Manual de Chess Position Trainer 4 2012 | Page 8

Chess Position Trainer – © Stefan Renzewitz 2012 - all rights reserved

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So, what does CPT do? In a nutshell: CPT trains you in your individual openings. It plays the opposite side and
focus on those positions which you know least - automatically.
Although chess players are known to be smart and logical people, it is surprising how inefficient many chess
players approach their goal to improve their chess opening skills. If you compare learning chess with learning a
foreign language it’s surprising that it was Chess Position Trainer only in 2004 which introduced the flash-card
concept to chess software. Till then chess players had either no way to get tested in their openings or it was totally randomly which is not much better. CPT changed this by automatically storing training results and then
focusing on the weaknesses of the user. This new version will put this approach to the next level by introducing
a space repetition methodology to chess software. Basically it means that the program schedules learned positions for recall based on your past results. It aims for an 80% recall rate which means you will forget about
20%. This is a good ratio between repeating positions too early (and thus wasting time) and forgetting too many
positions.
If you ever learned a foreign language it is clear that you just have to learn by heart vocabulary and grammar
and then practice them in real life situations. In chess you can compare the vocabularies with positions (and the
correct move) and grammar with tactical motifs, ideas or common acknowledged rules.
How did you remember the vocabulary of your foreign la nguage? Just by reading through them? Not very likely. Still, many chess players will tell you that learning by heart is nothing you should focus on, but understanding the ideas (=grammar) is all that matters. Maybe the reason behind this is that it doesn’t sound smart or even
cheap to learn things by heart and win a game just based on this knowledge advantage as it doesn’t require any
chess skills. However, in many openings the move order is basically forced and it is the only part of the game
you are guaranteed to play. Furthermore to create a repertoire which ensures you only reach middle games you
like to play requires actually quite some chess skills (and then the argument you have to learn rather ideas is
valid as you better understand the plans and ideas for key middle games of your openings).
Modern software programs for learning foreign languages are using some kind of flash-card concept to provide
you an efficient way to remember your vocabularies and grammars. CPT uses the same idea, but applied to
chess. It makes sure you are not overlooking any part of your repertoire and it does this in a very structured,
automated way. This is the beauty of it: you don’t have to care about the logic in the background, CPT does for
you!