Hi all,
in 1974, an old french president (still alive today) said than "a graphic is much more powerfull than a long talk to convince people". Leavenfich, I'm OK with you (and Valery Giscard D'Estaing too!). Since a long time I use Chess Assistant without intuition needed because I pretty well know this program wich is more flexible, fast and complete than Chessbase. OK, it's a question of taste!! But now I think than combine CPT (with it's many good options) with Lucas Chess (Free program) is a good way to maintain and enhance my personnal repertoire. Recent versions of LC deliver new options very interesting as, for instance, the "Stability control" under analysis to analyse variations like IDEA under Aquarium but much more simple to use. Also, there is a director (graphical option to illustrate any position) with more than 150 elements to choose. In fact it's almost infinite because the option "Markers" autorise you to add any JPeg file as graphical element. It's also possible to use comments, arrows and international code (!, !?, +-, etc) to explain ideas. Import/Export FEN, PGN and so on. Sadly, there is no recall system as CPT. But, as I wrote, I'll be please by any improvment under CPT because, again, it's for me the best program to train for openings. Thanks all for your smart opinions, it feed mine very well.
Best regards

I have 10.4 (subscription model) as well...haven't tried that yet either...not sure even if one can use the variability feature (contempt, I think it's called) within CPT.

6 ply...8 ply...whatever, if one is learning to play, it's not going to matter - modern engines are good enough to beat a lot of people even severely weakened. I think the whole idea of a weakened Fritz in Chessbase is - yes, why give you their top of the line program playing program when you can buy it, but also so that the average player has a chance to test out their opening and not get blown away. If Carlsen can not beat the regular Fritz...why should we even care to try?

I had someone tell me Fritz (or Stockfish or what-have-you) these days even severely weakened still plays at about a 2200 or better strength!

leavenfish schrieb:
You are right. I don't see that most of the uci parameters of engines can be set in CPT. No big deal if all you want is to look at a couple of pv's....

The new parameter is not the contempt setting, if is a new checkbox. It apparently has some way of randomizing some move selections without degrading the overall engine rating by more that a couple of points.

Personally, for me, the training feature lacks the understanding part. I started this forum post to have people give their opinions about the training feature. Chess is more complicated then the training feature that is currently available in CPT. Personally, I don't believe a flash card concept is the best way to learn chess. I do realize that it may be one of the few ways to learn the opening, but there are alternative programs that are developing the flashcard concept to learn openings, so CPT is not different in that regard. The reason why I don't like a flash card concept is that you have the static "correct" and incorrect" as your only choices during training. Also, there is no explanation given as to why an "incorrect" move is considered wrong. CPT counts every single move that is not in your repertoire as "incorrect", which prevents the "understanding" part. I wanted to know if anybody has any ideas on how to improve the training feature to incorporate the understanding part. I suggested some ideas in my earlier posts but this does seem to make CPT more complicated to use.

Also, I don't see the uniqueness in CPT compared to Chess Opening Wizard/Bookup. Both programs are basically the same thing. Both allow you to create your repertoire and then use a flash card concept to recall the opening. Lucas Chess has a similar training flashcard concept as well. In what direction does Stefan want to develop this program further to make it more unique then some of the other programs available? Personally, I would want to see a new hybrid chess opening training feature; one which already includes the flashcard training concept, but also a training feature that includes understanding of why certain moves are considered incorrect in a given position. How can this be done? Well you either allow the engine to evaluate all the moves while you are making them (similar to Chess Hero) or you create a three parameter training feature that I suggested earlier.

fischer2008 schrieb:
I have a post on the forum about why I moved from COW to CPT, also, compare the cost. However, COW does address the issue of opening understanding by selling additional products for specific openings.

There is a recent release book "How to Study Chess Openings: The Guide" by Roman Jiganchine that offers a decent guide on how you can get a good understanding of opening preparation. The book doesn't offer any guidance on computer support (he relies on the Chess Base print repertoire capability to find transpositions), but it provides a nice diary of the work that goes into acquiring chess opening understanding. In short - it requires a great deal of experience with positional analysis, and a lot of hard work.

CPT isn't to 'learn chess'. It is to train...generally openings, but you can load endgames and practice them. There are improvements that can be made and I think Steffan has said he has some things in the works. But please don't ever try to make CPT some unweildy swiss army knife of a program....please...

I have several opening books in PGN format from (mostly) Everyman publishing. They work really well in CPT. I also collect Openings from Chesspublishing.com and use them in CPT. I would urge anyone to subscribe to that site...1 group of openings, 3 or the whole lot. Sometimes (and maybe I can do this more than others being a 2000+ player for the past 20 yrs) I take raw games in pgn format and make my own Opening Book to use in CPT and let an engine guide me where I might not understand what is going on.

What I am saying is that their are all kinds of data out there for use with CPT.