Use your repertoire to play

[Carl Bicknell]

Some time ago a few people raised the possibility of adding a feature to allow a user to build their own opening books.

This would be a wonderful addition to the software and incredibly useful for OTB play as we hone our repertoires. I believe the Fritz / Chessbase implementation of this feature - although added many years ago - is suboptimal and there is a chance to provide something better.

Is this feature being seriously considered?

[oddg]

Some time ago a few people raised the possibility of adding a feature to allow a user to build their own opening books.

This would be a wonderful addition to the software and incredibly useful for OTB play as we hone our repertoires. I believe the Fritz / Chessbase implementation of this feature - although added many years ago - is suboptimal and there is a chance to provide something better.

Is this feature being seriously considered?

The new Fritz 19 have made this very easy to do. It also added different personality to play against. The clock don't seems to work normally in this
easy mode, but I use my own clock anyway together with my DGT board and it announces the moves on the clock.

Not that Hiarcs should copy their setup, but something to look at to get ideas.

Edit:
For personalities, they could go straight to the source: http://www.qualitychess.co.uk/blog/1841
Maybe not too hard if they have some strong chessplayers on their team. Could be they only need to adjust a little on the three personalities that are there already.

[Carl Bicknell]

Some time ago a few people raised the possibility of adding a feature to allow a user to build their own opening books.

This would be a wonderful addition to the software and incredibly useful for OTB play as we hone our repertoires. I believe the Fritz / Chessbase implementation of this feature - although added many years ago - is suboptimal and there is a chance to provide something better.

Is this feature being seriously considered?

The new Fritz 19 have made this very easy to do. It also added different personality to play against. The clock don't seems to work normally in this
easy mode, but I use my own clock anyway together with my DGT board and it announces the moves on the clock.

Not that Hiarcs should copy their setup, but something to look at to get ideas.

Edit:
For personalities, they could go straight to the source: http://www.qualitychess.co.uk/blog/1841
Maybe not too hard if they have some strong chessplayers on their team. Could be they only need to adjust a little on the three personalities that are there already.

The repertoire function has been significantly updated on Fritz 19, but I'm talking about building a playable opening book. That is still the same I think.

[oddg]

The repertoire function has been significantly updated on Fritz 19, but I'm talking about building a playable opening book. That is still the same I think.

Me too, you just create a database with the games you want it to play and set White resp. Black in one of the fields: White, Black, Event, or Source. Then you use this database as a book. No need to convert it to anything.

[Carl Bicknell]

The repertoire function has been significantly updated on Fritz 19, but I'm talking about building a playable opening book. That is still the same I think.

Me too, you just create a database with the games you want it to play and set White resp. Black in one of the fields: White, Black, Event, or Source. Then you use this database as a book. No need to convert it to anything.

Thanks but my opening post was really talking about information on future-gen Hiarcs, not Fritz 19.

[Carl Bicknell]

The repertoire function has been significantly updated on Fritz 19, but I'm talking about building a playable opening book. That is still the same I think.

Me too, you just create a database with the games you want it to play and set White resp. Black in one of the fields: White, Black, Event, or Source. Then you use this database as a book. No need to convert it to anything.

This is pretty neat actually.
It still "looses" its optimised settings between games though I'm finding if I forget to set that.

[oddg]

Thanks but my opening post was really talking about information on future-gen Hiarcs, not Fritz 19.

Not that Hiarcs should copy their setup, but something to look at to get ideas.

Yes, but Fritz's solution is very elegant and don't need Hiarcs to create a new book feature. I doubt their method has any "patent" restrictions.

It's so easy to use if you spar before a tournament. Just collect the games from your supposed opponents and do a mass replacement with White/Black in the source field.

(You can replace the books under Books/Personalities if you want it to use it for several sessions, do a backup copy first.)

[mrudolf]

Maybe we need "Play against current filter/database" feature?

This will make the moves from the filter/database as long as there is any and then continue normally using book or engine?

[Carl Bicknell]

Maybe we need "Play against current filter/database" feature?

This will make the moves from the filter/database as long as there is any and then continue normally using book or engine?

Wouldn't manually creating a book allow for more options, like controlling weights, easier exportation etc?

[oddg]

Maybe we need "Play against current filter/database" feature?

This will make the moves from the filter/database as long as there is any and then continue normally using book or engine?

Yes, I think this would be useful. You already have "Book Explorer" and filter function. Even a possibility to do a mass replacement of a header tag. The book explorer have control over number of games so this could be used for "Play%". I'm not a fan of using w/l for this, I would rather exclude those games manually if there is a blunder in there.

Maybe start with the scenario where people would use it.
Here are my usage:

1. I have a database with my repertoire and want to train against it. All games will end without any result and would/could have variations from main line. Here I would like to have a place to mark if I want the computer to play White or Black so I don't need to switch opening book between games.
I would probably train against a limited part of my repertoire in periods, so if it doesn't handle variations it wouldn't be a big problem.

2. Collect games from my supposed opponent before a tournament and train against those as a book. Here too I would want to mark if I want the computer to play White or Black.

3. Let the computer play my repertoire in match play against another computer opponent. This is just to get more ideas of how to play the positions I usually get in to (and a little fun to watch).

(I'm always supposed to look for three candidate moves, so I made up the third on the fly.)

The tag for marking White and Black should not be the "White" or "Black" tag, since they often are in use, especially in a repertoire database.

An alternative for a special tag for which color the computer should play, could be to be able to make the book as database pair with white and games in each database.

[oddg]

* Tree Explorer not Book explorer

[mrudolf]

1. I don't think tags are needed. I assume you will have different databases for black and white.
And switching may not be such a problem, most of the time you are training one opening at the time.
I am more worried about support for variations, as this is much trickier.

2. No need for marking, you just select a colour to play and computer uses the games for opposite colour. No need for variations here.

3. You already can play computer matches using positions from database.

[e4-homie]

This would be an awesome feature indeed. You can feed it top opening theory and then play it back, quizzing you.

[mrudolf]

This would be an awesome feature indeed. You can feed it top opening theory and then play it back, quizzing you.

Added to our TODO list.

[e4-homie]

Awesome, dude! Looking forward to it.