Hi, is there any free alternative to chessable, where I can train lines or games with spaced repetition just with the .pgn file?
You might try LucasChess.
You could build polyglot opening books based on a collection of games. For example,
polyglot make-book -pgn file.pgn -bin my_openings.bin -max-ply 24
Then in scid vs pc or any other chess gui, play games against an engine. In scid vs pc, when you select an engine, you also get the option of selecting the opening book. Then when you play, it tells you if you are making a move not in the opening book and asks if you still want to make the move.
In scid vs pc, you also have the option of practicing specific openings. This will use the opening books that come installed with scid vs pc. (There are 4 that come with scid vs pc.)
In scid vs pc, you can also change the probabilities of available moves. For example, if the opening book has two responses to e4, namely c5 and e5, then you can adjust the probabilities for c5 and e5, and you can do this at subsequent moves. Polyglot by default will assign weights to moves based on the number of occurrences of a position, but it also has the option of setting all probabilities to be equal while creating the book.
You can do more complex things. Let us say you want to make the engine play Carlsen's openings from white and Nepo's openings from black, you can use polyglot to create a white book using a pgn of Carlsen's games and a black opening book using a pgn of Nepo's games. Then merge the books. Now if you select the machine to play black, it will respond with Nepo's openings. Or you can have stockfish to play with itself, choosing Carlsen's openings from white and Nepo's openings from black.
I like experimenting with such things, and if you want more details, let me know.
@Alakaluf I have been familiar with Lucas chess for a long time. But I am searching for something universal or cross-platform. Because, I have to travel a lot, and thus it's cumbersome to open my laptop every time to learn some opening theory.
@kajalmaya Thanks for letting me know. I didn't know about the polyglot opening book. Can you please share some resources regarding this? Also, can you please suggest some alternative web apps to ScidVsPC?
Thanks in advance :)
About polyglot https://www.chessprogramming.org/PolyGlot.
I don't know alternative web apps. But I can suggest one app for android - it is not as good as scid vs pc for what you want to do but you can try. It is called droidfish (which I installed from F-droid app store, which is an app store for open source apps). In droidfish, you can install your own opening books and have stockfish play using these opening books. It does not tell you when you deviated from the opening book, but as long as you play a book move, the engine responds immediately, and as soon as you deviate from the book, it starts to take time to think before making a move, so you know immediately when you deviate from a book. I have, for example, created (using polyglot) opening books for e4-e5, e4-other, d4-d5, d4-other, indian and flank (roughly based on the groups in Modern Chess Openings). I then copied them to the book directory of droidfish, and I can choose a book to play against an engine.
Just to add some clarification about polyglot books: if you are using a chess gui like scid vs pc or xboard, with an opening book, and an engine, then as long as you make book moves, it is not the engine that is responding from the book, but it is the chess gui that is using the book. Only when you leave the book, the gui starts to send the moves to the engine. So as long as you are in the book, it does not matter what chess engine is called.
@abcd9876 said in #5:
> @kajalmaya Thanks for letting me know. I didn't know about the polyglot opening book. Can you please share some resources regarding this? Also, can you please suggest some alternative web apps to ScidVsPC?
>
> Thanks in advance :)
I come to your rescue, I am the inventor of the app you guys all call Puzzle Rush. There are a few web apps that are open source that you can use but one of the most versatile web apps is LT-PGN-VIEWER 3.4 -> https://millican.org/chess/pgnviewer.html
The advantage of pgnviewer is if you want to customise the web app you can do so easily with a bit of PHP, javascript, css and html, or just use it as is. I used it to create the first app that worked like Puzzle Rush/Puzzle Storm does today over 10 years ago. lol
For mobile devices try Perfect Chess Trainer for Android
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mbartl.perfectchesstrainer.android&hl=en_GB&gl=US
Good luck brother.
@michuk I had tried the demo version of the app you mentioned, and sorry to say, the experience wasn't sweet at all. The animation was inconsistent, the board freezes here and there, and moreover so many other bugs...
However, the site you have mentioned is helpful. Although, I have already started developing my own app based on https://www.npmjs.com/package/@mliebelt/pgn-viewer
Also, I have found an website called https://listudy.org/en which is opensource and thus can be customised to my personal taste.
Let's see how far does it go.
@kajalmaya thanks for the explanation and suggestion. I do frequently use droid fish to play against LC0 on my phone. However, I believe that, having a web app will be better in such context. I am trying to develop my own. Will update the thread with my repo link soon after completion.
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