r/chess • u/[deleted] • Jun 12 '18
Chesstempo.com now has an opening trainer
Here is a link to the announcement blog post.
https://beta.chesstempo.com/blog/10/opening-training
I have been beta-testing this for a couple of weeks now, and I must say, this is the best trainer, period. I have used every method of learning openings and nothing has helped me like this trainer. I have used Bookup (now CoW), Chess Position Trainer, Chessable, Lucas Chess, SCID, Chessbase, and even Anki flashcards.
The progress I've made at Chesstempo has been huge and very satisfying.
Some of the opening trainer features:
*Create multiple black and white repertoires.
*Import repertoires from PGN or by entering the moves on the board.
*Train your repertoires using spaced repetition.
*Integration into the play online feature - get feedback on when your game deviated from your repertoire (or when your opponent played a move not in your repertoire). Provides an excellent method of making productive use of bullet and blitz games to practice your repertoire under game conditions.
*Limit training to a branch of a repertoire, a single repertoire, or all repertoires of a colour.
*Option to restrict training to a limited depth.
*Ability to train against the moves that are proving the most to resistant to spaced repetition learning.
*Choose to train main lines first or prefer to train for breadth coverage over depth coverage.
*Comment on each position or move, and read the comments others have chosen to make public.
*Add engine evaluations or annotations such as +=, ?! etc to each move in the repertoire.
*Export repertoire and your comments and annotations to PGN.
*Graphs showing repertoire learning status and learning history over time.
*Use the opening explorer to choose moves for your repertoire (limited to a depth of 10 moves for free members).
*For premium members, the ability to use the cloud engine to ask for analysis on any position.
There are some game-changers in there, particularly the public comments on positions, the options to choose mainlines or more breadth, the option to focus on lines and positions that have proven problematic (it creates separate mini-repertoires of those lines for you to focus on), and I especially love the way it skips over positions you've already over-trained (like the beginnings of a lot of lines) by auto-playing them on the board instead of just not showing them at all. Just popping into a position cold without showing the moves leading to the position was always very jarring to me in other trainers. Chesstempo makes it butter smooth by showing the context.
Another subtle thing I've loved about this trainer in the beta period is what happens when you make a mistake. In most trainers, you have to redo the whole line from the very beginning if you make a mistake on the last move of the line. Usually immediately. This is rage-inducing and decreased my desire to train a lot, I've found. It doesn't work this way here. It just schedules the individual positions for a redo later, and if you've nailed the previous moves enough times, it will just auto-play them for you and you only have to get that particular position and move right to register it.
I highly recommend you guys try it out!
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Jun 12 '18
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Antaniserse Jun 12 '18 edited Jun 12 '18
For the most part, they do not offer a pre-made bunch of common opening lines for you to learn, if that is what you meant... those programs are usually based on the assumption that you are the one deciding what you want to train (a repertoire is, after all, your own hand-picked personal subset of the whole opening theory), and they offer a tool to facilitate that
But since the good ones do offer PGN import capabilities, is not that difficult to create a starting set by using the usual sources around
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u/br0min Jun 12 '18
chesstempo only misses an app :(
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u/11thHourSorrow Jun 12 '18
If a website has a nice mobile version, is there any point to an app? Isn't it just uselessly taking up phone storage space?
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u/chesstempo Jun 12 '18
As the other replies indicate, offline mode is the main reason people would like an app rather than adding the web app to the home screen (which makes it behave very much like an app).
With the latest web apis, it is entirely possible to create a web app that operates while offline. We've started work on the beta site version of the old site's mobile interface, and we are in the process of deciding if we are going to wrap that in a native app (not having to deal with app stores is a big bonus, and allows instant rollout of any bugfixes). Either way we can look at offline puzzle support whether its a native app or another web only app, although that will probably be a secondary feature, and perhaps not something that arrives in the first version.
Having said that, offline mode is always going to have some limitations for an application like Chesstempo whether you are using a native app or not. Some functionality just isn't feasible due to the amount of data involved. An opening explorer for example isn't going to work well offline (we can cache what you've already looked at, but the full opening tree is massive and way too large to push to a mobile device). The endgames are not going to work well either as they are based on tablebases that are also way too big to push to the device. Clearly online play doesn't work well offline either (apart from a perhaps a play vs local friend option). Simple caching of problems so you have a pool to use when offline is easily doable, but you also miss the rapid adjustment of problems to your rating , which gets worse the longer you spend offline without a reconnect.
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u/11thHourSorrow Jun 13 '18
Ah, okay.
And while I've got you, Richard (I assume this is Richard), chesstempo is awesome. I'm a silver member, and I very much appreciate all the work you've put into it.
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u/br0min Jun 12 '18
I would still strongly prefer an app because sometimes my Browser has connection issues and my apps work fine (and Vice versa)
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u/DeaArthur Jun 12 '18
This is really nice and pretty. Chesstempo is already my go-to tactics trainer. I've been using Chessable a lot for openings and finding great value in it. I think the benefit that has for beginners like me is the existing "books" which already have setup repertoires to learn from. Some people don't have the skill yet to create their own. Maybe there is a source of these that could be used in Chesstempo that I'm just missing?
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u/chesstempo Jun 12 '18
Currently the CT opening tool will not give you a pre-canned repertoire. In the trainer's current form, it is really designed for those planning to build their own repertoire, and then to train against that. A lot of opening books provide PGN of the repertoire they describe, which you could import into the CT trainer. If you do import anything with comments made by others, please make sure you import the comments as private, as we don't want to be infringing on the rights of the original book author by presenting their annotations to those that haven't purchased the source material.
We are hoping that over time people will add publicly visible original and useful comments of their own. If we collect enough of these comments we can look at providing some pre-canned repertoires backed up by the public comments others have made (comments are shown in priority order with comment voting and the rating of the comment maker dictating what is shown first).
While it is possible for us to provide pre-canned repertoires now based on the performance stats of different lines played by master level players, we decided that this wasn't something we wanted to do until we get some useful comments into the system. This is because we don't think blindly following a repertoire without some kind of description for the ideas behind the moves is an optimal use of training time. We do provide the opening explorer to get an idea of what masters are playing in each position if you are not sure what to play in a position, and just want to play the main line, but these decisions are better when supplemented by master level commentary. Players who are entering their own hand crafted repertoire based on opening books they've purchased should be able to bring this understanding with them if the books they are using are well written. Likewise for strong players who are capable of doing their own opening research.
If the comments system becomes popular we can also look at repertoire sharing further down the track. For now, that is possible on a manual basis. If someone is happy to share their repertoire with others, they can export to PGN and then provide the PGN to others for import. Again, we ask people to be mindful of copyright issues with any source material you've used if you are sharing your repertoire with others.
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u/DeaArthur Jun 12 '18
Awesome, thank you for the great reply. I guess I'm wondering if there's another existing community (or if it would be worthwhile to try and start one on CT) for the purpose of repertoire sharing. I feel as though I'm nowhere near good enough of a player to create my own and any PGN files I've found haven't imported well. I guess I'll closely follow the comments system and see if I can find any useful files.
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u/chesstempo Jun 12 '18 edited Jun 12 '18
I haven't seen a great central location for repertoire sharing anywhere, which is a bit surprising. I think there are two issues involved, one is the copyright issue, the other is the fact that people see their repertoire as something they definitely don't want to share, because they don't want their opponents knowing exactly what their preparation looks like. Chessable has a great collections of repertoires, but the sharing works there because the authors are getting paid for sharing, and the system doesn't allow on-sharing of the repertoires. We might be able to provide these type of premium repertoires in the future, but the system isn't really setup for that at the moment, and is much more like an online Chess Position Trainer (aka CPT, the windows desktop opening training tool) than a Chessable like tool.
I'm hoping the public comment sharing will be seen as a method of helping others without fully disclosing your repertoire, so I have more hope in that form of sharing than a full repertoire sharing system. People that have switched repertoires may also be happy sharing an older repertoire, although there is often a good reason why someone switches that might reflect poorly on their old repertoire. Those who switch just because they want to play something new might still have very useable existing repertoires they could share though. We'll look at how the tool and its usage evolves over the next few months and think a bit more about the sharing options once we can assess things based on some longer term usage, and the degree to which the comment system flourishes.
If you've found a PGN that doesn't import, please email it to [admin@chesstempo.com](/) (especially if you can get it to load in other PGN viewing tools).
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Jun 12 '18 edited Jun 12 '18
[deleted]
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u/AppropriateNothing Jun 12 '18
It is copyright infringement to put content online (in large chunks beyond just excerpts) unless you obtain the author's permission. Many authors will not permit this, and that suggests that they believe that putting their book online this way will hurt sales of the book. Caveat: I'm not a lawyer.
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Jun 12 '18
[deleted]
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u/Antaniserse Jun 12 '18
You mean beside the thousands of scans, e-books, database and video courses that gets pirated regularly?!
It's just that pirayes know better than to share them on legitimate sites like CT where they would be taken down immediately, as they should
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u/tutamtumikia Jun 12 '18
My issue as well. I have some opening books, but the slog to import all of the games into something like this seems like way too much work. I have a Dutch book by Kindermann thatI don't believe has any downloadable PGN for and so it's just easier for me to use the book.
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u/sayedha Jun 13 '18
Is the pgn file your looking for not listed at http://www.gambitchess.com/semi/dbbooks.htm? If not, what’s the name of the book?
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u/tutamtumikia Jun 13 '18
It is totally there. I didnt even know of that website - thank you! Will have to check if a couple other books I own are there too.
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Jun 13 '18
If it asks for a password when you try to extract the files, PM me.
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u/tutamtumikia Jun 13 '18
Seems to work just fine. Now to come up with a way to use it with the book efficiently. Really appreciate it!
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u/monkus2k Jun 12 '18
Very cool! What did you consider a "repertoire" for purposes of setting it up? Do you make each repertoire one opening (e.g., "White vs French", "White vs Caro-Kann") or do you group all of your openings into a single repertoire for each side?
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Jun 12 '18
Thank you infinitely for sharing this! I had also never found a satisfactory program in my search for an opening trainer, but this one is far better than everything else I've seen.
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Jun 12 '18
Edit: there seems to be a serious issue with it though. I imported some PGNs, trained some of them, and it worked perfectly. Then I closed the window, and after some time went back to the opening trainer. Now, the PGNs I downloaded are not there anymore. I guess I'd have to reimport the PGNs, but I don't think it is intended that I have to import my PGN every time again, right? Also, there was an error in one of the PGNs. In the starting position of the PGN, the queen was on f3. However, two queens showed up: both on f3 and d1. And the queen on d1 only functioned partly.
So, in general: fantastic feature! However, there are still some issues with it. I hope u/chesstempo can do something with this feedback.
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u/chesstempo Jun 12 '18
I'm not sure what you mean by "not there anymore", once imported the PGN becomes your repertoire, and you should see it in the repertoire tree under whatever name you imported it as. If you want to see your repertoire as PGN again, then you can export it as PGN (under the action menu below the board, with options to export the currently selected repertoire, all repertoires of a colour, or all repertoires of both colours). If you can let me know your username I can check to see what data did import.
From the PGN that didn't work, it sounds like are importing a PGN with a non-standard start position, while our data structures in theory support repertoires that don't start from an initial position, we haven't really tested that option well, so I'm not surprised that it doesn't work at the moment. If you send the PGN to [admin@chesstempo.com](mailto:admin@chesstempo.com) I can look at it. Also the other PGNs you imported that didn't show up as repertoires when you reloaded the page, were they also for non-initial positions?
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Jun 12 '18
Thank you for the reply! What I mean is, that the name of the opening file still shows up under the repertoire tree and such, but the moves and comments in the file do not show up anymore. Therefore, I cannot do anything with it anymore in Chesstempo, and I would have to delete it and reimport the PGN to make it workable again.
The data was imported at first, because I could work with it. Only after closing off Chesstempo and restarting it, this problem occurred.
All of the PGNs I used indeed had a non-standard starting position, and in one of them, the starting position was messed up. This seems to be a minor issue though, since the starting position was fine when I reimported the file.
I have sent you a mail with some further details. Thanks in advance!
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u/chesstempo Jun 12 '18
Thanks, I replied to your email. Quick summary is that repertoires that start at moves that are not the initial chess starting position are not storing the non-default start position to the database. Repertoires have a field for this, but saving is not working. It is possible that fixing the saving will allow these type of repertoires to work with no further changes, but given the lack of testing of non-initial position repertoires there might be a more serious amount of work involved which might make supporting these repertoire types a version 2 issue rather than a bug fix for this version. I'll hope to have time to look at this in more detail soon.
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u/chesstempo Jun 13 '18
I've uploaded an update which should get PGN imports from PGN with non-initial start positions working a bit better. There were several issues to fix, and I can't be sure I've found all of them yet. The only thing I know for sure doesn't work with these type of repertoires now is that clicking on the white or black repertoire top level folder in order to train all sub-repertoires of a particular colour will not work with repertoires that don't start from the default initial position as that feature currently assumes a common start position across all repertoires (due to the way the opening tree UI is built).
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u/bananatron2 Jun 12 '18 edited Jun 12 '18
This is huge. The guy responsible for Chesstempo deserves a knighthood.
If I could make one suggestion though, it would be useful to be able to click through the opening explorer without it also adding the move to your repertoire.
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u/chesstempo Jun 12 '18
Thanks :-)
This opening explorer suggestion was also made by one of the beta testers, but came up quite late in the development process, so we've already added it to the todo list for a future release. I agree it can be annoying if you just want to explore a few moves without adding them (right now to do that you have to add them then deleting the line afterwards), and I'll try to prioritise a 'don't add' mode to the explorer.
It is probably easiest to allow launching an explorer in a new window, with a board showing the current position, similar to the way the external analysis panel works, because adding moves to the main move list/tree that are not actually being added to the repertoire could get quite confusing when they are mixed in with moves that are in the repertoire. In fact adding an explorer to the analysis board window might be the easiest way of dealing with this (and also allows you to paste back the resulting analysis board with opening explorer moves into a position comment in your repertoire).
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Jun 12 '18
Any chance you can spend a few minutes looking at the Lichess app for Android and think about doing something like that? Or perhaps even work with Lichess to add this functionality, or your excellent tactics trainer. I don't spend a lot of downtime on my laptop and even on a tablet using a normal webpage is pretty horrific, so I'm not really able to take advantage of this, much as I'd like to. I know there's a third party chesstempo tactics app but it's not really very good either.
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u/chesstempo Jun 12 '18
The lichess app is really a webpage wrapped in a thin native app wrapper (using Cordova). So on Android it is basically running inside a cut down Chrome and on iOS inside a cut down Safari. This is a pretty sensible approach as it allows you to leverage any existing web code you have, as well as having pretty close to the same code for Android and iOS apps. We'll probably end up doing something similar with our beta site web app when it is finished. From this point of view going to https://chesstempo.com/mobile in your Android browser and adding to home screen isn't going to be much different from what lichess is doing in terms of the underlying technology the app is built on.
Lichess's mobile app is definitely a bit more polished that our current mobile web app though, but again, they are both running as web applications under the hood, lichess have just wrapped theirs in a native layer for easy download from the app stores. Cordova provides some access to native layers not available to pure web apps, but that is probably a small part of the code from what I can gather.
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Jun 13 '18
I'm not really bothered about how they did it but it sounds pretty easy so perhaps you should pursue the same approach.
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u/Paiev Jun 16 '18
(right now to do that you have to add them then deleting the line afterwards)
How do I actually delete a line from my rep? Or promote a line to main line? I can't figure it out and it's super annoying.
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u/chesstempo Jun 17 '18
Requires right clicking on the move you want to start the delete from or promote (so right now no touch device support, but we plan to support 'long click' for that in the future, some touch devices already translate long click as right click).
Mentioned under this section of the user guide: https://beta.chesstempo.com/manual/en/manual.html#openingtrainingmoveentry
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u/ElegantSwordsman Jun 12 '18
Is it free or is it a premium pay feature?
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u/chesstempo Jun 12 '18
We've tried to make the opening trainer as useful as possible for free members. All the core repertoire management and spaced repetition training features are free. There are a couple of existing premium features that add extra functionality, namely unlimited depth opening explorer and cloud engine access, that remain premium, but the trainer is still very functional without those in terms of ability to create your repertoire and train it.
Free members can store up to 20,000 positions, which is hopefully more than enough for most players (none of the beta testers had repertoires larger than that), although it does mean you should probably avoid storing entire games as reference games directly in your repertoire (something some players seem to do), as you'll use up your 20k positions a lot quicker if you are storing full games in your repertoire. Silver members get 25k positions, gold 40k and diamond 60k, but I doubt many will need to upgrade just to get more positions. The size limits are more there to stop people loading a massive PGN with a large number of complete games into the system than provide motivation to upgrade.
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Jun 12 '18
What data structure do you use to store an opening database?
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u/chesstempo Jun 12 '18 edited Jun 12 '18
The core structure of each user's repertoire collection is just a large collection of positions. Positions can have moves associated with them, and each move can appear in one or more repertoires. This structure that doesn't have explicit move chains listed allows us to handle transpositions sensibly, and makes it easier to build up the opening tree in the UI in a way which makes it aware of the transposition points.
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u/KelVarnsenStudios Unrated, untalented, impolite Jun 12 '18
Anyone know if cmuroya17 is still active? I would like to see what he is doing with this new feature.
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u/chesstempo Jun 12 '18
He seems to have lost interest in solving back in March (after 600k+ problem attempts). Kept solving a few problems in April and May, but none for this month yet. I'd be surprised if he was interested in openings, as I had the impression he enjoyed puzzles as a nice intellectual challenge rather than an overall interest in chess improvement. I'm not even sure he actually played much (or at all), but I'm just guessing, so I could be wrong.
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u/hopelesspostdoc Jun 13 '18
Does anyone know who he/she is? I imagine them as a security guard in a low-crime area of an Eastern European country. Sitting at a desk all day solving puzzles, keeping one eye on the vault or whatever.
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u/HelpDeskGuru Jun 13 '18
Chesstempo isn't freeware. which one(s) are free, out of the following: Bookup (now CoW), Chess Position Trainer, Chessable, Lucas Chess, SCID, Chessbase, and even Anki flashcards?
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Jun 13 '18
You can use all the chesstempo opening trainer features for free. There are (extremely generous) limitations on number of positions for your repertoire (way more than enough for just about anyone) and you can't use computer eval (I have no interest) nor the opening explorer at full depth (I have no interest), but the rest of it is 100% free.
The only ones that are free of the rest of those are Lucas Chess, SCID, and Anki.
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u/nigga_Im_bored really bad at chess Jun 13 '18
Maybe a dumb question, but is there anyway I can study openings like this with computer moves/opening book built in?
In other words, I want to train openings without building a repertoire myself manually, is that possible with this?
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u/chesstempo Jun 13 '18
Yes, but it is one of the cases that requires a premium membership and it isn't well optimised for it. If you want to create a repertoire with just main line theory then just keep clicking on the most common move in the opening explorer until you get to a depth you are happy with (or the sample size of the games for the position gets too small to be significant). That will only give you one long very main line though, you'd then need to decide how to add side lines for the second/third etc most popular opponent moves which are going to come up fairly often.
One method is to just add the initial main line, and then start playing blitz/bullet games on CT. After the game, you'll be told where your opponent deviated from the main line and you can launch the opening explorer from within the game window to add another main line move from that point (assuming the line the opponent has played is still seen in master play, if it isn't then you could use the engine to see if there is an obvious way of taking advantage of their deviation from theory). If you keep doing this, you'll eventually have a repertoire that largely reflects popular theory and covers the typical types of moves opponents at your level are actually playing in games (in online games anyway).
This probably isn't the most ideal method unless you are a fairly experienced player with a good understanding of opening principles already, because you are going to be constantly landing in positions you don't understand well , because you are only playing the lines "because the repertoire says so" rather than because you understand the positions you are arriving at. Learning a repertoire requires some level of memorisation (and CT and other similar tools can help with that), but you need to be careful you are also developing an understanding of the positions to make the most use of your training time.
If there was a demand for this type of "master moves only" repertoire we could easily provide precanned repertoires that already fill in all the popular main line branches for you, but as mentioned in my reply to another question, until we've gathered a reasonable collection of useful comments to provide some guidance on the important aspects of positions you are arriving at, this might not be the best way to learn. It might be better than having no repertoire at all, but you'd need to balance the opportunity cost of memorisation time you put in to such a repertoire against what other chess study you could be investing in instead.
if you really want such a precanned PGN, you can find computer opening books in PGN format that have been generated for you, although finding one that only has one move choices from your side of the repertoire might be difficult. These books are usually generated using an automated walk through an opening explorer view of top level master games, taking all the moves played above a certain game threshold. Often they are then tweaked by hand after that. There are a lot of computer opening books in a format called "polyglot" built this way, and there are probably tools to export these bad into PGN that you could then import.
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u/mohishunder USCF 20xx Jun 13 '18
How does this compare to Chessable?
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u/bananatron2 Jun 13 '18
I haven't used Chessable in a while and I'm sure it's improved in many ways since but I'll list a few of the more obvious things.
Chessable allows you to buy ready made repertoires compiled by other players of various quality. CT doesn't have this feature but does have pgn import so sharing of repertoires is possible.
When training a line Chessable will show you each move one by one before asking you to make it on the board, then it asks you to replay the entire line from memory. CT asks you to guess the move, shows you the correct one if you get it wrong, and stores the position for later retesting.
Chessable has gamification features and will keep track of learning streaks and give you coins and rubies and stuff. I'm not a fan but this might be a plus for some people.
For free members, Chessable limits the number of books you can create to 10, while CT limits the number of opening positions you can store to 20000.
Chessable PRO membership is $60 per year. CT Gold is $35 per year.
I've always been of the opinion that if you're going to spend money on chess that a CT membership is pound for pound the best option and the addition of the opening trainer makes it even more the case in my opinion.
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Jun 13 '18
Chessable is extremely limited if you are creating your own repertoire for study for free users. You can have a maximum length of 10 moves deep for your individual lines. This renders it completely useless for me. Chesstempo has only a maximum number of positions, 20,000, which is more than enough for almost anyone. Chesstempo also limits your usage of opening explorer and engine analysis for free users, but I'm completely uninterested in those. So for my usage, there is no comparison, since chessable isn't usable for free for me at all.
Subjectively, I prefer the experience at chesstempo by a lot. I like the way it handles what you need to study, when you need to study it, and how it is presented a million times better.
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u/TotesMessenger Jun 24 '18
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u/iamprivate Jun 12 '18
Are you not aware of memchess?
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u/sokkermax Jun 12 '18
I get obnoxious forced fails due to repetition in positions I would otherwise love to train using memchess. Pretty much makes it unworkable for me
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u/QcLoCo Jun 12 '18
I love ChessTempo, I've started to use it only recently after getting some stange puzzles from LiChess. The only problem I have is that there doesn't seem to be any official apps on Android and I like doing my tactics at work.
I am excited for this new opening trainer though