I think Chess Position Trainer, under certain configurations, can serve the role you have in mind. Along with a lot of other features.

I've tried a program like this, it was either CPT or Bookup. But the randomizer was weird. It kept taking me down uncommon early sidelines and never hitting the main lines. It needs to be more intelligent as far as cycling through all lines, repeating lines you failed, and going down the deeper lines more often than short sidelines. Just picking a random move at each branch is not good.

If their features page is accurate, then CPT apparently handles that pretty well. I haven't used it, though, so I can't vouch for the software myself, just what they claim. In theory, though, it tracks which portions of your repertoire you've gotten right and wrong, chooses which positions to give you based on spaced repetition concepts, and has a variety of options to let you focus your training on specific lines or variations if you want.

Sounds like one of two things is true. Either: TimM, you used a different tranining software, and CPT is better, or else: CPT's features page promises more than the software delivers.

If it was CPT, it was probably 5 years ago that I used it. Maybe it has been improved by now.

CPT is great. Purchased it last spring and have been thrilled.

sounds like what I am looking for, will check it out. Thanks guys

A cool upside to CPT is that their "30 day demo" is a totally unlocked full-functioned version of the software (after 30 days a lot of the functions lock up, of course), so it's easy to get a good quality assessment of whether it's what you want, and worth the money to you.

I might be two days into my demo period right now, lol. Thanks for asking your question that inspired me to research options and find CPT. I'm impressed so far!

That's true, and even the limited functions of the after 30 days version is enough for most people. I wanted some stuff that wasn't in that package so I bought it since I'd been using it for a couple of years anyway.

There's an old version of the software that is 100% free, too. You can't get it on their website anymore and it's hard to find otherwise, but I have it on my website for download (it's version 3 something: 100% free).

http://gorgonian.******.com/pgn.html

I split this thread out, because I can

Downloaded CPT and it looks pretty close to what I want. It seems to not be going through all the positions from the lines I entered, though. For example I made an opening with the Bb5+ Moscow Sicilian (for White) and it only shows me positions after Bxd7+ Qxd7 0-0 Nc6, even though I added both 5...Nf6 and 5...Nc6. Do I need to do something to make it clear that both of these moves are possible replies? Is there some way I can go through the whole line and see which positions it considers worth showing me (17 of them, it seems)?

Have you added white responses (6. __) to those alternative fifth black moves?

yes, a few moves deep

How does marking Black moves as "best" (the checkbox to the left in the candidate moves window) affect how it treats them? My understanding from the manual/tooltips is that these are only important for pruning the variations when they are put on White moves. Which seems intuitively reasonable, since I want to practice the lines which are "best play" for White but possibly inaccuracies by Black.

I don't *think* "best" lines matter for black (in a white opening). Maybe double check your "max depth of sidelines" setting?

I've downloaded CPT 3.3 from Gorgonian's site, it required .Net Framework 1.1.4322 (though I have v. 4.0.30319 already in Win 7), which I installed, but now CPT now freezes when clicking on any top menu (but works otherwise), even when launched in the XP compatibility mode, probably because .Net 1.1 is incompatible with the IIS of my system (as I was notified during the v. 1.1 installation). How can I make CPT 3.3 fully functional?

The "Photo Training" mode selects positions randomly from the opening, I think that's the selection I need but in "Filter" mode, so I just have to find one right move in each position.

still getting to grips with it but I paid for the full version today. I've done pretty well with remembering the lines I've put in it so far, if I can keep this up with all my repertoire this will be the best investment ever.

Still I have the same position open in Chessbase and CPT at the same time which isnt ideal. CPT promotes the idea of organising a repertoire as a set of positions, each of which has one or more right moves. Which seems to make a lot of sense, but what we are used to as chess players is games or fragments of games - I like to be able to look at the moves display and see the next few moves complete with any commentary. And of course the actual database is a killer feature for Chessbase. So I'm using Chessbase for discovery and CPT only once I've decided what I want to play.

Same basic structure I've been using. CPT is definitely intended to learn your repertoire, which is all well and good if you already HAVE a defined repertoire, but it isn't the highest quality tool in the world for choosing your preferred move in a given position, i.e. actually building your repertoire. Discovery elsewhere, and when you settle on the move you like, add it in to CPT, and then use CPT to drill it into your head, definitely seems like the best choice.

You could make a ChessBase opening tree, but last i checked it doesn't have anywhere near the features of a CPT or a BookUp. It's designed to create opening books for chess programs. I've tried to put my repertoire in an annotated game in ChessBase, but then you have to catch all the transpositions yourself and make a note to see some other line.

This program is the NUTS. Most likely going to buy it after eval is over, even though someone mentioned that it is entirely good enough without full features? Will have to check what features I'd be missing.

Good enough for some people. Not for everyone. The limitations showed up for me in training. Not all modes are there and there is a move depth limitation. The old version 3 is fully free, if you want to work with its limitations and idiosyncrasies (and not pay).

My free trial just expired, and probably the biggest feature I miss is being able to go deeper than 15 moves. I only had a couple lines that went that deep, but because I had trained them during the eval period I will now FOREVER have a few lines that are "overdue" for study, if I don't buy it.

I have been using this regularly for the last 6 months, although there are still a lot of lines I would like to add to it.

It's missing two important features for me though: database integration and a phone version. Without the database I found myself exploring openings in Chessbase and flicking back and forth to CPT to enter them when I had made up my mind. Being able to use it on the phone is also pretty valuable - a flash card app is a great use of time when travelling. So I was actually working on a web version of this for my own use. Today however Chessbase have announced a competitor which has both of those features. Not sure if it has everything I want from CPT but I'm excited to try it out.

This is about 20 years overdue. I've been a ChessBase user since the 1990s MSDOS versions. While some windows versions had positional databases, these were mostly designed to produce opening books for engines, not for human repertoire building. Before CPT there was BOOKUP, and this was good too, but suffered from the same problem of having to flip between programs and add lines manually. They also had much weaker integrated analysis engines as compared to ChessBase.

I agree it is massively overdue. Looks like it doesn't have an engine or full integration with the Windows app. I'm guessing some form of integration will come in the next release. There are still a few rough edges though. The mobile site seems to be missing some of the buttons, including "load White" and "load Black" which seem vital to its operation. I can get them on my phone if I load the desktop site, which works fine on mobile (actually I can't tell the difference apart from the missing buttons). Often the panel that shows the database moves hangs with "requesting moves..." forever. Other times it's really snappy though (see the video) - I thought they might have cheated and done some extra caching for the video but I had the same experience trying it for real.

It doesn't handle transpositions as gracefully as CPT and I'm not sure that it has a flashcard mode where it picks positions either randomly or based on your previous training results. So I'm not convinced I will switch. Hopefully it is still actively under development though.

Why can't they just take the existing opening tree feature and add in the things that are missing? It already handles transposition and retro-moves well. It needs the ability to add notes, informant evaluations, true backsolving*, and showing how many positions in the book are reachable from each available move (bookup calls this "accumulations").

* For example, if a position with black to move has five replies, and one leads to a win for the black, and the other four lead to a win for white, the position is lost for white, not 80% winning for white.

seems someone else also had the same idea at the same time. Very low on features, but maybe he will add them.

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