There is of course a reason I for one wait (and wait…and wait....and WAIT) for Stefan to make his long promised update – it IS currently different from these other programs and for what it is designed to do, overall better I think.

Being able to flag an alternate move for later investigation, would be fine. But please never let it clutter the actual training process itself. Training is about really knowing/remembering what you should do in a particular position – the exact same situation you would find when you are at the board during a tournament game. That is why it is so important!

I have thought that maybe the opportunity to switch on an engine at the point of the ‘incorrect move’ would be okay, but the more I have thought about it, the more I am unsure...or at least sure that I would not benefit. After all, at this point you are in TRAINING mode, NOT INVESTIGATION mode. But the simple option might benefit some - to each his own.

In any case, Stefan has detailed what he is working toward for the next release. I am excited by those ideas…but terribly frustrated with the slowness of the project. When he says 9 months ago, "I've implemented a new major feature based on....". I am sorry, until you have made it available, you have really 'implemented' nothing.

The slowness has had me looking at other alternatives. Nothing is quite as good as CPT for what it does however...

To give you a short version of the problem I see with CPT, I wanted to discuss the issue with spaced repetition training, which CPT solely focuses on. The issue I see is that spaced repetition in chess doesn't work because chess is a dynamic game. Spaced repetition may work when learning vocabulary for a new language, because you do not need to rule in our out certain words to memorize. When playing chess openings you have to rule out certain variations to play in a game before choosing a candidate move. If you try to memorize the openings, you will not understand any of the key ideas or why a certain move you play is wrong. This will make it even harder to remember the opening you are trying to remember because CPT does not have any way of incorporating understanding into chess openings. To incorporate understanding in chess you really need to rule out incorrect moves, which are defined as blunder, inaccuracy, and mistakes.

It was mentioned earlier by Stefan I think that having a computer analysis during training mode would not completely solve the problem either when you make an incorrect move but would partially solve the problem when you make a blunder move. I would agree with that, but wanted to mention why this is the case. The reason why having a computer tell you your move is incorrect would not work is because it only helps to distinguish your move as a blunder from a mistake or inaccuracy. The computer would do a good job spotting a blunder because that usually involves only tactics and you would then understand why your move is incorrect during training mode. When playing an inaccurate or mistake move there is no way of understanding why your move is considered incorrect unless you understand the resulting positional ideas after the variations have been played. The computer does not explain any of this to you. Therefore, it would make some sense to incorporate some kind of blunder alert into CPT and you can also see the subsequent variations on the board after the blunder alert.

You would need to enter comments about the position of why your move is considered incorrect when you make a mistake or inaccuracy, which you currently cannot do in CPT. Every move you make in CPT that is not in your repertoire is considered incorrect, which is really annoying. The only way to solve this is to somehow incorporate a comments section when you play an incorrect move which we can further define as a mistake or inaccuracy.

I now realize that CPT was solely designed for training according to Stefan, which makes me very disappointed, but was always wondering how to incorporate understanding when training openings to enhance long term memory instead of mindlessly memorizing the moves. I'm assuming that the reason Stefan programmed the incorrect moves as he did is to cut down on the amount of variations that are possible to make the program as simple as possible to use. It was specifically mentioned that you cannot get all the features you want into a training program for openings. I think it is possible to program a very comprehensive chess opening program.

Stefan mentioned already what updates he would have in the future, but I'm confused on what it is that he will incorporate into CPT that will differentiate it from the other opening training programs.

It is almost like you would prefer to have Chessbase, where you can play over an opening and think at various points “‘why can’t I play ‘x’ (?)” and then export that position to Fritz and play a half dozen moves to see how that alternate move/choice goes. No real issues with that approach. Me, I prefer to actually do that when preparing my opening(s), not when I am trying to remember lines...'training'.

If I want to tinker with my openings, I can still do that from within CPT.

To each his own. I like CPT for what it is and am excited about what Stephan has apparently been working on. My only real complaint...that he seems to have lost interest in CPT.

You may be correct that it is a matter of preference for the training mode Leavenfish since you would be cutting down a massive amount of incorrect candidate moves with their variations when trying to prepare/input this into CPT. CPT does only partially of what I want it to do so far even if it is a training program that is supposed to help you remember your candidate moves.

I wanted to give an analogy for all of this. When somebody trains you for a job they are supposed to show you all the correct things to do on the job. However, what if you start forgetting the right things and accidentally do the wrong habits on the job. Aren't you supposed to also be trained to not to do the wrong habits on the job when this occurs? You could always practice doing the right things on the job over and over to reinforce, but for some reason your brain considers other incorrect alternatives or habits since they look appealing. So wouldn't reminding yourself on why not to do something be a good idea?

I wanted to ask you some questions Leavenfish or anyone else that may read this. When preparing/inputting your openings when you use CPT do you personally look at why you can't play move X?. Aren't you also supposed to remember why you can't play move x?How are you supposed to enter that into CPT with comments? Because if you do that in CPT, the training mode will test you on those lines as well but count that as correct, since CPT considers everything you enter into your repertoire as correct. Unfortunately, this method of preparing/inputting incorrect moves conflicts with the current trainer.

Even in Chessbase or Fritz when you prepare moves that are considered incorrect and comment on them, when you export the moves into CPT you have the same problem, unless you tell CPT to count those moves as incorrect and show the comments when testing you on your repertoire.

I don't know if there is a way to actually enter an incorrect move and the variations for your side into a future version of CPT without it conflicting with the training mode. Maybe the idea of having to input or prepare incorrect moves and their variations is a bad idea because it would involve a lot more work and also the trainer would have to somehow show you with several variations that your move is considered incorrect.

I'm wondering how chess mentor on chess.com works because that program I believe tells you that your move is incorrect not through computer analysis, but through the program itself, which somebody must have inputted prior to the program testing you on it. However, nobody on chess.com has made chess mentor exclusively for training openings. I would think that it is possible to program something like that into CPT but I could be wrong.

Again, I realize I can't get everything in a chess opening program especially if it is designed exclusively for training only your correct candidate moves. However, I want to offer these suggestions to Stefan first and see what his thoughts are since I began using CPT first. Maybe contacting Mike at Bookup would be a good alternative choice, but I have not done so yet. Depending on how long it takes Stefan to come out with his next release, which he mentioned already over a year ago, I may contact other people that have programmed freeware programs or find somebody else to program the software.

You can enter openings into both White and Black repertoires. Then, you will need to decide which moves you wish to play and tailor the openings as to which you would want to play as White and Black. Your comments should reflect whether your choices are to avoid specific lines, prepare for an opponent, or just learn ideas for the openings. A good book, like Paul van der Sterren's Fundamental Chess Openings can be a valuable resource that lends itself to this approach to general opening theory.

There is no shortcut for the work we need to do. CPT has all of the tools in my opinion, but it cannot think for us...

So I decided to enter in the comments section what you can see in the image file CPT image. I put the incorrect move Qb3 in red and the alternative 0-0 move in blue. The line isn't very long but I'm using it for example purposes.

So when training every time I turn on the hint feature after I make a mistake after the 1st time and it will show me the Qb3 mistake and 0-0 alternative with the variations in the comments section. I would prefer if the comment section was separate for each move but this should still suffice.

The only thing I would really like is for CPT to show me on the board those variations because I cannot calculate far ahead in more complicated lines. Therefore, I propose that Stefan make an analysis board during input mode AND during training mode. That way I can see for example why my Qb3 move was wrong since I can follow my comments section.