fascinated by technology in conjunction with solutions which really create value for the user or company. chess CD's or other electronically resources. I once bought the at that time only opening specialist software on the market and thought it was a good first step into the right direction. It automatically focuses on your weaknesses. The true gem of CPT is how it attempts to get really the most out of the information which you entered manually or by importing your played games. Think for a moment how do you achieve the same right now. even developing this tool was fun!).Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . if you are making that effort at all? With all the information which CPT is gathering it is possible to give you finally a single and trustfully percentage number reflecting the knowledge of your own repertoire. but leaving so much left to desire and giving the fact that it was already build 19 I just had to create my own tool which fulfils my goals. Process optimisation is another major part of my daily job. 1. because it supports studying end and middle game positions too.
I'm convinced with just a little bit and frequent chess study I would have improved much faster and reached a much higher rating. The first time that I'm actually studying chess material and I realize that I missed a lot of fun (just reading Chris Wards WWTD 2 is so much fun even if you don't play the Dragon!). I was on my way to finally pass the magic 2000 DWZ before once again other interest caught my attention and I only continued to play enough chess to lower my rating again.all rights reserved 9 bly).Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . You can see that it is possible to reach a very high rating / performance without having read any chess book (at that time I even would have failed in some basic endgames like king vs. If CPT would have existed at that time who knows what I would have reached? Now such a program exists and it is even for free. king pawn). So take your chance and do it better than I did! Let me know your success story and how Chess Position Trainer helped you in improving your chess skill! Yours. However. The book from Bronznik about the Chigorin opening brought me really back into chess again and watching Morozevich exciting games did the rest. After some years I made a comeback and fall in love with this fine game again like never before. Stefan Renzewitz – Creator of Chess Position Trainer 2006 .
Now you can auto-mark all positions where you missed the candidate move as 'candidate move missed' (check the sub-menu 'extras my games.2 Since Version 3. analyze them with another program and then re-import just the computer evaluations.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . In order to not overwhelm a new user the wizard was introduced. Crafty.'). CPT has by now more than 70 training options of which most can be freely combined leading to almost infinite options. Further more each marked position will have the info about the game where it was played and the move which was played in the game instead of the candidate move. • Novelty function extended: New functionality for the novelty mode inspired by Jonathan. . Xboard engine support (e. • Smart move input: Another user-based new neat feature. Press the SHIFT-key while entering a move and CPT won't navigate to the new position.g.1.. • Build-in backup functionality: ZIP support let you zip your whole repertoire easily if you use the function under 'Repertoire'. • EPD import/export with several options opening a new dimension for CPT. • Novelty module: Game list extended by ECO. Then you can easily jump to those positions (see menu items under 'position') and use these marked positions for the training center! Check the training center for this new option (selection tab). Spike): You can now use an external engine to analyze a position opening a new dimension to CPT. You have to load the repertoire first. manual and web-site have been translated. Then use backsolving / min-max-calculation based on computer evaluation! • PGN-Export: Export a sub-repertoire as PGN file. A new column has been added. • Training wizard: The training wizard will help you to quickly find good training settings.1 there have been many new features added and the following list is just a selection: • • Localized German version: The whole program.. but just add it to the candidate move list.all rights reserved 10 2 New Features of Version 3. This will let you quickly add all candidate moves of a position without having to navigate back and forth all the time. You can easily export leaf nodes (final positions of variations). but it can be a funny challenge for the experienced user as well by using the difficult level. • Remove Markers: You can remove any type of marking for a whole sub-repertoire (just check the submenu of 'sub-repertoire). Now your hard work is no longer bound to the fortune of CPT.
g. Now you can easily take a snapshot of the current chess board (incl. 3 Walkthrough for Chess Position Trainer Chess Position Trainer is a quite complex chess tool which offers you many features which might be overwhelming at first. • • Beta version check: The version check will now look for official releases and beta versions. you will soon understand how CPT works and how much it will help you to save time while training your chess material. So in some way you have to unlearn the wrong methodology those programs taught you for years. If you drop a piece outside of the board it will be removed. There are many options to configure them the way you like.g. . Actually the representation of your repertoire in CPT is more natural than what you probably got used to by game databases. You can change the colors and the width of the arrows. 11 Snapshot function: Check the toolbar or sub-menu 'position'. You can let CPT show the top candidate move distinguish or moves with a positive evaluation different from ones with a negative one etc. It will be copied to the clipboard from where you can easily use it in any other program. You can use the computer evaluation for backsolving! • New interface to enter / edit positions: Now you can drag and drop the pieces easily. This is an excellent mode to train your visualization skills! • Computer evaluation as well as personal evaluation is now possible. • New position comment window: The position comment has been dedicated a whole window which you can dock and float as you like. but don't be afraid. arrows).02). Several parameters give you more control on what should be hidden. -1. If you never used a similar software for your repertoire management you might get even confused that there are no games at all actually. • Blindfold mode for training: You can now train without any pieces being displayed. Check training options! • Toolbar in the main window: Buttons can be added and removed as you like.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . menu). Check the position tab to edit the number (e. Otherwise it should be self-explaining • Visual enhancements by using colored arrows: Candidate moves are now indicated by arrows. Defining more than one candidate move for training: Training mode can be configured to accept more than just the top candidate move.all rights reserved • • New icon graphics added at many places (e.
Of course. At the end it comes down to a single move for each possible position of the variations you want to play: Your "candidate move" or "best move". because the goal of CPT is quite different too. only the first ranked and explic- . with this information it's possible to re-calculate a move order to reach a certain position. A repertoire is the result of chess material you studied either by reading chess books or chess CD's or both.1 The concept of Candidate Moves If you want to use CPT it's critical to understand the concept of "Candidate Moves". but even then it's quite easy with CPT to manage the repertoire.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . Usually you only want to cover one or two moves for your color. but all reasonable of the opponents color. In CPT not concrete games. For all these purposes you can use Chess Assistant and Chessbase which are just perfect for that job. The candidate move concept is very important in CPT. It's your personal essence out of this material. But in general you will study some material and make decisions about which variation fits your style. Let's say you face with Black e4. With CPT you want to manage your repertoire rather than your games or the games of someone else nor do you want to study openings by looking at games of other players. but in general the approach is very different to typical chess databases. You always want to play the Sicilian as the reply to e4 so the candidate move in that position is c5. are not your first candidate move.all rights reserved 12 Take your time to go through this tutorial and you will get a good overview of Chess Position Trainer and it's features in action! 3. This is important for the training center later where you can decide to train only your first ranked candidate moves or all best moves. You can have more than one candidate move and later change the order of your candidate moves or make more than one candidate move as "best move". but it will help you to organize and to train them in a very efficient way. All other moves. If you have more than one candidate move for your side you can declare one or all as "best move". You may want to fine-tune the repertoire by doing some deep analysis with a chess engine or chess database. Many other concepts are based on this basic concept. A candidate move is a reasonable move for a given position which you want to cover in your repertoire. CPT won't help you to find all these single moves. while they might be absolutely sound. However. sometimes there exist two candidate moves which you would like to play and especially the stronger you are the more likely it is that you have more than one line which you can play for the most popular variations just to make it harder for your opponent to prepare the game against you. Of course. but just positions and moves are saved.
When you run your played games against your repertoire to find any novelties CPT will check where you didn't play your first ranked candidate move / best move for the first time. 3.all rights reserved 13 itly marked "best moves" will be considered for several functions which CPT offers like the training mode. You will be asked to choose a repertoire file. Keep this in mind! A short list of functions which are based on the first ranked candidate move or "best moves": Training mode: you have to play your first ranked candidate move or the program will count it as a incorrect answer.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . Browse to the folder where you saved the example repertoire and load "Standard. Updating your repertoire based on your played games works similar. There is an option to accept "best moves" too.2 Get the example files and start Chess Position Trainer First of all if you didn't do so yet you should download the example repertoire which is available for free in the download section of www. If you didn't use CPT before no repertoire will be loaded automatically and CPT will look similar to the next screenshot: Either click on the Load button of the toolbar or use the menu navigation Repertoire/Load.xmr". After you loaded the repertoire you should see something similar to the following screenshot: . Next start Chess Position Trainer.com. Save and unzip it in a folder where you want to keep your repertoires.chesspositiontrainer.
It shows you always all moves which are covered for the current position.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . You can easily add moves to this list. use the right arrow of your keyboard or just click on the candidate move in the candidate move list. but yourself will probably focus on one move for each position. You can see that your repertoire knowledge is at the moment zero (the bar is empty). You will navigate through the repertoire. At the bottom you can see a window called candidate moves. Usually there is only one move for your color and several moves for the opposite one as you want to be prepared for any reasonable move of your opponents.all rights reserved 14 3. because you didn't train it yet. Get to the first branch that is where more than one move exists in the candidate move list.3 Navigating through the repertoire and entering new moves If you loaded the repertoire as described before please select the sub-repertoire Alekhine by clicking on the name in the tab-list to activate it. . Now click on the forward button in the toolbar. At the same time the window move list will be updated.
Now let's jump to the next branch by pressing F2. Nc6 and g6.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . This is a very useful shortcut! With F2 and F1 you can jump easily to the next/previous branch. . You will get back to the current position.all rights reserved 15 White could have played different before. but I made the decision that this is the Alekhine variation I want to play. Try that yourself once at the current position: First press F1 and afterwards F2. In our example you can see that 3 moves are covered for Black: Be7. You can see that Black has two possible moves which are covered by the repertoire.
delete one or change the order of a candidate move. In CPT 4 this will be improved. All of a sudden you have a candidate move again! That's called a transposition which is covered by CPT. This is called "smart input" which let you quickly enter all replies for one side without having to navigate back and forth. To do so you need to click on the tab of the position window first. Reply for White with Nf3 (ignoring the blunder for this example) and afterwards for Black with g6.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . For every position of you repertoire you can enter information like a label.all rights reserved 16 Now let's say you experienced that someone played 6…Bg4 (an obvious blunder. what transpositions are and how to navigate through a sub-repertoire. Now you learned about candidate moves. It's important to know that CPT is saving every position only once. Navigate back to the branch before by pressing F1. You could have reached the same position if you picked the move g6 first instead of entering the new move Bg4. The move list will be updated again and your candidate move list will be empty.4 Add information to positions Let's have look at positions in a little bit more detail. Play a little bit around by choosing one of both paths to get to the same position. two move orders are leading to the same position. It's quite simple to add assessments to a move. And a very last tip: Keep the SHIFT-key pressed while entering a move and CPT won't navigate to the next position. 3. A last tip: You may want to right-click on a move in the move list or candidate move list. Drag & drop the Black bishop to that place. but we are doing this just for demonstration reasons). Hence transpositions are covered. . A double entry is per definition impossible. how to enter them. because this is a totally new position and there can't exist any candidate move yet. Now. These are the basic functions. At the moment this is limited to the current sub-repertoire and it doesn't cover colour transpositions that means if you have with Black a position which is covered by your repertoire for White it is not showing this transposition. comment or assessment.
Now have a look at the position list by clicking on the tab. CPT will save the information automatically after any action. This is a very important concept to know. In the position window you can enter a label for the position.all rights reserved 17 Depending on the current position your screen should look similar afterwards. Enter "my position" and either click on the Sub-Repertoire/Save menu item or navigate through your repertoire.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . . Once a position is labelled it will show up in the position list. you can't lose any information even if you close the program.
because CPT can't know which move order lead to the position (considering that transpositions are possible). You will see the following finished screen: . If you want to get back to the start position you have to use restart (toolbar or menu item). CPT offers a training wizard which helps you to find good training settings quickly. Let's start the training mode by clicking on training (or use the menu item training/go to training centert). but CPT has much more to offer than just managing your moves and positions. the type "opening" and leave the difficult level at zero. Once you jumped to a position you can't get back to the start position. Follow the wizard instructions and select the Alekhine sub-repertoire. Important: Whenever you jump to a position your move list will be erased. 3.5 Let's start the fun: train your repertoire! Till now you learned how to create your own repertoire and to navigate through a sub-repertoire. but to the position to which you jumped before. You will directly jump to that position and it will be shown on the chessboard. At the same time you can see your training score for this position this is of course zero at the moment. Navigate through your repertoire a little bit and then click on "my position" in the list.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . If you entered several key endgame positions you can easily toggle through them by using the position list. If you don't like to use a wizard just uncheck the proper box and press Cancel.all rights reserved 18 You will see your just labelled position "my position". You can also do so by using the menu Position/Goto…/with name (or just F8 or Shift+F8).
Just adjust the trackbar. CPT will first demo the variation it is training you in.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 .all rights reserved 19 After you click "Finish" the training will start. You can change the speed in the windows called "Moves per Minute". After the demonstration has finished you are asked to play White's moves! .
c4. Then you can set every parameter to your likings. d4. Let's do that.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . Of course it is possible to train longer variations either by changing the difficult level in the wizard or training without the wizard. exd6. Next play Nc3 for White. You are given a second chance (at least CPT does give you a second chance!). e5. Did you hear it? Yes. CPT takes back the wrong move and shows you the correct piece highlighted for a short moment. Let's stop the training now and have a look at the mechanics behind the scenes. d4. While f4 is absolutely sound and another popular choice it is not your repertoire. Continue with White: e5. CPT gave you an applause! That's because you played the whole line without any mistake. The training wizard set for you the parameter to train only the first 6 moves as you said that you really have no clue about this opening (lowest difficult level). CPT will reply with Nf6 and in the background your training score for the previous position will be updated. How does CPT choose a line in which it want to test you? .all rights reserved 20 You are asked to move the right piece for this position. Nc3. You are faced with the start position again. Let's get back to the training. It's e4 as you are an e4 player (in this example at least). You have to play the same line again to let CPT move to the next line. What happened? According to the repertoire exd6 is the candidate move. This time play all moves correct: e4. After this last move CPT will jump to the starting position again. Again this is only due to the training settings and at any time possible to change. After d4 CPT is making the move d6 and you have this position: Maybe you are an e4 player and you like to play here f4. Now play exd6. After you played this line for the second time correct CPT will demo you a new line. c4. Drag & drop the pawn.
Did you spot the difference? Yes. For each position CPT is storing your training score. Go back to the starting position by clicking on the restart button. all of a sudden there is 30% for the position score! That's because during the training mode you found the correct move in this position for three times. You just learned the relation between your repertoire and the training mode. once that score is 100% you can be quite confident that you really know your repertoire! . Whenever you make a correct answer it will increase by 10% otherwise decrease by 10%. Now let's close the training center by clicking on the stop button first and then the close button. However. because it's the average training score of all positions where you have to move. You can see that this approach is similar to the time-proven flash-card concept. During the training mode it will simply pick those positions which have the lowest score. CPT was the first program to introduce this unique feature in a comprehensive way and is proud to have changed a stagnating market significantly. You get back to the normal enter mode. If you continue to move forward through the sub-repertoire you can see that more positions have a score of 30% now. Try to get the score for all training positions up to 100%! Your repertoire score is increasing slower. Think about how you have been training all your life! Probably randomly and not really with an auto-focus on your weaknesses like CPT guarantees.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . The training options make the selection a little bit more complex and flexible. but in general that is the whole concept.all rights reserved 21 Whenever you make a move during the training mode the move is either correct or wrong (according to the repertoire).
Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . Did you ever wanted to know with one click where you or your opponent didn't play what you actually prepared? With CPT this becomes a very simple task. it should look like this: . Finding novelties Click on the menu item Extras/my games…Show novelties.all rights reserved 22 3.pgn" which came along with the example repertoire and click on OK. Click back to the newly opened window. A new window will open and after a few seconds your main window will receive the focus again.6 Learn from your games Probably you play on the internet at some chess servers like ICC or playchess or you just play over the board games. For the first time a window with some options will popup: Enter as player name "Amarok" and choose as the watch file the PGN file "Amarok.
I'm a Chigorin player and now I'm out of theory right after the second move.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . At the same time it will automatically focus in the main window the sub-repertoire to which the move should belong. If you click on any other game in the list CPT will show the first novelty for that game. but not for Bg5.all rights reserved 23 You can see at the bottom a list of games I played on ICC a while ago. You can also get back to . For the first game CPT shows you the first move which is a novelty according to the repertoire file. In this case it was my opponent who played a move I didn't expect. You can navigate through this subrepertoire. but is not yet covered: You can see that I was only prepared for c4 and Nf3. Thanks to CPT after some blitz sessions I can later easily get back to these critical positions. add the move and try to fill the gap by doing some research with your chess material (especially in such specific situations programs like Chess Assistant and Chessbase are invaluable). My nickname is "Amarok" on that server.
but you will for sure create your own repertoire. You can use this feature to train not only by the training mode. Note: Once you are done with the PGN games you might want to archive them to avoid checking them again. If you are playing at playchess you will have to export the created database of your games to a PGN file. but it would be even better if you could use this information similar to the training mode to update your training scores. but also by playing games on chess servers. Important: The chess servers (or to be more precise their clients) ICC and playchess offer to save automatically all games you play into a file. Of course. Now CPT will automatically find out for every game where you didn't play your candidate move for a specific position and it does even more: It automatically figures out which sub-repertoire corresponds to the game and the position in question. Once you are done you can close that window and get back to the main window.1 My games. Again. After you've create the repertoire you asked to create a sub-repertoire. To do so just click on new in the toolbar.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . A repertoire is similar to a folder. 3. So far you have been playing around with the pre-made repertoire. With ICC this is already a PGN file so it makes the whole task very easy. CPT offers you plenty of ways to study your chess material in an efficient way. Create a sub-repertoire for White with the name "Kings Gambit". There is much more to say about these features which you can find at 4. for all correct moves your training scores will increase automatically too! Thus it makes the whole process a piece of cake.7 Create a repertoire with sub-repertoires Let's get back to your repertoire. the files. For this you need to set an archive file in the options and use afterwards the menu item extras/my games/move games to archive. but you decide which method you prefer. click on another game. You will be asked to save the repertoire. You probably guessed it already: CPT can do that too! Updating training scores Click on the menu item Extras/my games…update training scores.all rights reserved 24 the game window and navigate there through the game.6. are the sub-repertoires. Save the repertoire as "Blitz". The actual content. It's good to see where something went wrong. Your window should look similar to the next screenshot: . With this information CPT will update the position score if you played the incorrect move.
After entering these moves go to sub-repertoire and choose Add and New Sub-Repertoire. You will be asked again to enter a name and choose the colour. There is much more to learn like copy. merge or split a sub-repertoire. .Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 .all rights reserved 25 Now enter the moves e4. f4. You just learned how to create a repertoire with sub-repertoires. Now you can enter moves for this one too. e5. but you are ready to create your own repertoire now. After filling out these fields you have created a second sub-repertoire.
A new window will open. If you made a mistake you can also just click on cancel and nothing will be saved to your database. CPT is only your tool which offers you many functions to optimise your chess training. This feature allows you to create a repertoire for endgames which could contain sub-repertoires for rook endings. bishop endings. but it's you who really makes it valuable.1 Edit Position): Once you entered the position you have to confirm it by pressing on OK. but not the least important section for the tutorial.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . I hope you got your feeds wet by now and can't wait to start exploring Chess Position Trainer on your own. Enjoy! . On the other hand you could also create a repertoire for key-middle games or even repertories just filled with chess puzzles! Again. The walkthrough ends here. You can now freely enter a position for example a key position for rook endings (for further details see 4.all rights reserved 26 3.and endgame positions This is the last. Go to position/edit position/new position. pawn endings etc. With this function you can make CPT more than just an opening trainer.8 Create middle.3.
It will not only delete the repertoire.4 Delete Be careful with this one. but CPT offers a much better way to manage your repertoire including all sub-repertoires. 4.1.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . 4. 4.1.1. That's the way how you probably did it in the past. Any opened repertoire will be closed and saved automatically.2 Load Simply to load a repertoire.all rights reserved 27 4 Menu Items Description 4. But don't make the mistake to create a repertoire for Black or White or even a specific Opening. After choosing the repertoire name you will be prompted to create a new subrepertoire too.3 Close You can close your repertoire and all not yet saved information will be saved automatically. You might want to create a repertoire called "Standard" or "Blitz" etc. A repertoire on it's own is useless.1 Repertoire 4.1 New This will create a new repertoire. It is just the framework for your sub-repertoires. but also all sub-repertoires if any exist! .1.
5 ZIP Repertoire This function is very useful if you want to make a backup of your repertoire or if you want to easily copy it to another place (e. send it to your friends or use it with your pupils this is the function to use. CD). As a general advise it's recommended to make a backup of your repertoire frequently and store it at a different place (e. 4.g.6 Exit Before the program will terminate it will save all not yet saved information. 4.1.2 Sub-Repertoires This is a very important section as Chess Position Trainer is introducing a new concept to the chess software market which will make your daily work with your chess material much easier than ever before. memory stick.1. . Also if you want to publish a repertoire to the CPT community. another PC. Soon you don't want to miss this feature again.all rights reserved 28 4. clarify an issue with CPT support. First you have to load the repertoire which you want to zip and then just call this function. CPT will automatically identify all related files and zip them together into a single file.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 .g. from your desktop PC to your laptop).
you can transfer it from one to another one. it doesn't offer you an efficient way to manage these very important information as a whole. A repertoire file stores only the information which sub-repertoires belong together – it's therefore similar to a folder.all rights reserved 29 Probably you are right now managing your repertoire in one way or another. but in general all your chess knowledge is gathered and connected within one repertoire. However it has the downside of a performance penalty. There might be a different one called "Blitz" where you are playing different lines. This makes the whole concept even more flexible. This makes the download of CPT very small and the exchange of repertoire files among users quite simple. Using the concept of sub-repertoires several of new functions are possible and in CPT implemented which will be described in this section. Many things depend on this key characteristic. During the training mode the program will only ask you positions where the side with the colour of your sub-repertoire has to move. As long as you really separate your repertoire into small sub-repertoires you shouldn't have any performance problems (only the one time import might take some time depending on the file size). In this case you are either storing you repertoire in many lines or in only one big line/game.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . the moves and all corresponding positions. but simple XML. one for Scandinavian and one for French you only have the repertoire let's say "Standard". You can change the sub-repertoire colour at any time though. You no longer have to manage your sub-repertoires independently. With CPT the concept of sub-repertoires are introduced. The training scores are based only on those positions where the sub-repertoire colour has to move and so on. They all belong to one Repertoire. but if you start to work with CPT in the same way as you probably do with Chess Assistant or Chess- . The sub-repertoire itself has the information about the colour of the subrepertoire. There is one more thing to know: Any sub-repertoire can be extracted from a repertoire to become an independent repertoire itself (including the sub-repertoire) at any time and vice versa. Last note: At the moment CPT is not using a real Database in the background. The difference between a repertoire and a sub-repertoire becomes clear if you check where your moves and positions are actually saved. Maybe you are using an opening specialist where you have one big file for your White Repertoire and one for Black or you use for this purpose a classical Chess Database Program like SCID. While you might have one sub-repertoire for the Dragon. Whatever tool you are right now using. For example the board will be automatically switched to the pieces of the subrepertoire colour at the bottom. Note: A sub-repertoire can only be used in one repertoire! However. Before you worry too much now: Even a few thousand of positions for one sub-repertoire are not a big deal. A sub-repertoire is always designed for one specific colour.
There is a version 4 of CPT in the making which will feature a professional database where this main disadvantage of CPT will become history. because after every action including closing a subrepertoire. 4. bishop endings etc. If the added repertoire has itself several sub-repertoires all of them will be added to the current repertoire automatically! You can download at http://www.1 Save Usually you don't have to save anything explicitly in CPT. any changed information will be saved automatically. . Check the Separate function for this purpose. In the future there might be many more available and you are encouraged to send yours to the author to make it downloadable for the community of CPT. Choose the color for which you want to create it and that's it. Beside integrating third party sub-repertoires you might want to transfer a sub-repertoire from one repertoire to another one.com some free (sub-)repertoires and add them with this function. because sub-repertoires belong to other repertoires already and hence can't be shared.or endgame positions you might want to create sub-repertoires for rook endings. Existing( Sub-)Repertoire Only repertoires can be added.chessposiontrainer.2 Add While you build your repertoire you are going to create new sub-repertoires for each opening you want to study or if you are going to enter key middle.2.2.3 Separate Separating a sub-repertoire will make it independent and not deleting it physically.2.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . Stay tuned! 4. After this action the subrepertoire no longer belongs to the repertoire and can be loaded as a repertoire.all rights reserved 30 base you are soon going to have a performance problem. A repertoire will become a sub-repertoire once added and won't be available for any other repertoires or loadable as a repertoire anymore. 4. New Sub-Repertoire This will give you the opportunity to create a totally new sub-repertoire from the scratch.
7 Refresh This function will update the display of the sub-repertoire score. 4. 4. Check the Sub-Repertoire List to find and open any closed sub-repertoire. but it does not so after entering new moves for example as it is a quite time consumption function (even though it runs in the background as a thread).2.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 .all rights reserved 31 4. CPT does that frequently on it's own for example after loading a sub-repertoire or after finishing the training mode.6 Properties A window will pop-up and you can edit the name of the sub-repertoire.2. 4.5 Close You can close any sub-repertoire and open it later again.4 Delete Unlike removing this will definitely delete it physically as well. Even a little sub-repertoire which by far doesn't cover all lines you have easily to study more than 3400 positions! If there is no efficient and reliable way to do so you can spend years on a sub-repertoire and still don't know it evenly.2. Additionally you can see how many positions your sub-repertoire covers. Now that you can see how many positions exist you can get finally an idea about what it means to learn for instance the Dragon. the colour for which it is designed and enter a comment.2. .
. This will be done recursively.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . if you jump to any positions the move list will start exactly from that position on and will ignore any previous moves which might lead to the position. 4.8 Restart The restart function will bring you back to the start position. The split function will move all moves and corresponding positions from the current position on into the target sub-repertoire. For this purpose you can use this function. It copies all moves of the current move list and all derived moves from the current position into the target sub-repertoire. it won't delete a position if it can be reached by a totally different line (a transposition). but the Restart function does. 4.9 Copy from here on Sometimes you want to copy parts of your sub-repertoire into another one. CPT is acting here quite smart and you should achieve the result you had in mind. Because of that the move list won't let you get back to the start position. In this case the position is not depending on the one which will be deleted. At the end it will delete all candidate moves leading to the current position and afterwards all moves depending on this position directly or indirectly (by recursion). In short: It will just work as you would expect it. Thanks to the new concept of subrepertoires you can now organize them much better and later train them more specific. If you imported your repertoire from Chess Assistant or Chessbase it's quite likely that you have all opening variations for at least one colour in one big repertoire file. In other words: Any position which is reachable by any move order (which is represented in your repertoire) from the current position on will be copied.10 Split into two (from here on) With this option you can split a big sub-repertoire into smaller ones. It will also copy all moves from your move list into the target sub-repertoire to ensure that the current position is reachable in the other sub-repertoire too. That's one of the best concepts which Chess Position Trainer introduces.2. As you will read in the position section.2.all rights reserved 32 4.2. Don't worry.
if you decide to separate them again you can do so easily at any time by using the Split function. but simple XML. Maybe you want to split them at a different point this time.2. If you selected this function you will be asked to choose the sub-repertoire with which you want to merge the current one.2. Once imported in CPT you can quickly choose the lines which you want to play without entering anything manually. Note: The import will always check whether the position and move to import exists already in your repertoire or not. This will become the one you choose in the pop-up window.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . the import of a huge CD can take some time as CPT is at the moment not using a true Database in the background. This is going to change with the next major version 4 of CPT. 4. At the same time it slows down the process of course. Furthermore you can use it to import typical Chess CD's which cover a whole opening etc. You can use it to import your Chessbase or Chess Assistant repertoire.12 Import PGN-file into The import function of CPT is your door to the big world of chess games from other sources. However.11 Merge with… In case you want to merge two sub-repertoires you can simple use this function. Only this time expensive extra-work while importing ensures the consistent of the data as CPT stores any position only once. .all rights reserved 33 4. However. In this case it might be better to combine them (for example the Accelerated Dragon and the "real" Dragon). This is very useful if you for example have two sub-repertoires which transpose frequently. The result will be one sub-repertoire with all moves and positions of both sub-repertoires. After the merging process the current sub-repertoire will be deleted (physically too!).
If you only want to import the first X moves of the PGN file you have to unselect "all" and then pick the number of half-moves you want to import. Probably more important will be this function if you want to use your repertoire for specific tasks in other programs like Chess Assistant or Chessbase.2. You can also skip variations in the PGN file or even use the game result to automatically set the position evaluation after the last move. it only picks really unique moves and positions. New Sub-Repertoire You can import into a yet to define sub-repertoire with this option. This can become very useful in combination with the function backsolving/min-max-calculation (see 4. A variation is defined by unique line in your subrepertoire where unique means that at least one move is different. 4.13 Export PGN The time you invest into your repertoire with CPT will be never lost even if you decide to stop using the program one day (only theoretical speaking of course).18). If you choose to export the whole sub-repertoire as just one game you will see many variations in this exported one game as each candidate move – except the first one – is creating a new (sub-)variation which can become a little bit difficult to read later in a game database. Therefore CPT let you easily export your repertoire and offers several options.2. As mentioned before the import file will be merged with the current sub-repertoire and thus no double entries can be created accidently.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . but as game databases don't offer a better way to handle this information it might be the way you want to go. Thus you will find many games in the exported PGN file. A little example: If you have a test sub-repertoire consisting just of 4 candidate moves for . Current Sub-Repertoire In this case you are going to import into the current sub-repertoire. Most of the options speak for themselves except the first one.all rights reserved 34 The import offers several options. The other option is to let CPT create one game per variation.
Then you analyse it with a specialised program which will add a centipawn based evaluation to each position and optional suggests a line to continue from the position on. There is one little important detail to know.2. In this case CPT has to convert the evaluation always into whites points of view.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 .2. 4.14 Import EPD This function is very powerful in conjunction with the export and Backsolving/Min-Max-Calculation if you own a chess program which can analyse EPD files like Chess Assistant.all rights reserved 35 white for the start position this would create 4 games. Several parameters give you a lot of freedom. If you add 2 different replies to one of the white candidate moves it would lead to 3 (the 3 candidate moves without black reply) + 2 (the one white candidate move with two black replies) = 5 games. Now the options let you decide whether you only want to update the computer evaluation of the existing positions in your sub-repertoire or even add suggested candidate moves. You can import EPD files and the evaluations of the provided positions into your sub-repertoire easily. You can even add not existing positions. Usually you would first export your leaf nodes of your sub-repertoire as an EPD file. The options let you either only export leaf nodes if you want to later use the analysed positions for min-max-calculation or you can export all positions. .15 Export EPD The idea of the export is already covered in the Import EPD section above. EPD positions are usually evaluated from the point of view what colour has to move. After you imported a EPD file you can use Backsolving/Min-Max-Calculation with the option "based on computer evaluation" and there you are. If you are not interested in the min-max-calculation this might be your preferred option as each position can be analysed and not just the final positions. 4. having a fully min-max-calculated sub-repertoire. These functions can become extremely useful and powerful for your daily work with CPT.
If you already checked / trained all "missed move positions" or "new positions" you can easily remove this marking without having to do it for each position manually.and Qg6 to =.17 Reset all Training Scores If you ever have the feeling to start your training from the beginning again or you got your repertoire from someone else (legally I hope) you might want to reset all training scores at once.16 Remove Marks for This is a very handy function if you want to remove a specific type of marking for all positions.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . This means that the current position is already +as you can get into a variation which is evaluated as +-. This is possible too. 4. In case all leaf nodes have an evaluation you will receive a fully evaluated repertoire (every position will have an evaluation) even though you only entered this information for the leaf nodes (or you used the EPD import/export function!). However.2. it can be very useful though. In some specific scenarios you might want to set all of your training scores to 100 percent. You can use this function for doing so. In general min-max-calculation works as follows: Let's say there exist two moves for a position: Ne4 and Qg6. Now you know that Ne4 leads to a position +.2.18 Backsolving / Min-Max-Calculation About this function exists already more myth than it does deserve. CPT offers a function to jump to any leaf node which has not yet . From a programmers point of view it is probably one of the most easiest function of the whole application (and the least code lines with about 20 too).2.all rights reserved 36 4. 4. The whole process is recursive and CPT starts with your leaf nodes that means all end positions of your repertoire where no further candidate moves exist are checked first and then going backwards through all variations up to the start position. The whole trick is now that CPT makes this decision for you and goes through your whole sub-repertoire backwards and while doing so it will update the position evaluations accordingly to the best possible result the side to move can achieve.
It's opening a whole new world for CPT as it makes it a comprehensive tool not only for the opening. In order to get really back to the root of your repertoire you have to use the button Restart. .Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . you can even create chess puzzles and train them later (or upload to the CPT community or send it to some friends/your pupils). not the start position. only your imagination is the limit. However. if you navigate backwards to the beginning through your move list you will always get back to the position where you jumped to before. but it will also import this key information if you have some good PGN files already.3 Position There is one thing you have to know to avoid any confusion: Whenever you jump to a position the move list will be deleted. 4. Any following move you make will be added as usual.3. Use the option to run the min-max-calculation based on computer evaluation if you imported an EPD file or used this field rather than the informator symbols. You can also enter typical rookendings etc. Again.all rights reserved 37 any evaluation (check the submenu of positions and there "Goto Previous/Next Position…"). CPT just doesn't know what the correct move order is to get to this position (if any exists). This means.1 Edit Position This option will let you enter new positions like key-middle or endgame positions. Once these key positions have been entered you can add candidate moves as usual. 4.
You can drag & drop any piece from the right side onto the board. moves which have a reference to a no longer existing position).2 Delete This action will delete the current position and all candidate moves for this position.all rights reserved 38 The position editor is very easy to use. There are some actions possible only based on positions with names. Once you are done you have to click on OK to finally accept this new position and to save it into the database. You can find it in the position list. this is only possible if no move is leading to this position and no candidate move exists for this position. These are go to next/previous position with name and the training mode. within the board or remove it from the board by dropping the piece outside the board.and endgame positions or chess puzzles. even not by accident. However. You can for example only train positions with names and then the whole variation. In CPT it's not possible to have the same position twice in the database. That's the perfect training mode to practice middle.3. You can also cancel the editmode and no changes will be made to the database.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 .e. In case you create one which just by chance exists already. nothing will happen. Every created position is by default labelled as "new position". Otherwise there is a chance that you create a non-consistent entry for the database (i. New position This will create a totally new position and save it to the database once you confirm it. 4. In case that a follow-up . At the same time it will delete all follow-up positions and candidate moves which only exist because of the current position (the current position is directly or indirectly leading to that position via moves of your repertoire). Current position If you made a mistake while entering a position this option gives you the opportunity to correct it.
Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 .3 Previous Branch Jumps to the previous position where more than one candidate move exists. d4 dxc4 if you delete again the same position from our first example (Black just played d5 in the same move order of the first example!). The move d5 will be deleted too. Let's assume you have the following moves in your database: 1. it won't be deleted. So this function just ensures that you still have a consistent database where all positions and candidate moves are valid and reachable. 2. 4.3.all rights reserved 39 position is reachable by an independent move order of your database too (e. 2. in this case dxc4 would not be deleted. but in reality just unleashed a deleted line. In Bookup this is not the case and while this is a positive thing if you want to get back the line one day it has several disadvantages by creating "uncandidate moves" which make it impossible to implement some of the more sophisticated training options CPT has to offer. Beside that it becomes quickly confusing if you enter new moves which all of the suddenly give the impression they are transposing into a known line. Now let's say we have the same moves as above and additionally these moves too: 1. because it is leading to the position which we want to delete! At the end only the move d4 is left. c4 – d5. because another move order is leading to this position too! For Bookup-Users: It's important to know that really all follow-up positions and moves are deleted which are depended indirectly or directly by the position to be deleted. c4 dxc4 if you delete the position where Black just played d5 the positions of c4 and dxc4 will be deleted as well as the candidate moves themselves. This is a very helpful function if you want to go through all variations systematically! Don't forget the shortcut F1. not depending on the position you are going to delete).g. Two little examples to explain this a little bit more. 4.3. This is a very helpful function if you want to go through all variations systematically! Don't forget the shortcut F2. . d4 – d5.4 Next Branch Jumps to the next position where more than one candidate move exists.
5 Goto Previous / Next Position In CPT you can mark positions in many ways and later you can use this marking to jump to those positions quickly. Unclear Jumps to the previous / next position which is marked as Unclear. .1. Leaf Node Jumps to the previous / next leaf node / end position which means that this position has no candidate moves. New Position Jumps to the previous / next position which is marked as New Position. ToDo Jumps to the previous / next position which is marked as ToDo. Missed Move Position Jumps to the previous / next position which is marked as Missed Move Position (see 4.3.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . With Label Jumps to the previous / next position which has a label. Leaf Node w/o Eval Jumps to the previous / next leaf node / end position which has no evaluation.6. There are some other specific types of positions which you can also easily access by using this function.all rights reserved 40 4. Critical Jumps to the previous / next position which is marked as Critical.3 Mark Positions of Missed Moves for more details).
3.6 Copy to Clipboard You can copy the current position in the popular FEN format to the clipboard and then paste it into another chess software program.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . This feature is also helpful if you want to discuss certain positions with other people in newsgroups etc. 4. So the colour you want to study is always at the bottom. you can temporary switch the side. 4.7 Paste from Clipboard This function allows you to paste a position from the clipboard which you may have from another chess program.3.3.10 Take a Snapshot You can take a snapshot of the current chessboard at any time and then copy it into another program to save it on disk. The image is copied to the clipboard.9 Switch Side In Chess Position Trainer you actually don't have the option to decide whether you want to have the Black pieces at the top or bottom of the board. At the same time it will be labelled as "new position". .3. This makes sense if you for example changed the order of the candidate moves. However. 4.3. Otherwise you will be asked if you want to create this new position and save it into your database. It's done automatically based on your sub-repertoire colour. include it into a report or edit the image. At the moment it only accepts the popular FEN standard as input.8 Reset Training Score Using this function will reset the training score for the current position to zero again (and only this position).all rights reserved 41 4. If the position already exists the program will jump to the position right away. 4.
2 Forward You will advance by the selected candidate move in your candidate move list. The delete pattern is similar to the one of positions.6 Candidate Moves List.5 Delete This will delete the candidate move and all positions which depend on this move only.2 Delete Positions (especially Bookup users!). . 4.3.4. 4. For further information have a look at Move List 5.5 or 5. 4.3 Up This will change the order of your candidate moves.4 Down This will change the order of your candidate moves.4.4 Move Beside the menu items explained in this section there are more functions available to manipulate moves if you right click on the candidate move list and there on a specific move or right click on a move in your move list. The currently selected one will switch the position with the one above (if any exists).4.1 Backward You will just go to the previous move of your move list if any exists.4.4. 4.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 .all rights reserved 42 4. So please have a look at 4. 4. The currently selected one will switch the position with the one below (if any exists).
5 Training-Center The training center of CPT is the true gem of this chess software. Train your worst positions (in this case CPT will always jump to your worst position regardless of the concrete line).6 Copy Moves to Clipboard You can copy the move notation of your whole move list into the clipboard and paste it into for example an email. but your personal repertoire. This feature is also helpful if you want to discuss certain lines with other people in newsgroups etc. Unlike specialized visualization software you are not training any lines and patterns. • Sound support making the training session fun and educative. only hiding certain pieces or areas).all rights reserved 43 4.4. • • • Train only a specific line.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . word processor etc.g. Helpful visual effects to let you learn from your mistakes faster. • • Play with time limit to challenge yourself a little bit more. A few highlights: • The idea of the whole training center is based on the time-proven flash-card concept you might already know from learning a foreign language: CPT will always test you in your worst line or position based on the training settings and training scores. . 4. If you teach pupils you will be surprised how addictive these little sounds will become in combination with the repertoire training score. Train your worst line (based on your training scores of the past). The training module is unmatched by any other chess software as CPT offers more than 70 parameters of which most of them can be combined freely leading to almost infinite options. • Play blindfolded and become the next Morozevitsch! A great option to train your visualization skills. You have plenty of options to configure the blindfold mode to your liking (e.
5. Based on these results it is using an algorithm to calculate the worst position or whole line of your repertoire. It is more important to start with studying at all. Instead of randomly and thus inefficiently test you in positions it will save for each position how good you know it already. However.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . You will automatically continue your journey till you have studied all three parts. but no doubt spending time on chess theory is always well invested no matter which part of the game it is. This sounds like a challenging task and too promising? Don't worry. . Having said that there is a little bit more to say about openings and just learning the ideas. Thus you are shown just the position without having any idea which move ordered lead to the position. CPT is doing all the homework for you in the background and all you have to do is train your repertoire. don't let other people fool you that you only need to memorize openings once you have a rating above 2200 ELO or that memorizing is something stupid for people who lack any chess skill. Each part of the game can gain you points. Let's see what the idea behind this is. Before CPT was released chess software would test you randomly in your repertoire. If you check opening books you will see that there exists no position for the first 15 and more moves where not time proven theory exists which tells you whether the move was good or bad. It is possible to reach a performance >2100 without having read any book. CPT is proud to have invented the flash-card concept to the chess software market. As CPT is making the process of memorizing much faster than it was possible in the past you will spend even much less time on openings than you will do on theory research and studying of the other parts of the game. Thus CPT will make your learning process much more efficient when it was possible before as you no longer have to play stubbornly the same lines again and again even though you know them already pretty well while other lines are not tested at all. To study openings is no worse or better than studying tactics or end-games. You just have to recognize the position and isn't exactly this what chess teachers tell you? You have to recognize positions and patterns.1 The idea of using the flash-card concept for a chess program The reason why CPT has been developed and for sure the most important concept of CPT is the incorporated flash-card concept. If you want to learn the ideas behind an opening you still need other sources like (e)books. Another point is that CPT let you train your worst positions without playing whole variations. Now how do you want to find all these moves over the board just knowing the ideas? For sure it is no disadvantage to know the right move first before you remember the idea behind it. If you do both even better. You will quickly recognize that never before you have learned a repertoire as fast as you do with CPT and the best of all: It is even fun to do so! One note about memorizing move orders: Of course the training center is not teaching you for example an opening.all rights reserved 44 4.
5.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . The better you know a sub-repertoire the more challenging will become the settings CPT is choosing for you thus even experienced users might discover new and "funny" training scenarios when they use the wizard.all rights reserved 45 4. . The wizard is very easy to use and will automatically find good training settings for the selected sub-repertoire and your current knowledge. Just follow each step to let CPT configure the training parameters for you. If you don't want to see the training wizard each time you go to the training center just uncheck "Show wizard always on training center opened" and press "Cancel".2 Training Wizard A very unique feature of CPT which is not only aimed at new users. If you finish the wizard the training session will start automatically.
To the left side you will see the moves played and to the right side the comment for the current position if exists. You have to stop it if you want to close the training-center or change the settings again.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 .5. the last played move. .all rights reserved 46 4. At any time you can mark the current position as "ToDo" to check it after finishing the training session. time left for the next move and the average time you need to find the right candidate move. The previously introduced training wizard can be opened from here too. These windows can be removed in the training option.3 Main Window The main window offers at the bottom (if you didn't change the factory settings) some info about the current position. Open the option panel to find plenty of parameters to tweak. Once you found your preferred settings you have to click on "Play" to start the training. The option panel has quite detailed info about each parameter thus we are now only having a rough overview.
4 Little walkthrough In general the training mode works as following: You decide the type of positions you want to train and CPT will show you for the selection you made the worst 10 positions of the current sub-repertoire. That's why CPT knows what your worst 10 positions are.1 My games. For further information about this very useful feature have a look at 4.6. That means that each position has a training score based on the results of previous training results (all new positions have a training score of zero).all rights reserved 47 It's recommended to take a little bit time and play around with all these options to get a feeling for them and figuring out which one fits your training style the best.5. So the order of your candidate moves is very important for the training mode unless you accept all "best moves" in the training settings! The training positions will be shown without any hint for the candidate move. You can also update the training scores by running your played games against your repertoire. 4.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . If you don't play the candidate move your training score for this specific position is going down otherwise it's going up by 10%. . Now we are having a look at the two most important tabs of the options. For each position you will have to find the pre-defined first ranked candidate move.
Only positions with names: The perfect choice if you want to study key positions.3 Mark Positions of Missed Moves.6. Only positions of missed candidate moves: This option let you train exactly only those positions which have been marked previously described under 4. Only positions which have a label are considered. below). below). Always from start: You will always start from the beginning. Again.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . Only current line: A very helpful training mode if you only want to train the line which you just played through (the moves of your move list).1. The current position is the one which you checked last in the main window. It will determine the general framework of the training mode and the positions which are considered.all rights reserved 48 Type of selection of training positions That's first parameter which you have to choose. In this way you can really focus on critical lines. Continuation . Always from current position: In this case you will always start from the current sub-repertoire position your training session. Jump to worst position always: Really any position of your sub-repertoire will be considered for the training mode. this makes only sense in combination with the option Whole variation (s. This makes only sense in the combination with the option Whole variation (s. A very efficient way to quickly study those positions which you missed during the last blitz session for example.
firstname.lastname@example.com Close Training This will close the training-center and brings you back to the normal input mode of CPT.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 .all rights reserved 49 After you have selected the type of positions you want to train. At the end of the line it will pick up again just any (actually worst) position based on your updated training scores and you will play this line till the end and so on. After you make a move the program will choose for the opponent the candidate move (if more than one exists) which leads to the position with the worst training score. If you are not overwhelmed by the options yet and can dream of a training mode which is not covered by the options. Before you ask: A future version might extend this idea by doing the shuffle over all sub-repertoires at the same time. We are not at the end of the training mode yet! If you decide to play always the rest of the line which is presented you can even choose to be asked to play this line over and over again till you played it without making any mistake for as many times as you say. you have now to decide whether you want to train these positions randomly or if you want to play after each presented position the rest of the whole line too. but after the program shows you one you want to play the whole line (from the current position on).com 4. There exist many more options which let CPT train you in your repertoire the way YOU want. You will learn your lines as fast as never before. You could train just any (actually worst) position . That's shuffling at it's best. please don't hesitate to send me an email right away to: stefan. The repertoire scores will be updated. Think about how flexible this option makes the training mode in combination with the option before. Hence. Note: Playing a whole variation is implemented in a quite smart way. . If you know your repertoire pretty well you might go for the hardcore variation: Any position with a random sequence. again you are focussing on your weaknesses! If there are two worst positions it will pick the move which has the oldest training date.5.
Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 - all rights reserved
4.6 Extras
4.6.1 My games
That's probably one of the most powerful features which CPT offers. The typical situation: You play several games over the internet or at a tournament. How can you find out what went wrong? Yes, you can use a chess engine let it analyse it and finally let it show you what it would have played different. But if you entered already your whole repertoire, I bet you would like to know where you or your opponent played a so called "novelty". That is, a move not covered by your repertoire. Your chess engine will show you moves which it questions and you played absolutely by intention, because they are part of your repertoire. Of course, from time to time you have to check your lines again, but more straight forward is a different approach which CPT follows.
220.127.116.11 Show Novelties With CPT you can choose a PGN file which contains your played games (it doesn't matter whether the source is ICC, playchess or what ever). Once you determined this file and entered your name you can just click on Show Novelties (otherwise the program will ask you to enter this information). A new window will open showing you all games of the PGN file.
Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 - all rights reserved
It will show you only those games which match your entered name in a list with some further information. If you click on any game the program will show you immediately the novelty played in this game. At the same time it will show the last position of your sub-repertoire before the novelty is played in the main window. The magic happens in the background. CPT checks all sub-repertoires and finds the one which covers the game the best automatically. While it is checking the game it saves the information where you or your opponent didn't play a candidate move for any position. In the case of your opponent he has only to play any candidate move for a specific position, but in your case you always have to play the first ranked one. The first deviation will be shown. So the meaning of a novelty is different depending on who deviated first. If your opponent deviated first it simple means that you didn't consider this move yet. Maybe, because it's obviously a bad one or you really didn't expect it. On the other hand, if you didn't play a candidate move you made a mistake, according to the candidate concept and the repertoire which you entered. There is one exception: there is no candidate move at all for example because it's move number 20 or so and you are not interested in covering the variation for that long. Play around with this feature and you will soon realize that you are no longer throwing away useful information for example from internet blitz games, because you are too lazy to check the last 20 games manually. A last note: You can check all games from which you want to mark the novelty position in your repertoire as "ToDo". Just check the game in the game list and then click on "Accept" in the toolbar. Later you can jump to all positions which are marked as "ToDo".
Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 - all rights reserved 188.8.131.52 Update Training Scores
The idea behind this feature is similar to the concept described before. In this case you will update your subrepertoires training scores depending on the moves you played. Again the program finds out which subrepertoire fits the game the best and will increase the training score for each position where you played the candidate move and decrease where you played not the candidate move. It's like CPT was watching your games in training mode. In case you make some tests between the novelty and the update function and wonder if the results are consistent, here are some additional information: The novelty mode shows you where you or your opponent played a move not covered by your repertoire. However, it is of course possible that after some moves you transpose back to a position of your repertoire. While the novelty mode ignores this fact the update mode will check all positions! Another point: CPT only accepts your first ranked candidate move or moves marked as "best move" in the candidate move window (just click on the first column to mark or unmark a move as "best move"). If you played a candidate move which is your second choice, but not marked as "best move" CPT considers the move as wrong for this function! Another point: The update mode only cares for your moves, the novelty mode checks both sides. Thus only positions are affected where you have been the first player who deviated from your repertoire.
188.8.131.52 Mark Positions of Missed Moves This is a very useful function in conjunction with the training centre and the possibility to jump to positions of certain types. When you call this function CPT will automatically mark each position as "Missed Candidate Move" where you have been the first one who deviated from your repertoire. As mentioned before only first ranked and "best moves" are considered to be correct. Additionally to marking these positions CPT will also add a comment.
Please see the corresponding section.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 .6. The Archive File is used for Extras/My Games/Move Games to Archive. Therefore you have the option to move all checked games with one click into an archive file.6. Check these sections for further details. We are going to have a look at each tab of the option panel. There is a specific training parameter which let you train only those positions where you missed your preferred candidate move. 4.all rights reserved 53 This will make it very easy to check those positions where you missed your preferred candidate move as you can jump to positions of the type "missed candidate move" (check the submenu "position") and you can see in which game you missed the move and what you actually played instead of the correct move. PGN (Watch File etc.) The Watch file is used for all functions belonging to "Extras/My Games/…". But there is more to say about this function.1. .2 Options CPT offers many options to configure CPT the way you like.4 Move Games to Archive Finally you probably don't want to update your training scores based on the same games over and over again. It can't get easier than that to really focus on your weaknesses! 4.
. Next you can change the rendering style to change the overall appearance of CPT.com/helpcenter/b2primer/menu. Play a little bit around with the colours to find your perfect settings. candidate move list. Afterwards you set your watch file to exactly this destination! For further information check this page: http://www. Usually CPT is using the Figurine font whenever it makes sense (e.all rights reserved 54 The Player Name is also used in the same context mentioned above. Note to ICC players: If you want to log your ICC games automatically in one PGN file and you use BlitzIn 2 you have to check the menu item Game/Log my Games. In case you are using Windows 98 you might encounter a background colour problem. It will automatically save your games in the BlitzIn 2 folder with the name 'handle. You can use a wildcard represented by the symbol "*". It will filter all games by this name (no matter whether Black or White matches the name). In this case you can use the specific setting provided here. but if you prefer to use a different font or size you can change it here.g. Font) You can change the colours for the chessboard as you like. position tree).Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 .html#game Interface (Chessboard.pgn'.chessclub.
You can precisely decide which moves you want to let CPT auto-highlight. Play a little bit around with it to get a better feeling for these very helpful options. .Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . Here you control the frequency for the update check as well as whether the check should include beta versions or not. CPT can auto-highlight certain type of moves to make it easier for you to navigate through your repertoire. which colours to use for this and what width the used arrows should have. Updates CPT can auto-check for new version of CPT.all rights reserved Highlighting 55 Here you have totally control of some quite useful features.
Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . You can get for example Crafty for free at many places including the home page of CPT. You can deactivated and reactivate the engine easily by using the proper submenu item or toolbar item. If you don't like to have any sound played you can turn it off here. While the engine is active you might experience some slowdown depending on your system. You can change the way engine output is displayed and you can activate the engine here. Chess Engine The last tab let you assign a chess engine.all rights reserved Sound 56 The program is using sound for normal move navigation in the main program as well as for training. . Once activated CPT will always use the engine to analysis the current position.
7 Help Here you can find out more about CPT.all rights reserved 57 4.g.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . 4. After you changed the language you have to close the program and open it again to let the changes take effect. If you encounter any problems with CPT or you would like to see a new feature in the next version please feel free to send an e-mail to support: stefan.xmi" and "ini. There is another way in case you removed the menu bar and thus can't access this function anymore.chesspositiontrainer.6 Language Currently English and German are supported.6. Start CPT again. Crafty and Spike can be found for example on www. read the online-help or check for the latest version of CPT. You can configure the engine (output) in the options. 4. There is one window only dedicated to the output of the engine's analysis.6.6.xsi" in your application folder.com and downloaded for free. 4. 4.4 Data Integrity Check You need to use this function if you are trying to use a repertoire based on an older version of firstname.lastname@example.com Reset Layout In case you want to get back the factory settings you have to choose this menu item.com . If no engine has been assigned yet you are prompted to do so. Crafty).3 Xboard Engine By clicking on this submenu item you are activating the assigned xboard engine (e. Exit CPT and delete the files "ini. Afterwards you need to immediately exit CPT and start it again or you will have no effect.6. support this freeware project.
Beside that you can mark positions to get back to them quickly (check the menu position). 5. 5.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . You can simple click on an entry to jump to that position. All positions with a label are displayed in the position list (s.1 Position Data The position window let you add assessments and a label.2 Position List Positions for which you entered a label are shown in this list. next section). Later you can use Position/Goto next/ToDo to get back quickly to this position.all rights reserved 58 5 Windows Description Chess Position Trainer allows you to arrange you all windows as you like and in case you closed a window by accident you can use re-open it with these menu-items. . For example if you haven't enter a line completely you can mark it as "not complete yet".
e.all rights reserved 59 5. but you can also start to expand the nodes manually.3 Position Tree The position tree list is just another way to navigate through your repertoire. While it's calculating the tree you can continue to do other things. i. 5.4 Position Comment You can enter comments for each position. It's a database heavy action and will only run if you click on Update. If you click on any move you will jump to it in the main window.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . . Black moves indicate that it is a move of the opposite color. Each node where it is your candidate move a color and a percentage rate reflects your score for that position. how good you know this candidate move for the corresponding position.
5 Move List Clicking on an entry in the move list will bring you to the corresponding position. 5. delete the move or change the order of the candidate moves. This will help you to get to your worst positions more easily. The move list is automatically updated while you navigate through your repertoire.all rights reserved 60 5. If you wondered about the bars for each candidate move: They show you the training score for the upcoming position if you make choose this candidate move.6 Candidate Moves List If you right click on a candidate move you get a context menu which let you easily make an assessment. If you doubleclick on the item in the comment column you can edit a comment for this move. .Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . You can edit the assessment for a move easily within the move list window.
8 Sub-Repertoire List The sub-repertoire list shows you all sub-repertoires of your repertoire. 5.7 Repertoire Score The repertoire knowledge reflects the average training score of all positions where you have to move and a candidate move exists.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . Thus it has steps of 10% for each correct or incorrect answer. The position score reflects your score of the last 10 times during the training mode.9 Xboard Engine . 5. This way you can re-open sub-repertoires which you previously closed. You can click on a sub-repertoire to activate it in the main window.all rights reserved 61 5.
Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . 62 .all rights reserved If engine analysis is activated you can see here the current lines which the engine already calculated.
You can have floating windows. At the end CPT will automatically save the layout for the next session. As one screenshot says more than thousand words: .all rights reserved 63 6 Tips for the interface Make sure that you really take advantage of the flexible interface which CPT offers. docking windows or collapse a window (and of course you can close it). You can drag&drop almost any window like you wish.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 .
org The most important person for this project was my girlfriend.co. der Kandidatenliste hinzufügen. So he did a lot of "background" work which enabled me to implement the features which I had in mind on top of it. the general PGN import and chess engine support.uk/net/ The next very important control for Chess Position Trainer is without any doubt the list view: . Some of the most typical shortcuts are F1 and F2 to get quickly to the previous/next branch.divil.co.Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 . editing etc.cafechess.uk/net/ SandDock Copyright (c) 2004 by Tim Dawson. An especially useful shortcut is the shift-key while entering a move. sondern nur den Zug (sowie die entstehende Stellung) Ihrem Sub-Repertoire bzw. but will just add the move (and corresponding position) to your sub-repertoire as well as to your candidate move list. A very efficient method to quickly enter all reasonable candidate moves for a position.all rights reserved 64 7 Shortcuts Check the menus and their short cuts.divil. Ein besonders nützliches Tastatur-Kürzel ist die Umstelltaste während der Zugeingabe. validation. Her patient and understanding that I'm not only playing chess a lot. If you keep pressed the shift-key while you are making a move CPT won't navigate to the next position. Without them this program would never look as professional as it does and it would have taken much more time to develop it. Checkout his homepage: http://www. He is the guy who is in charge of the chess board itself (navigation. You also don't want to miss the arrows on your keyboard which let you navigate through your repertoire and candidate moves. http://www. Up and down will help you to choose between the candidate moves for one position while the right and left arrow let you move forwards or backwards. http://www. SandBar Copyright (c) 2004 by Tim Dawson.). Tim Dawson is the man who developed some of the best user-controls I ever used in my projects: All the windows dockings and menu stuff are based on his brilliant components. but some will certainly make CPT even more efficient for you to use! 8 Credits This project would never have been possible without Gregory Prentice. It's not important to know all shortcuts. während Sie einen Zug ziehen und CPT wird nicht zur nächsten Stellung direkt gehen. Halten Sie die Umstelltaste gedrückt. but now even worse develop a chess tool gave me the energy to create this tool! I have to thank several developers of controls which have been used without charge in Chess Position Trainer.
but not least: ColorProgressBar .all rights reserved Glacial Listview . http://www.Copyright Glacial Components Software 2004.(c) 2004 by Alan Zhao & 'SeveredCross' .Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2004 – 2006 .com 65 Last.glacialcomponents.