ChessTempo Manual
ChessTempo Manual
Table of Contents
1. Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1. The Chesstempo Board . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.1. Piece Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.2. Navigation Buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.3. Board actions menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1.4. Board Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2. Other Buttons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3. Play Position vs Computer Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2. Tactics Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.1. Blitz/Standard/Mixed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.1.1. Blitz Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.1.2. Standard Mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.1.3. Mixed Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2. Alternatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.3. Rating System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.3.1. Standard Rating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.3.2. Blitz Rating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.3.3. Duplicate Problem Rating Adjustment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.4. Screen Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.5. Tactics session panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3. Endgame Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.1. Benchmark Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.2. Theory Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.3. Practice Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.4. Rating System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.5. Endgame Played Move List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.6. Endgame Legal Move List. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.7. Endgame Blitz Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.8. Play Best . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4. Chess Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.1. Opening Explorer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.1.1. Candidate Move Stats. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.1.2. White Win/Draw/Black Win Percentages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.1.3. Filtering/Searching and the Opening Explorer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.1.4. Explorer Stats Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.1.5. Related Openings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.2. Game Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.2.1. Results List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.2.2. Quick Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.2.3. Advanced Search. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.3. Games for Position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4.4. Players List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4.4.1. Player Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4.4.2. Player Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4.5. Openings List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
4.5.1. Openings Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
4.5.2. Openings Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
4.6. Player Details Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
4.6.1. Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
4.6.2. Rating Graph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
4.6.3. Opening Stats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
4.6.4. Repertoire Selector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
4.7. Opening Details Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
4.7.1. Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
4.7.2. Opening Popularity Graph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
4.8. Game Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
4.8.1. Game Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
4.8.2. Move List. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
4.8.3. Current Opening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
4.8.4. Game Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
4.8.5. Permanent Link. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4.8.6. Material Graph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4.8.7. Game Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4.9. Database Subset Selector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4.10. Filter Impact Selector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4.11. Database Related Board Buttons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
5. Comment System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
5.1. Adding a New Comment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
5.2. Comment Voting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
5.3. Comment Boards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
5.4. Editing and Deleting Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
5.5. My Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
6. Problem Search and Custom Problem Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
6.1. Basic Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
6.2. Advanced problem search and custom set criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
6.2.1. Advanced Search - Problem Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
6.2.2. Advanced Search - Previous Attempts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
6.2.3. Advanced Search - Set Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
6.2.4. Advanced Search - Game details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
6.3. Custom set sorted selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
6.4. Custom set spaced repetition selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
6.4.1. Spaced Repetition Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
6.5. Creating Custom Problem Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
6.6. Managing Custom Problem Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
6.7. Creating Merged Problem Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
7. Problem Tagging. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
7.1. Tag Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
7.2. Tag Voting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
7.3. Needs More Moves and Different Opponent Move Tags. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
7.4. Custom Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
8. User Preferences. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
8.1. Solving. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
8.2. Engines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
8.3. My Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
8.4. Coaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
8.5. Game Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
8.6. Guess The Move . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
8.7. Playing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
8.7.1. Playing - Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
8.7.2. Playing - Correspondence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
8.8. Achievements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
8.9. Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
8.9.1. Membership Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
9. My Stats. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
9.1. Statistics Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
9.1.1. Rated Stats Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
9.1.2. Activity Calendar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
9.1.3. Problem History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
9.2. Tactics Stats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
9.3. Endgame Stats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
10. Training Targets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
10.1. Training Target settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
11. Achievements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
11.1. Achievement Stats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
11.2. Achievement Points Leaderboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
11.3. Achievement Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
12. Analysis Board . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
13. Engine Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
13.1. Analysis Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
13.2. Engine Lines Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
13.3. Annotate Game using Chess Engine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
14. Student/Coach Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
14.1. Nominating a Coach. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
14.2. Coach Access to Student Stats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
14.3. Coach Access to Student Preferences. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
14.4. Coach Assigned Problem Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
15. Play Online. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
15.1. Playing page startup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
15.2. Starting a new Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
15.3. Challenge Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
15.3.1. Time Controls. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
15.3.2. Rating filter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
15.3.3. Direct challenges. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
15.3.4. Rated/Unrated game types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
15.3.5. Challenges from arbitrary start positions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
15.3.6. Challenge Favourites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
15.4. History. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
15.5. Player list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
15.6. Challenge List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
15.7. Friends List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
15.8. All Games List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
15.9. My Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
15.10. Game playing interface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
15.10.1. Game Board . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
15.11. Vacation and Sleep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
15.11.1. Vacation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
15.11.2. Sleep. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
15.12. Online Players List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
15.13. Online Playing Game Archive and Stats Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
15.14. Online Playing Rating Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
15.15. Challenge Formula . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
15.15.1. Challenge Formula Time Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
15.15.2. Challenge Formula Operator List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
15.15.3. Challenge Formula Variable List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
15.15.4. Challenge formula as challenge list filter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
16. Opening Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
16.1. Getting started. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
16.2. PGN import . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
16.3. Adding repertoire moves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
16.3.1. Changing main line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
16.4. Training mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
16.4.1. Move hints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
16.4.2. Training depth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
16.4.3. Spaced repetition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
16.4.4. Learning priority order. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
16.4.5. Context for training moves. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
16.4.6. Training all repertoires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
16.4.7. Resistant repertoires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
16.4.8. Transpositions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
16.5. Play online integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
16.6. Opening training settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
16.6.1. Basic settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
16.6.2. Advanced settings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
16.7. Opening tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
16.8. Repertoire tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
16.9. Repertoire shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
16.10. Opening explorer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
16.11. Candidate moves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
16.12. Engine panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
16.13. Annotations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
16.14. Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
16.14.1. Comment boards. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
16.15. Other actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
16.15.1. Import PGN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
16.15.2. Export repertoire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
16.15.3. Reset training. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
16.16. Graphs and Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
16.16.1. Global stats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
16.16.2. Repertoire stats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
17. Guess The Move . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
17.1. Move Score Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
17.2. Score Calculation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
17.3. Progressive Scoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
17.4. Commenting and Tagging. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
17.5. Game Selector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
17.6. Review Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
17.7. Variation Hiding/Folding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
17.8. Skipping The Opening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
17.9. Engine Analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
18. PGN Viewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
18.1. Feature Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
18.2. Keyboard Bindings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
18.3. Comment Markup Annotations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
18.3.1. Arrows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
18.3.2. Square Colouring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
18.3.3. Mini Boards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
18.4. Variation Folding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
18.5. Annotation Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
18.6. Using the PGN Viewer on your own site. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
18.6.1. Basic Usage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
18.6.2. PGN Viewer configuration options. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
18.6.3. Theming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
18.6.4. PGN Viewer translations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
18.6.5. Per user persistent board and move list settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Appendix A: Problem Comment Guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Chapter 1. Introduction
Welcome to the Chesstempo User Guide. This document is designed to give instructions on all
aspects of the Chesstempo site. Some of the features described in this guide are only available to
Premium members of the site. To see more information on which membership levels have access to
a particular feature, please see the Membership Description Page.
There are two methods of piece movement available, drag and drop and click and click. By default
both are available and you can freely alternate between them.
The navigation buttons allow you to move through the available moves on the board. The following
navigation buttons are available:
[ Jump to Start ]
Jump to the start of the move list, this sets up the board in the position before the first move has
been played. For tactic and endgame boards, this also animates the opponent "pre-move", that
sets up the position at the start of the problem.
[ Back ]
Go back one move. Also available with Left
[ Forward ]
Go forward one move. Also available with Right
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[ Jump to End ]
Go to end of move list, this brings you to the position AFTER the last move was played.
[ Play ]
Auto play the current moves , starting with the next move from the current position. Unless the
stop button is clicked, play will continue until the end of the move list (or variation) is reached.
[ Stop ]
Stop auto playing moves.
This is the blue circular menu shown under the move list.
Board settings
Launch the board and move list settings panel.
Toggle fullscreen
Toggle between full-screen and non-fullscreen modes
Toggle autoplay
Auto play moves in the move list, select again to stop any auto-playing currently in progress.
Rotate board
Flip the board orientation (also via r).
Annotate
Bring up the annotation window, which allows you to add comments and graphical
annontations, and manipulate any side variations you have entered.
Show PGN
Shows the PGN of the current game, and allows you to download the PGN to your own computer.
Explore in DB
Go to the database page where you can view the current game, and use the opening explorer,
and compare to other games played with similar lines. The chess database offers many options
for examing your game in the context of other database games, and in controlling how the
opening explorer works. Please see the Chess Database for more details
To change board settings click on the blue rotary menu beneath the move list (or on the old site the
button in the top left corner of the board). Unlike user settings in the preferences panel, the settings
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here are stored in your browser rather than on the server, this means you can have different
settings on different machines, for example, a larger board size on your desktop machine
compared to your mobile device.
Board Size
This option allows you to select the size of the board in pixel units.
NOTE: This option is only available if the board resize handles on the edge of the board have
been disabled, as that is the default method for board size selection. The handles are disabled for
compatibility reasons on some touch devices.
Piece Type
The style of image used for pieces.
Board Style
The colour or texture used for the board squares.
Icon Style
The style of the icons used for navigation and other board related actions.
Icon Size
The size of the board icons such as navigation and action buttons.
Coordinates Size
The size of the border around the board used to display the board co-ordinates.
Highlight Move
Moves can be highlighted with either arrows or by colouring the source and destination squares.
Both methods can be used, and highlighting can be turned off by disabling both methods of
highlighting. The highlighting option applies to both the last move, and to pre-move indication
for the board that have pre-move enabled.
Board Sounds
This option determines if sounds will be played on this board. Sounds include piece movement
sound, but may include other types of audio notifications, depending on the context the board is
being used in.
Auto Promote
Allows you to turn auto-promote on, and choose the piece to auto-promote to (usually the
Queen).
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Click and Click
Turn on/off click and click piece movement (i.e. the movement of the piece by clicking the source
and then the destination square).
Figurine Notation
The figurine notation option allows you to choose if you want move list notation to replace piece
letters with small piece images for each piece.
Autoplay speed
The delay between moves if the play moves button is clicked.
Confirm Moves
Turns move confirmation on or off. The move confirmation option allow you to confirm each
move before it is sent to the server.
[ Copy FEN ]
The Copy FEN button allows you to view and copy the FEN description of the current position,
which can then be pasted into other applications, or other parts of the Chesstempo site that
accept FEN strings as input. The dialog which shows the FEN, will also show a 'copy to comment'
button, it is relevant to the context. The 'copy to comment' button allows you to create a static
image of the current board position in a comment.
NOTE: FEN strings are a format used in most chess software as a shortcut for describing a
particular position in a game. It holds information on the piece configuration, move number,
castling status, colour to move, and information required to process en-passant captures and
adjudicate the 50 move rule. You don’t need to understand the actual format to make use of the
notation, as most chess software will have a way of accepting FEN strings as input, and
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producing them as output. A common use of FEN strings is to setup a position you have seen on
Chesstempo in your own chess engine, in order to do further analysis of the position on your
own computer.
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Chapter 2. Tactics Training
Chesstempo tactics training allows you to test and train your tactical ability. Tactical positions from
real games are shown , and you are expected to find the best moves leading to an advantageous
tactical outcome. Where possible, the moves will match those played in the source game, however if
the opponent played sub-optimal moves or resigned, then the best computer moves will be played
instead.
Rated training modes provide you with a tactics rating which can be used to track progress, as well
target problems at your current ability level.
2.1. Blitz/Standard/Mixed
Chesstempo tactics training is aimed at improving two important aspects of tactical ability, pattern
recognition, and calculation skills. Blitz and Standard tactic solving modes target both these areas.
Mixed mode allows you to merge both these skills, with a solve time rating adjusment more closely
reflecting time available in longer over the board games, and includes positions where the best
move may leave the position even, but is the only move which avoids entering a lost or losing
position.
'Blitz' mode is a training mode that emphasizes speed, and is useful for seeing a large number of
positions, which assists in learning tactical patterns, a very important part of improving tactical
strength.
In Blitz mode, your rating adjustment is partly determined by how quickly you are able to solve
problems.
'Standard' mode is a tactics training mode that allows you to take as much time as you like on each
problem. Standard mode is suitable for calculation practice, and gives you a chance to see harder
problems, that require more thought and deeper calculation than you will see in blitz mode.
In Standard mode, your rating adjustment is based only on whether you get the problem correct.
Time taken is shown on the screen, and recorded in your results, however it is ignored for rating
adjustment purposes.
The mixed rating type uses a hybrid standard/blitz rating adjustment, and includes both winning
and non-winning (sometimes called "defensive") problems. Problem attempts are rated the same as
standard mode if they are solved under 5 minutes, i.e. time will not be used as part of the rating
adjustment, and only correct/incorrect matters. If the time exceeds that level, the problem is rated
in a similar way to the blitz rating method, i.e. you start to get less reward for a correct solution if
you take longer than the average solution time across all users.
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The main differences between blitz and mixed mode after the 5 minute threshold has been reached
is that there is no bonus for fast solving, there is no "time after first move" penalty, and the
minimum average time you are measured against will be at least the no time-adjustment threshold
of 5 minutes. This means for problems at your current rating you should be able to take at least 10
minutes before you start to lose rating points on a correct solution.
2.2. Alternatives
Some tactical positions have moves, which are good, but are not deemed to be the 'best'. When this
occurs, you will receive a 'try again' message, and you’ll be given another chance to find the 'best'
move.
The reason the problem set includes positions with these alternative winning moves is because it is
important to provide training in as many real game situations as possible. Real games often have
positions where you need to choose between multiple good moves, and so it is important that
training includes such positions. Positions where two moves are given the same computer
evaluation will not be used, so one should always be better than all others (at least from a computer
evaluation perspective).
The default difficulty level for tactics problems targets problems that are on
average 100 points below your current rating. This means that on average you will
lose more rating points for problems you get wrong than you will gain for
problems you get right. In return you’ll get a success rate over 50%. If you’d like to
get the same amount of points for correct and incorrect attempts (on average), you
can change your problem difficulty in your preferences to 'hard' which targets
problems at your current rating and will get you a roughly 50% success rate over
time.
The rating adjustment for standard mode tactics is the same as that outlined above , correct
problems will give you a full 1-0 result, with you gaining points, and the problem losing points.
Problems you get wrong will give a 0-1 result, with you losing rating points, and the problem
gaining rating points.
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2.3.2. Blitz Rating
Unlike standard ratings, blitz ratings do use the time taken as part of the rating adjustment. This
means if you take too long to solve a problem, you may lose rating points, even if you get the
problem correct. Usually chess results come in three varieties, 1-0, 0-1 or 0.5-0.5, however the blitz
rating system extends this to have values other than 0,1 and 0.5 as results, so for example a 0.25-
0.75 result is possible, and when this result was fed into the Glicko rating system it would produce a
rating adjustment that was worse than a draw, but better than a complete loss. The blitz rating
system adjusts results in this way to account for time taken during the problem.
When you solve a blitz problem, you are competing against the average solve time of all users who
got that problem correct. If you solve the problem faster than 1 standard deviation from the
average solve time, then you get a solving bonus and instead of a 1-0 result, you are given the
equivalent of a 1.25-0 result. If you solve slower than this, but faster than the average time, then
you receive a full 1-0 result. If however you solve the problem less than the average time, then you
receive a result proportionate to how much slower you took compared to the average. So for
example if you took 20 seconds, and the average was 10 seconds you will receive a 0.5-0.5 result. As
your solve time increases, your result will approach zero, for example if you take 40 seconds and
the average was 10 seconds, then you will receive a 0.25-0.75 result.
Incorrect problems in blitz mode get a standard 0-1 result, where you lose rating points, and the
problem gains them in the same manner as a normal loss. Note that blitz problems can gain points
when you get a problem correct, as they receive 1 minus whatever value you receive as a result
(with a minimum of 0), so as shown above if you receive a 0.25 result, your opponent will receive
0.75.
To discourage guessing, and incremental solving, blitz problems also take account
of time taken after the first move and ads an extra penalty for time taken after the
first move. Essentially time taken after the first move is counted twice when
accounting for total time taken. So a solve time of 10 seconds where 5 of those
seconds were on the moves after the first, the total time used to calculate your
rating adjustment would be 15 seconds (10 seconds + 5 seconds).
To help reduce the impact on the rating system of users seeing problems multiple times, a reduction
in the reward for successful attempts on problems that have been seen before has been
implemented.
Duplicate reward reduction only applies to the top 1-3% of users in each rating type. This prevents
the top 10 lists from being a list of users with the best memory for past problems, rather than the
people with the strongest problem solving skills, but still allows lower rating users who are not
getting large memory benefits from past attempts to get full reward for problems.
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• 3rd Repeat - 45% of full credit
There are also time decay adjustments made if the user has not seen the problem for a long time. So
problems not seen for least 6 months receive a minimum of 45% of full credit, irrespective of how
many times they were solved in the past. Similarly, problems not seen for a year are given 75% of
full credit, no matter how many times they had been seen previously.
[ Give Up ]
The Give Up button allows you to finish the current problem without playing any further moves.
You will be marked as failing the problem, and your rating will be adjusted accordingly.
[ Replay ]
This replays the current problem. The button is hidden until after the problem is over.
[ Change Set ]
The Change Set button brings up the problem set selection dialog, allowing you to select a new
problem set for the next problem.
There are three groups of problem types, rated, unrated , personal and from my games. Rated
includes the officially rated sets such as Standard and Blitz sets. Unrated includes any of the default
custom sets such as Mate in 1, Fork etc. Personal is where any custom sets you create are placed.
From my games sets are sets targeting tactics extracted from your games.
[ End session ]
The [ End session ] button allows you to reset the session stats.
Difficulty selector
Click on the difficulty drop down to switch between easy, medium and hard difficulty modes.
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This option allows you to select the difficult of problems you receive when solving rated
problems. This option shifts the average rating of the problems you are given. 'Hard' mode
serves up problems targeted at your current rating level, so on average, problems rating will
match your own rating. The default 'medium' difficulty gives problems that are on average 100
rating points below your current rating, and 'easy' gives problems that are on average 200 rating
points below your current rating. You should expect different success rates at each level of
difficulty, and these different success rates ensures that on average, there is no total rating
advantage to any of these modes.
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Chapter 3. Endgame Training
The Chesstempo endgame training allows you to play through endgame positions, trying to
progress towards to mate. Often you do not have to play all the way to mate, as converting to a
more easily won endgame (by capture or promotion) is usually enough, although if a quick mate is
available after conversion, then you may be asked to play it.
Promotion or capture may not always cause the problem to finish if it was deemed that the
opponent still had threats that needed to be dealt with, for example when the opponent had very
advanced pawns , the problem may not end until you have neutralised the promotion threat. All
endgame problems start from positions that appeared in real games.
In Benchmark mode , your rating adjustment for successful solutions will be based on how many
moves you take compared to the average number of moves spent by all previous solvers who have
solved the problem correctly.
Benchmark mode is the only mode in which 7 piece endgames can be solved, as
the depth to mate metric required to score correct solutions in Practice and Theory
mode is not available for 7 piece endgames.
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3.4. Rating System
The rating system for endgames is similar to that used in the tactic problems, the Glicko rating
system is used to rate both endgame problems and players. For failed attempts rating adjustments
are done based on a straightforward 0-1 result. Your rating adjustment for successful rating
attempts depends on how many moves you played before completing the problem.
For benchmark mode if you take the same number of moves or less than the average number of
moves on correct attempts for all users, you will receive full rating points. As the number of moves
increases beyond the average, you’ll start to get reduced rating points. If you end up taking exactly
twice the number of moves compared to average, the result will be treated like a draw, so against a
problem rated at your current rating level, you will receive a zero points rating adjustment. If you
use more than twice as many moves compared to average, you will start to lose rating points
against a problem rated at your own rating level.
Note that in benchmark mode, some problems may have common paths that prune quickly when
converting to another endgame such as taking a pawn instead of opting to mate in the current
position. In this situation, the average move length played by all users may be shorter than than the
fastest mate in the current position. This could lead to unfair situations where a mate in 6 is played
with no extra moves, but marked down due to being considerably longer than the more common
move sequence that leads to a quick prune (but a longer mate). To avoid this unfairness,
Benchmark scoring on correct solution will also check depth to mate where available as a fall back
score adjustment method. This means if you would score highly based on how quickly you mated,
but the average move length would punish you, your score adjustment will be the highest of the
depth to mate vs the user average move length scoring methods.
Benchmark’s rating method allows you to play lines that may not be the fastest method to mate ,
but still exhibit good endgame technique without worrying about being punished too much, due to
using other solvers move lengths as the benchmark for scoring rather than number of moves to
mate.
For practice mode, successful rating adjustments are based on how much longer your number of
moves was compared to the fastest number of moves. If you play the optimal move at each point
then you will receive a full 1-0 result. However
Theory mode rating adjustments for successful attempts are similar to practice mode, except that
instead of total moves played impacting the outcome, it is the extra moves that would have been
used if the longer moves had been allowed. For positions where you attempt to play more than one
sub-optimal move, the move with the longest length to mate is used for rating purposes.
In theory and practice modes, the endgame training tool currently uses the
shortest distance to mate as the measurement of best moves. This means that to
make perfect play, all your moves must lead to the quickest mate. This can
sometimes lead to situations where the most obvious move (for example
promoting or taking an opponent’s piece) may not always be the quickest way to
mate. In these situations the server will treat takes or promotions as equivalent to
the shortest mating move, as long as capture or promotion doesn’t extend the
length of the shortest mate by more than 2 moves.
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No matter how sub-optimal your solution, or how many times you use the "Play
Best" button, you will never lose more points that you would if the problem is
marked wrong.
The result notification for correct endgames has two extra lines. The first line
shows the number of moves, and then in brackets the number of extra moves. The
second line shows you the score you received, 50% means you received a result
equivalent to a draw, i.e. 0.5-0.5, 25% means you received closer to a loss (or 0.25-
0.75), and 100% means you received maximum points (i.e. the equivalent of a 1-0
result). After the percentage score, the actual number of moves you were punished
for is also shown. Where you played sub-optimal , but allowed moves such as
slightly longer moves that promoted or took a piece, this value may be smaller
than the total number of sub-optimal moves shown on the number of moves line.
The annotations on the move list after the problem is over show moves that were not the best move
in the position. For example M10(M8) shows you played a move that was mate in 10 where the best
move was mate in 8. L10(M2) shows that you played a move that leads you to lose (i.e. be mated) in
10 moves, where the best move would have had you mate your opponent in 2 moves. D(M3)
indicates a move that draws when you could have mated in 3.
7 piece endgames do not show the number of moves to mate, only if the move is
winning, losing or a draw.
We also provide a distance to zero (DTZ) number for each move, which is the number of moves (in
ply) before the 50 move counter would reset (so before a pawn move or capture occurs).
Note that the scoring is 50 move rule aware, so there are three types of draws, the normal draw, a
cursed win draw (i.e. a position that allows mate, but not before the 50 move rule), and a blessed
loss (a position that would lead to the player getting mated, but not before the 50 move rule would
finish the game as a draw).
You can click on any of the moves in the legal move list to play that move on the board.
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Not that clicking on a move in the endgame legal move list or moving forward in the played move
list will play only one side’s move. However if you play the move by interacting with the pieces, the
opponent move will be played in reply, allow you to play out lines against the position.
The "Blitz" button allows you to take the option of solving endgame problems under the clock. The
"Blitz" button is intended for use on endgames which you feel may be easy to mate , but not easy to
play perfectly. After clicking the "Blitz" button, the clock changes to a count down timer and you
have until the clock reaches zero to solve the problem.
Similar to Benchmark and Practice modes (irrespective of whether you were in Theory or Practice
or Benchmark mode to start with), you are able to make any move you like (as long as it is still
winning). You will not be punished for moves that take longer than the shortest path to mate, and
in benchmark mode you will not be compared to the average number of moves to solve.
If you solve the problem within the time limit, you will get full points for getting the problem
correct. There are no rewards for fast times, you will be marked the same if you have 1 second left
on the clock or 50 seconds. If you run out of time, play a losing or drawing move then you will
marked incorrect. You can only choose to blitz a problem before your first move. The number of
seconds you have to solve the problem is defined by the function MAXIMUM(60,DTM*3.0+10) where
DTM = Depth to mate. The time used before you press the blitz button is also included in the time
allowed, so the longer you take to press the blitz button, the less time you will have to solve the
problem once the clock starts counting down.
When using the blitz button you are required to mate the opponent, the usual endgame pruning is
disabled. However, to avoid frustration from having to play out endgames against a lone king when
blitzing after having already converted from a harder endgame, there are specific conditions under
which a blitzed endgame will prune when you reach a position where your opponent has a lone
king. If you reach such a position that would normally be pruned in a non-blitzed endgame, and
have not used so much time already that you would likely not have time to mate, and have never
reached within 2 moves of checkmating up to this point, then the problem will finish without you
having to mate the opponent king. Sufficient time to mate is defined by the formula MAXIMUM(10
seconds,DTM*1 seconds). Or in other words if you have at least 10 seconds or 1 second per move to
mate left when you reach a lone king position for your opponent, then you will be deemed to have
enough time left to mate, and the early pruning check will be made.
Blitz mode is not available for 7 piece endgames, as the depth to mate metric
required to determine solve time is not available for those endgames.
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large penalty for using the button, so be careful how often you use it. Each time you use "Play Best"
there will be a certain number of moves added to your move count (used in calculating your rating
if you succeed). The penalty for using "Play Best" will be a minimum of 10 moves. In Practice and
Theory mode, if you have made any previous attempts then the penalty will be the longest attempt
you had made already for the current position plus an extra 5 move penalty (or 10 moves if this
number is still less than 10). Benchmark mode will add a flat 10 moves on to the number of moves
taken each time the play best button is used. The purpose of "Play Best" is to provide an alternative
to completely giving up, and thus to allow you a chance to learn more about a position which you
may otherwise feel completely lost in.
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Chapter 4. Chess Database
The Chesstempo database allows users to research openings and endgames, and study the games of
the great Grandmasters. Powerful search and filtering features are provided to control which
games are included in your opening research, or to help you find and study games of interest.
You can interact with the opening explorer by making moves on the board, or by clicking one of the
candidate moves. If you are playing through the moves in an actual game, the explorer will also be
active, and will show the stats for the current position in the game.
The number next to each candidate move provides an indication of the popularity of each move. By
default, this number shows the number of times the position after the move was reached in the
database. Because this count is based on the resulting position, and not the actual move, this means
that the count is aware of transpositions, and will also include the number of times the resulting
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position was reached via other moves. If you wish to see the count for only the moves that were
played in the current position, and ignore transpositions into the subsequent position, then you can
change the explorer stats settings from Resulting Position › ] to menu:Actual Moves[ . This is
discussed in more detail in the Explorer Stats Options section of the user guide.
The other columns in the opening explorer show the date the move was last played (or the resulting
position reached, depending on the Explorer Stats setting), the average and maximum rating of the
player playing the move, as well as the performance rating of the move. The performance rating
uses the USCF tournament performance rating calculation, and provides a rating for a move based
on the rating of the opponents of the player who played the move, and the number of times the
game ended up won or lost after the move. If the performance rating is higher than the average
rating of players who played the move, the performance rating is displayed in green, and if it is
below the average rating, it will be displayed in red. The colours can be used to see moves that lead
to positions where the players of the move perform above or below their average rating.
White has a natural advantage in the opening, so white moves are more likely to
receive green colouring than black moves. This factor should be considered when
interpreting performance rating based colouring.
These values show the respective outcomes for games where each move was played (or each
resulting position arrived at). The bars allow the relative outcomes to be seen at a glance.
By default, Game Database subsets (2200+, SuperGM+ etc) and game searches (both advanced and
quick search) impact the games used to generate the statistics for the Opening Explorer. So for
example if you specify the database subset as SuperGM+ then the Opening Explorer will only
include games where both players were rated 2700+. You may also want to look at recent theory in
a line, and specify a date search criteria to include only games played recently. It is also possible to
specify a player’s name to view the opening repertoire of that player. To make this useful, you
probably want to look at one colour at a time (otherwise the opening stats will include moves
played by the player’s opponents). For example, specifying Piece Colour as white will only have
games where the specified player played with the white pieces, so all white move stats will be from
the player’s point of view, and all black move stats will be from the opponent’s point of view. It is
also possible to specify an opponent name to view the types of openings played between particular
opponents, a Piece Colour setting should also be used here so that each colour’s moves are
attributed to only one of the players, rather than showing a mix of choices across different games.
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4.1.4. Explorer Stats Options
By default, opening explorer statistics for each move are based on analyzing the position that is
reached after the relevant move is made. This allows stats to account for transpositions into the
resulting position from other lines. There may be times at which this is not the desired behaviour,
and you would prefer to see the stats based only on the instances in which the relevant move was
played in the current position. To do this you can choose the option from the Explorer Stats option
selector. To return to the default behaviour choose .
Related openings shows a list of the openings that contain the current position. This display is
transposition aware, so it will show openings that contain the current position, even if the move
sequence in the move list is different from the opening’s actual move sequence. As the number of
openings can be very large for some positions, it is suggested you only have this panel open when
needed, as downloading the information can slow down other operations.
The initial board position will not show any related openings, if you wish to see a
list of all openings, the Openings List page is the best place to see them.
The search results are displayed under the search filter. You can sort most of the columns by
clicking on the column headings, the sort order can be reversed but clicking on the column header
a second time. There are three icons shown in the first column:
[ Download PGN ]
The first icon on the left allows you to download the the PGN of the game.
When opening a game in the current window, the search results will remain,
but any previous game and lines will be replaced with the new game, and there
is currently no way of returning back to them, so if you have lines in the move
list you still want to refer to, open in new window button is the best option.
If you click on any of the other links in the results list, they will take you to the relevant player or
opening shown in the link.
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4.2.2. Quick Search
Quick Search allows you to rapidly enter simple search criteria, without having to use the more
complicated advanced search panel. Search criteria supported in quick search includes:
Year
Any 4 digits e.g. 2007
Year Range
Two years separated by a hyphen, e.g. 2007-2009. All games played within the years will be
matched.
ECO
Any ECO code, e.g. B52
ECO Range
Two ECO codes separated by a hyphen, e.g. B52-B56. This will search for all games with openings
within the ECO range.
Minimum Rating
A 4 digit number with a + at the end, e.g. 2500+, would match games where one of the player’s
rating is 2500 or higher.
Event
Any string preceded by the word event: will matches games in events containing the following
word. For example event:Corus. If you want to match more than one word then you will need to
put the words in quotes, for example: event:"World Championship"
Site
Any string preceded by the word site: will match all games played at sites that match the
following word, for example: site:London. Again, if you want to match more than one word them
quotes are required, for example: site:"New York".
Opening Name
Any string preceded by the word opening: will match all games that used the specified opening,
for example: opening:Sicilian. Again, if you want to match more than one word them quotes are
required, for example: opening:"Sicilian Dragon".
Player Name
The name of a player, playing either white or black in a game. There is no special syntax for
player names, you can simply type them directly, e.g. Kasparov.
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4.2.3. Advanced Search
Advanced search allows more explicit control over search criteria than is provided under Quick
Search, and also allows access to some search features not made available via Quick Search. When
the database page is first loaded, the advanced search is hidden, to show the advanced search
fields, click on the [ Advanced Search ] link.
Game Details Search allows you to specify criteria that are related to the game as a whole, currently
the following criteria are supported:
Player
Player
Player Name
The name of the player. The more specific the name, the more specific the results, for
example if you type 'Kasparov' will receive results from not only Garry Kasparov, but also
Sergei Kasparov and Tatiana Kasparov. The name format is fairly flexible, so the following
should all return the same results:
• Garry Kasparov
• G Kasparov
• Kasparov, Garry
• Kasparov, G
Some player names are given aliases, so for example 'Gary Kasparov' will be equivalent to 'Garry
Kasparov'. Several names can be added using semi-colons as separators for example:
Kasparov;Carlsen, will return games played by one of Kasparov and Carlsen (but not necessarily
against each other).
Player Rating
The rating range of the players to match. If no player names are specified, this will match all
players with this rating range.
Piece Colour
The colour of the pieces played by the player. There doesn’t need to be a player name entered for
this to apply, for example if a rating range is entered and 'white' is chosen as the piece colour,
then it will apply the rating range to games where the white player had the rating range
specified, instead of either player. Similarly, if a colour is selected here and an opponent player
name is entered, then the opponent name will only be matched against games where the
opponent played with the opposite colour to the one specified.
Result
Specifies the outcome of the game from the first player’s perspective. So for example if you enter
Kasparov as the player name, and Karpov as the opponent player name and select 'Win' as the
result, then you will search for all games where Kasparov beat Karpov. If you also select the
piece colour , for example 'black' then you will return all games Kasparov beat Karpov where
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Kasparov played the black pieces. To search for any games where Kasparov won as black , you
can select Kasparov as the player name, piece colour as 'black' and result as 'win', leaving the
opponent name fields blank. Another example of a result based search is to look for games
where Kasparov lost to players under 2500. This would require choosing Kasparov as the player
name, choosing 'Loss' as the result and entering 0 and 2500 for the min/max rating for the
opponent rating. Result’s do not have to have player names entered, for example using setting
result to 'Win' and piece colour 'Black' would return all games in the database where black won.
Opponent Name
The name of the opponent. It is important to remember that player versus opponent name is not
the same as white versus black player name. The player and opponent names are colour neutral
unless the 'piece colour' option has been selected, so entering Kasparov as the player name and
Karpov as the opponent name will return all games between Kasparov and Karpov, irrespective
of which colour pieces each player had.
Opponent Rating
Rating range of the opponent. Like player rating range, this does not require an opponent name
to have been entered, leaving opponent name blank and entering in values for the opponent
rating will match all games with opponents within the rating range.
Year
Year - Range of years in which matching games must have been played.
# Moves
The total number of moves in the matching games. This value is in terms of half moves (also
known as ply), so 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 would be 3 moves.
Event
The name of the event that the matching games were played in. Multiple event names may be
entered by separating them with the semi-colon character.
Site
The name of the event that the matching games were played in, again a semi-colon can be used
to separate multiple site names.
Opening Name
The name of the opening in each game to be matched, multiple openings can be entered by using
a semi-colon to separate the names.
ECO Code(s)
The ECO codes of matching games, multiple ECO codes can be separated with a semi-colon, or
eco ranges can be entered , for example E90-E92.
Material Search
Material search allows you to search for particular material configurations on the board. This is
especially useful for finding endgame positions to study, but can also be used for other purposes,
such as using material value differences to find games involving sacrifices.
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Material search results will have game link buttons that will go to the first position
in the game which matched the material criteria. Only the first matching position
in each game will be returned in the results, even if there was a matching position
later in the game with the colour of the matched pieces reversed.
Material Counts
Material counts allow you to specify a position with a certain number of pieces of each type on the
board. You can specify an exact number of pieces or a range of number of pieces. An exact count is
specified by setting the minimum and maximum to the same value. Pieces types that don’t have a
count, or count range specified are treated as 'wildcards', that is any number of that piece type are
allowed. Piece counts can be adjusted in several ways:
Text Entry
Directly entering the minimum or maximum values into the text box next to the piece.
Up/Down Arrows
Clicking the up or down arrows next to each minimum or maximum box will increase or
decrease the count.
Zero Button
Clicking on the [ Zero Button ] sets the count to zero, such that only positions with none of that
type of piece will be matched.
Cancel
Clicking on the [ Cancel Button ] will reset the count to the default. The default is the wildcard
setting, which will match any number of the piece.
In addition to each piece type there is also a 'Minor' piece type and a 'Value' type. 'Minor' pieces is a
type which covers counts for both bishops and knights, so a count range of 1 to 2 here means you
could have 1 bishop, 1 knight, 2 bishops , 2 knights, or just a bishop and a knight. The 'Value' count
lets you search based on a count of material value, using the traditional values of:
• Pawn - 1
• Knight - 3
• Bishop - 3
• Rook - 5
• Queen - 9
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Kings are not counted in the 'Value' count, and therefore have effective value of zero for Value
counts.
When using 'Minor' piece search criteria you need to make sure you are not
creating separate Bishop and Knight criteria that would clash with the 'Minor'
piece specifications, otherwise you may not receive the results you expect, for
example asking for 0 Knights and Bishops, but also asking for 2 Minor pieces will
lead to incorrect results.
Material Difference
Material Difference ranges allow you to specify the material in relative difference to the opponent,
rather than in absolute terms. So for example a material difference range of -2 for the pawns,
means that the player is down 2 pawns compared to the opponent. This is often more flexible than
using exact counts, as it covers all such situations rather than just one particular case, i.e. rather
than just specifying a player pawn count of 6 and an opponent pawn count of 8, a pawn difference
search of -2 includes all of player 0 pawns and opponent 2 pawns, player 1 pawn and opponent 3
pawns etc.
Material difference searches allow you to search for particular material inbalances on the board,
for example by specifying an exact material difference in minor pieces of -1, and rooks +1 you can
find positions where one side has won the exchange. You could also add a pawn difference range to
this search of -2 to -1 to find won exchanges where the opponent was given 1 to 2 pawns in
compensation.
Material differences can also be combined with exact material counts, so for example an exchange
winning difference search could be combined with an exact count of zero for queens for both
player and opponent , to find positions where the exchange was one and both queens are off the
board.
Stability Length
Stability length specifies the number of ply (half moves) that the position must be stable for in
order to match the search. The default value is two, which means the material situation must match
the criteria and remain stable for at least the move on which the material balance occurred and
after the subsequent opponent move.
Stability length applies to the entire position, not just the material specified in the
search. This means that if for example, you specify an exact match of 1 queen for
each player, and a stability length of 4, this will not match a position with 2 queens
on the board for 4 moves, if during those moves any other pieces are taken. It will
only match positions where there was 2 queens on the board, and the total
material on the board remains the same for 4 moves.
The Bishop Square Colour option allows you to specify whether the bishops left on the board are on
the same or different square colours.
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Bishop square selections should be consistent with the material specified. For
example, asking for 2 bishops on each side, and specifying same colour bishops
doesn’t make sense. The square colour options are only relevant to situations
where there is only one bishop on each side.
Endgame Selector
It can sometimes be time consuming to set up a material search for a particular endgame type you
are interested in. To make common endgame searches easier to perform, a quick endgame selector
is provided at the top of the material search tab. The endgames are categorized using the same
chapter and section divisions used in Reuben Fine’s Basic Chess Endings.
The endgame selector creates the relevant material search fields to match the
endgame description. Even if a specific endgame you want to find is not in the
endgame selector, choosing the closest available endgame in the selector and then
tweaking the material search criteria may be much faster than creating a search
from the initial default search criteria.
All material search criteria are combined with the criteria from the game details tab, so for games
to match the search, they must match both game details and material search criteria. The game
details player and opponent criteria are especially relevant, as they dictate which colour pieces the
player and opponent material is counting. By default the colour of the pieces is ignored during
material matches so, for example a player material difference match of 'Minor -2 to -1' will match
any position where either black or white was 1 or 2 minor pieces down. However, if you selected
'Piece Colour' white and did the same search you would only get positions where white was down 1
or 2 minor pieces.
Combining the game details 'Result' criteria allows for some interesting searches. For example
specifying Result: 'Win' and a player 'Value' difference range of -38 to -5 and a longer stability length
of say 4, you can see all the games where a player was down at least 5 points of material, for at least
4 moves, and still ended up winning the game. Particularly for high rated players' games, these
positions are often going to be tactical sacrifices of a rook or queen.
The Games for Position list, is particularly useful in conjunction with the opening explorer, and can
be used to study example master games that followed the current opening line.
Like the game search results table, most columns can be sorted by clicking on the relevant column
header. See the Results List section of the user guide for more information on the columns returned
in the Games for Position results.
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4.4. Players List
The Player List page allows you to search for a particular player. It can also be used to identify the
top players, as well as the top players by country, gender, rating range, or a particular period in
history.
Player Names(s)
The player names you want to search for. You can enter multiple names by separating them with
semi colons, for example: Kasparov;Karpov
Player name auto-complete will be triggered after at least 3 letters have been entered. Auto-
complete displays the player names that match the letters types. You can click on the player
name to choose the relevant player , or continue to type letters to further refine the choices.
FIDE Id(s)
The FIDE ids of the player players you wish to search for, multiple IDs should be separated by
the ';' character, for example: 4100018;600024
Rating
The minimum and maximum rating for the players you want to match. This matches the
player’s most recent rating.
Gender
The gender of the players that will be matched by the search. This criteria can be used to show
the top male or female users.
Federation Code(s)
The chess federation of the country the matched players are currently playing under. These are
three letter codes such as RUS,USA,POL etc. Multiple federation codes can be entered by
separating them with semi-colons, for example: RUS;USA
Name
The name of the player, in "lastName, firstName" format.
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Last Played
The date of the most recent game played by the player in the database.
Country
The chess federation the player most recently played for.
Max Rating
The maximum rating achieved by the player.
Rating
The most recent rating the player has achieved.
Games
The total number of games by the player that are stored in the database.
Piece Colour
The colour of the last player to move in an opening line, in other words, the piece colour of the
player, that chose this particular line.
Opening Name(s)
The name of the opening(s) to search for. Multiple opening names can be entered by separating
them with a semi-colon. You don’t need to enter for the full name of the opening for it to match,
for example entering Dragon will match the standard Sicilian dragon, as well as the accelerated
dragon.
ECO Code(s)
The ECO code of the openings you wish to see. Multiple ECO codes can be entered by separating
them with semi-colons. ECO ranges can also be entered in the format B50-B56. Multiple ranges
can also be entered such as B50-B56;B60-B70.
Opening
The name of the opening.
Colour
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The colour of the pieces played by the last player to move in the opening line.
Num Games
The total number of games that used this opening.
ECO
The ECO classification for this opening.
Last Played
The date this opening was most recently played.
Perf Rating
The performance rating for this opening. This is the performance rating of all the games this
rating was played in.
Avg Player
The average rating of players who choose to play this opening.
Player Win %
The total % of games in which the player who choose this opening won.
Draw %
The total % of games in which this opening was played that led to a draw.
Opponent Win %
The total % of games in which the player who choose this opening lost (i.e. their opponent won).
Moves
The moves which define this opening.
4.6.1. Comments
The comments tab allows you to read and add comments relevant to a particular player.
The player rating graph shows how the player’s rating has changed over time.
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4.6.3. Opening Stats
The player opening stats shows the most frequently played openings for the player with the white
and black pieces. The 'Played' column of each table shows the total number of times the player
played an opening and how the player performed , for example:
13 (+3 -4 =6)
shows the player had played the opening 13 times, for 3 wins, 4 losses and 6 draws. You can click on
any of the opening names to see the opening details page for that opening. Openings will open in
the current page unless you ask your browser to open them in a new tab or window.
When viewing a player details page, a repertoire selector is provided just above the opening
explorer. This lets you choose which games of the player the explorer will show stats for. By
default, both white and black games are shown, however for the white moves, this will also show
stats that include games where the player whose details are being shown had played the black
pieces. To view only the stats for games in which the player played one of the pieces, you can use
the repertoire selector to choose either black or white pieces only. If white is chosen, then all the
stats for the white moves will reflect only the games where the player played the white pieces, and
the black move stats will reflect only the player’s opponent moves.
4.7.1. Comments
The comments tab allows you to read and add comments relevant to a particular opening.
The opening popularity graph shows the relative popularity of an opening across the time period
that it has been played. In order to factor out the increasing number of games recorded in the
modern period, the graph is based upon number of games per thousand in which the particular
opening was played in each year. This allows a more meaningful comparison of popularity over
time.
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4.8.1. Game Data
When the game details are for a game, instead of user entered moves, the details for that game are
displayed above the move list. This data includes the names and ratings of the players who played
the game, the date the game was played, the event and location the game was played in, the result,
the opening, and the ECO code the game was tagged with. The opening used to tag the game is
based on the latest position in the game that matched a move reached in a recognized opening.
Because the opening tagging is position based, rather than move based, the opening tag is
transposition aware, and relies on the positions eventually reached, rather than the moves made to
reach them.
The move list shows the current list of moves. For a game, this starts out as the full list of moves
from the game. If the user is making their own moves, the move list will show those moves.
Whether the moves are for a game stored in the database or not, new moves or variations can be
added at any point by playing a different move to the next move to be played in the move list. Any
move can be clicked on in the move list in order to jump to that position on the board.
Just below the move list is the opening relevant to the current position shown on the board. This is
different to the opening a game was tagged with, as it shows the opening the move list would be
tagged with if the game finished at the currently selected position. As you move through a move list,
the opening will become more specific as the moves continue.
The buttons beneath the move list allow several actions to be taken:
[ Report Problem ]
Due to the large variety of public sources that games have been collected from, inconsistencies
are inevitable. Exact duplicates are removed from the database, however there may be near
duplicate versions of a game that are incorrect and require removal or correction. The Report
Problem button allows you to report problems with a particular game, and the resulting reports
will be used to improve the quality of the database. If you are unsure on whether a game score is
accurate, you may want to post a link to it in the forum , so others can discuss it.
[ Download PGN ]
The Download PGN buttons allows you to download the PGN of the game you are viewing. The
Download PGN button can also be used to download moves,variations or comments you have
entered yourself.
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[ Promote Variation ]
The Promote Variation button takes the sub-variation holding the currently selected move and
swaps it with the parent variation, with the old parent variation becoming a sub-variation.
[ Reset Board ]
The reset button returns the board and move list to the initial position.
The reset button clears all existing moves and variations, and these cannot be
restored.
[ Jump to Novelty ]
The jump to novelty button moves to the last position in a game that is shared with other games.
This means the next move to be played was a novelty, never seen before in any game in the
database. The novelty button can be used in combination with the Games for Position tab, which
after the Jump to Novelty button is pressed will show the games in the database that were closest
to the current game.
NOTE: The jump to novelty button will jump to the last novelty in the game, it is possible that
earlier novelties may exist in situations where transpositions led the game back into a more
popular line later in the game.
Currently search filters or database subset choices are not applied to the novelty
processing, so the games used for novelty matching use all games in the database.
Because games can be loaded directly into the page without causing a page reload, the link at the
top of the browser window, may not reflect a link to the current game. To provide a convenient way
of saving or book marking links to a game and position, a permanent link is provided beneath the
game board. For games this will link to the game and the current position. For moves entered
without a game, it will link to a page that will show the current board position, but without the
move list.
The material graph shows how the material balance in a game changes over time. This can be used
to see key points in the game, both where material has been swapped, or a persistent material
advantage has been gained. The graph can be clicked on to move to the relevant point in the move
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list.
Game comments allow you to add comments that are specific to a particular game.
The database subset will effect the game search, the games for position list and the results shown in
the opening explorer. The database subset will be ignored if you enter a rating based search in the
advanced or quick search.
[ Paste Position/Moves ]
The paste FEN position or moves button beneath the database board allows you to paste either a
FEN position or a list of moves in standard PGN format into the database in order to initialize
the board to a particular position or move list.
When pasting moves, an entire PGN file is not required, so for example you could paste in 1.e4
c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 in order to see the Sicilian Najdorf, and start
exploring further lines in that opening.
When moving through the moves in a game, the game database may indicate that
it is busy loading related data, for example when loading opening explorer stats or
updating the games for position list. If you want to quickly move though the moves
in the game, you do not need to wait for these operations to finish before going on
to the next move. If you don’t want to see the opening explorer or games for
position results for each position, you can press the arrow keys (or click on the
forward/previous buttons) as quickly as you like, without having to wait for the
data for the current position to finish loading.
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Chapter 5. Comment System
Comments allow you to express your opinion on tactic and endgame positions, games, players and
openings.
Please read the Problem Comment Guidelines for the rules and guidelines on
commenting on tactic and endgame problems.
Boards can be inserted into a comment using the analysis board or 'Copy Fen' button which has a
'Copy to Comment' option. The 'Copy Fen' option creates a static board position represented by the
current position on the board.
[moves start=START_POSITION_FEN]PGN_MOVE_LIST[/moves]
[moves start=r5k1/b2brp1p/p1pN1pn1/q1N5/1p2P3/1Q4P1/PP2B1KP/2RR4
b - - 0 1]1... Bh3+ 2. Kxh3 Bxc5
3. Bf3 Bxd6 4. Rxd6 Ne5 5. Rxf6 Kh8 6. Rd6 Rd8 7. Rxd8+
Qxd8 8. Rd1 Rd7 9. Be2 Rxd1 10. Qxd1
[/moves]
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Static Position
[fen]FEN_POSITION[/fen]
[fen]3q3k/5p1p/p1p5/4n3/1p2P3/6PK/PP2B2P/3Q4 b - - 0 10[/fen]
5.5. My Comments
The 'My Comments' tab on the Problems Page provides a convenient way of viewing replies on
problems you have commented on in the past. The 'My Comments' tab shows a list of problems you
have commented on, and all the comments on those problems. The problems are ordered such that
the problems that have been most recently commented on appear first. This means you can
regularly read the list to view new comments on problems you have previously commented on.
Your own comments are highlighted, and a colour bar separates the comments of one problem
from another.
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Chapter 6. Problem Search and Custom
Problem Sets
Problem search allows you to find problems matching a specified criteria, premium users can
create custom problem sets based on these criteria.
Problem #
Each problem, has a unique number assigned to it, this makes it useful when communicating
with others about the problem, for example when posting on the forum. The problem numbers
are direct links to the problems. They can can be clicked on, or copy and pasted into the forum
or emailed to allow others to go directly to the problem.
Moves
The Moves column shows the number of moves in a problem, these are full moves, rather than
ply, so 2 moves means at least two moves from the side to play.
Rating
This is the current rating of the problem using the selected 'Rating Type', for example if you
select 'Blitz' as the rating type then this will be the blitz rating of the problem.
Av Secs
Average number of seconds taken to solve the problem. Note this only includes successful
attempts. The number of seconds is for the rating type selected.
Attempts
The number of times the problem has been attempted. This is the number of times for the rating
type selected, and does not include unrated attempts, or attempts in other rating modes.
% Correct
The percentage of people who solved the problem correctly. Again, this is for the rating type
selected, and does not include unrated attempts, or attempts in other rating modes.
Correct
The total number of times you have got the problem correct.
Wrong
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The total number of times you have got the problem wrong.
Number of Moves
The number of moves in the tactic. These are full moves, for tactics they are measured as the
number of moves the solver must make to complete the problem. For endgames the number of
moves is the fastest number of moves to reach mate. Due to pruning, the endgame problems
often reach completion before mate is achieved.
Total Attempts
This is the total number of times a problem has been attempted using the selected rating type.
This number is across all solvers, not just the attempts of the person doing the search.
Tactic Tags
This allows use to select tactic problems based on their tag, such as Fork, Pin etc. To add a new
tag, select the tag scope in the first column (Tag or Primary tag, where primary tag is a tag which
has the most votes of all tags for the problem). The second column says if you are matching
problems with the tag or only problems without the tag. The final column is the actual tag
selector. You can add another tag using the + button. By default multiple tags need all tags to
match on a problem for the problem to match. To change this, switch from the 'All' choice to the
'Any' choice which means a problem will match if any of the multiple tags match. If you need
more complicated matching such as (Fork AND Pin) OR (Discovered attack) you can create
tagging groups. Click on the group icon (the three circles next to the + button) to create a new
sub-group of the current top level group and enter the criteria for the sub-group. To achieve
(Fork AND Pin) OR (Discovered attack), you would create one sub-group with Fork and Pin as
multiple tags and the 'All' criteria, and then a top level with one Discovered attack criteria, and
have the top level changed from 'All' to 'Any'. You can also choose the tag vote threshold which is
how many more up votes than down votes is needed on a tag for it to match. The higher the
number, the more certain the tag will be, but the less problems that will match.
Endgame Type
This allows use to select endgame problems based on the endgame type, for example, KRPKR is
the Rook and Pawn versus Rook endgame. To see this option, theory or practice rating type must
be selected. Multiple endgame types can be selected. The numbers shown in brackets after each
endgame type is the number of problems for that type. Currently only available on old site.
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to a losing or lost position.
Outcome type
The outcome option indicates if you want matching problems to be mates, non-mates or either.
This options is only useful for tactics problems, as all endgames are deemed to be 'mates'.
Quality rating
The quality range option allows you to select problems based on their quality rating. If you want
to select a value that is not a whole number that is not supported by the slider, then you can
click on the minimum or maximum value to enter an exact value.
Colour to move
The colour of the pieces controlled by the player solving the problem.
Number of pieces
The number of pieces on the board at the start of the problem.
The number of pieces, colour to move and game move number search criteria can be useful when
combined with the opening name/ECO code search criteria, allowing you to choose tactics from
games that used your opening of choice, and concentrate on the tactics that actually appeared in
the opening phase of the game, rather than middle game/endgame positions that happened to arise
out of the opening you searched for.
Comment search
Matches only problems with the supplied search string in one of their problem comments. For
example "boden" would return problems where people had discussed Boden’s mate (likely
because the problem itself was of that type).
The previous attempts criteria of the advanced search allows you specify problems based on the
nature of your previous attempts against them.
All Problems
This is the default option, and matches any problem, irrespective of your past history with the
problem.
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Problems I have tried
This criteria matches problems you have attempted in the past, irrespective of the outcome.
The problem set attempts criteria can be chosen to apply to all problems, or a subset of problems.
All problems is the default , and includes any problem, both from the official sets, and custom sets.
The other options are blitz, standard, mixed, theory and practice attempts. If for example you
choose standard and apply the 'Problems I always got wrong' then this will match only problems
you got wrong in standard mode.
Solve time ranges of the problem attempts can also be chosen, here the solve time is the shortest
solve time across all attempts, and is defined in number of seconds. You also choose to include all as
yet unsolved problems in the search , which is useful if you want to solve a set of problems until
you can solve them all under a specified minimum solve time. You can also choose to only use the
most recent solve time for the solve time matching. This allows you to include problems that you
may have solved quickly in the past, but where your most recent attempt was slower. Without
using the "Use most recent time" option,the time that is matched is the shortest time across all
problem attempts.
How recently you have seen a problem can also be used as an attempt filter criteria by entering a
"Days since last seen" range. For example setting this to 0-31 would only give you problems you had
seen in the last month. Setting it to 31-365 would only give you problems you hadn’t seen for at
least a month, but had seen within the last year.
These are options to be applied to any custom set created based on the search criteria.
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Rating adjustment method
Allows you to chose the method of rating your custom set, it can use the blitz, mixed or standard
rating methods.
This option selects how problems will be selected from your created problem set:
Random
Randomly select any problem from those that match the search criteria.
Target my rating
Use the same method used for the Blitz/Standard/Mixed sets which uses a bell curve centered
around your rating and selects items based on that curve, meaning that problems close to your
rating will be chosen much more often than problem further from your rating.
Sorted
The sorted options allow you to control what order problems are served up from a custom set.
See the sorted sets section for more details.
Spaced repetition
Select problems from your set based on a spaced repetition selection algorithm. See the spaced
repetition section for more details.
The advanced searched criteria used in the database is also available in the advanced problem
search. This allows you to match problems based on their source game criteria. For example the
player (or players) involved, their rating range, or the opening played. Please see the Advanced
Search section of the database chapter for more detail on the criteria available here.
Currently only game detail parameters are available for problem search, material
search is not yet supported as part of the problem set matching criteria.
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Because custom sets are dynamic and any new problems or existing problems that
change to meet the criteria of the set search criteria will become available in the
set, some problems may appear out of order according to the set’s sort criteria. For
example if you are doing a custom set sorted on ascending problem rating with
ratings in the 1000-1200 range, and you’ve already done all the problems rated
from 1000-1100, but a problem that was previously rated 990 gets a rating
adjustment that leads it to become rated over 1000 , then that will be the problem
that is served next, as it will be the problem in the set, not yet solved during the
current run that has the 'lowest' match on the sort criteria.
Some ordered sets may have no problems left to do after they are complete. For
example if you are doing a set ordered on rating and have selected 'Problems I
always got wrong', then if you get all the problems in the matching set correct,
then the set will eventually become empty. This behaviour allows you to repeat
particular problem sets until you have completely mastered them, but without
having to solve the same problems many times. In this example when you start
getting new problems wrong, the empty set will start to fill up again.
Unsorted
This is the default ordering, and will serve up matching problems in random order.
Problem Rating
Sort custom sets by problem rating. Combined with ascending sort direction, this option
provides an effective way of creating custom sets that get more difficult as you go through the
problems.
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Minimum Solve Time
Sorts problems based on the fastest time you have solved them in the past. Using a descending
sort direction allows you to do the problems you’ve taken the longest on first.
Moves in Problem
Sorts problem sets by the number of moves in the problem. The most common use of this
criteria is to combine it with outcome type "mate", to create custom sets that first give you mate
in 1 problems, and then mate in 2 problems etc. NOTE: For endgame problems, the number of
moves is the number of moves to mate from the starting position, not the number of moves to
where the problem is pruned.
You can create a spaced repetition set by enabling the "Spaced repetition" option for the problem
selection type (instead of the default "Random Selection"). The selector can be found just above the
problem set ordering options.
For spaced repetition sets, you get two new numbers next to the problem set count at the bottom of
the problem board, for example: Problem Set: TestSR ( 91 in set) ( Learning: 8, Scheduled: 4 )
"Learning" is the number of problems in the set that we are currently actively learning.
"Scheduled" is the number of problems that are currently due for review.
When "Scheduled" = 0, each time you do a problem, a new problem will be added to the set for
learning. When "Learning" is the same as the number of problems in the set , trying to do problems
when Scheduled = 0 will lead to problems being done in order of the next one that would be
scheduled (i.e. you’ll be solving problems "early", before they are due for review). If you can’t be
given problems early without repeating the last scheduled problem, then you’ll be told you need to
wait for the next scheduled problem to be due.
If you get a problem wrong, it will be scheduled for serving again in 5 minutes. The first time you
get a problem correct, it is scheduled for review in 1 day from when you solved it. After the second
correct attempt in a row, the next problem serving time is determined by the gap between the last
two times you saw the problem, and a factor estimating how difficult the problem was for you. The
difficulty factor is currently decided by the ratio of your most recent solve time on the problem
compared to the average solve time for all users. By default, the problem will be scheduled to be
served again at a time that is two times longer than the last time gap between solving it. If you solve
it under the average time, then you will not see it again for up to 3 times longer (depending on how
much quicker you solved it compared to average). If you solve it slower than the average time, then
the gap to the next view will be reduced to as little as 1.3 times the last gap between solutions (again
depending on exactly how much slower).
Over time, the problems you know well will get increasingly large gaps between serving times,
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those you are having trouble with will get served more often, until they too become "well known".
You can use most of the problem search/custom set options with spaced repetition sets, although
there are some exceptions. Ordered sets, are not compatible with spaced repetition, as the spaced
repetition scheduling will override the sort order of the set. Also some sets such as "problems I’ve
never seen before" don’t make sense with SR sets, as they will lead problems to drop out of the set,
as soon as you’ve done them the first time. Merged sets are also currently incompatible with spaced
repetition sets, so merged sets where one or more subsets are spaced repetition set types will not
work as expected.
It can be useful to create spaced repetition sets based on a custom tag as the search criteria , so you
can add specific problems to your spaced repetition set by tagging the problems. However, you can
also use other search criteria such as "all forks from 1200-1400" etc to define set membership.
So for example if the difficulty estimate is 1.0, Spacing Growth Rate is 2.0 and Maximum and
Minimum space growth is 3.0 and 1.0, and the last gap between correct attempts on the problem
was 10 days. The gap factor will be:
max(min(log(1.0)+2.0,3.0),1.0) or
max(min(0+2.0,3.0),1.0) =
2.0 so the next attempt on this problem will be scheduled 10 days *2.0 = 20 days into the future. A
more difficult problem (i.e. one which was solved more slowly) would have a smaller gap factor,
and would be served up again more quickly, how quickly would depend on how slow the attempt
was, and the value of the Minimum Space Growth parameter.
DIFFICULTY_ESTIMATE is a value that approximates how hard you found your last attempt on the
problem. The value used here depends on the difficulty estimate method chosen.
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Spacing Growth Rate
Controls how quickly the gap between correct attempts will grow. Larger numbers lead to a
more rapidly expanding gap after each correct attempt.
Average Time
Difficulty is estimated by your most recent solve time compared to the average solve time by
all users on the problem.
Minimum Time
Difficulty is estimated by comparing your shortest time during the current sequence of
correct attempts to your most recent solve time.
Recent Time
Difficulty is estimated by comparing the average solve time of your own current sequence of
correct attempts to your most recent solve time.
Target Seconds/Move
Difficulty is estimated by comparing a fixed amount of time per move to your most recent
correct solve time (in which case the time you took on the last attempt is also calculated as
seconds/move).
Target Seconds/Problem
Difficulty is estimated by comparing a fixed total problem solve time to your most recent
correct solve time on the problem.
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Once you have created a problem set you need to choose it as your current problem set in order to
use it. You can choose to set it as the current upon creation or you can change the set on the solving
page or in your preferences.
Custom problem sets are dynamic, such that new problems may enter the set at
any time. For example if you create a set with the "problems I always got wrong"
criteria, and end up solving all those problems, then if you get more problems
wrong in the future, they will automatically appear in this set, and will not be
removed until you get them correct.
To merge sets you need to go to the manage custom problem sets panel (see Managing Custom
Problem Sets section of the manual). You can then select the two, or more problem sets you wish to
merge, and then click the [ Merge ] button. You will then be prompted to enter a name for the new
merged set, ad will need to provide percentage weights for each subset. Weights will need to total
100%.
Once you have chosen your merged set as your current problem set, problems will be served up
based on the percentage weights you have provided.
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Short term random fluctuations may occur in merged set distribution, where one
set may be used more than others, in the long term however, the distribution will
match the requested weighting.
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Chapter 7. Problem Tagging
Problem tagging allows you to mark the tactical motifs on tactical problems and to create custom
tags for personal tagging requirements. Voting allows you to vote for a new tag, or for or against an
existing tag.
The number of votes for and against each tag is shown in brackets after the tags. To avoid clutter,
votes are not shown on tags that have an overwhelming number of votes in favour.
Alternatively the + Tag and - Tag buttons can be used. The + Tag button is the only way of voting for
a new tag, or adding an extra tag for existing green tags that don’t show vote counts.
Needs more move tags allow you to suggest a move to continue the line when the problem may
finish too early to show the point of the tactic. Only the first move in the follow up line should be
entered, and when processed later, the engine will try to further extend the line from that move.
Needs different opponent move tags let you suggest a different move for the opponent that might
allow the point of the position to be shown more clearly. Only a single move should be entered, and
it should replace an existing move by the opponent in the main line of the tactic.
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Custom tags can be used to search problems with those tags in the advanced problem search where
they are shown in the tactical motifs/tags list. Custom tags are most powerful when combined with
custom problem sets. For example , using the 'review' example above, you could tag problems with
the 'review' tag, and create a custom 'review' problem set which matches problems with this tag.
This could be combined with the 'Problems I always got wrong' criteria to produce a review custom
set that keeps giving you the review problems until you’ve successfully got them correct.
To create a new custom tag, click the [ Create Tag ] button next to the tag voting buttons, enter the
tag name, and click [ Create ] to confirm the new tag. After creating the new tag, you can start
adding it to problems in the same way you add existing tactical motif tags.
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Chapter 8. User Preferences
The user preference settings are available via a link in the top right hand corner of all non-forum
pages. Preferences allow customisation of many of the site features.
8.1. Solving
Display Show Solution Button
The "Show Solution" button option now allows you to avoid seeing the solution immediately
after a problem is complete, allowing you to continue to search for the best move after failing a
problem, and eventually clicking the "Show Solution" button in order to see to answer. This
option is off by default.
Hide Clock
Option to hide clock showing solve time
Continue on
The "Continue On" option defines under what conditions you automatically continue on to the
next problem after completely the current one. You can choose to continue automatically when
failing a problem, getting a problem correct, or never (by selecting neither of the options).
Continue on fail is not recommended, as it is a good idea if you review your mistakes before
continuing on to the next problem.
Board Orientation
This option allows you to view problems from the losing side’s point of view. Some users use this
mode to help train in finding threats your opponent may have against you.
8.2. Engines
Engine Arrows
Chooses if arrows are shown on the board while engine analysis is progressing. Choices are
between no arrows, arrows for the current best move, or arrows for the current move and the
next move (the default).
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This option should be left on, as the alternative is to attempt to use the legacy Java engines which
are no longer available on most pages.
8.3. My Problems
This panel offers options to control how problems are created from games you have played on
chesstempo. Hover over the [ ? ] button next to each option for details. Click the [ x ] button to reset
the value to the default.
8.4. Coaches
Coach Usernames
Allows entering the username of any coach you may have on Chesstempo. See Student coach
section on coach nomination for more details.
8.7. Playing
Playing preferences covers settings for play online feature, and are broken down into sub-tabs.
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are together above the move list. 'Above and below board' places the names directly above and
below the board.
The layout settings are the default only, if you have a 'beside board' position set,
but resize the board such that the game panel is not wide enough to hold the
player name and clock, then they will be moved to an 'Above and below board'
position.
8.8. Achievements
Achievement Notifications
Determines if achievement notifications are enabled or not. If disabled, Achievement points will
still be collected, and achievement awards rewarded and visible on your achievements panel,
but no notifications will occur.
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8.9. Account
Account preferences controls settings specific to your Chesstempo user account, such as email
address and password.
Current Password
To change your password or email or you first need to enter your current password for
authentication.
Change Password
After entering your current password, you can change you password by entering the new
password and a confirmation to make sure you’ve typed the password correctly.
Email
After entering your current password, you can also choose a new email address. A verification
email will be sent to your new address, and needs to be clicked before the email update is
completed. Please check your spam folder if you don’t see the verification email in your inbox.
FIDE Id #
Chesstempo collects FIDE Id#'s for three reasons. The first is that it used to display title
information next to usernames, and secondly, it is used to collect stats that allow the
effectiveness of different training techniques to be made. The final reason is that it provides data
used in creating the regression equation used to provide FIDE estimates. If you have a FIDE id,
please enter it here, it is kept confidential , and FIDE ids entered are not visible to other users.
Email Permission
Decides if you will receive chesstempo newsletters. Default value is set at registration, and can
be turned off here or by clicking the unsubscribe link in a newsletter email.
This section of the account tab provides information relevant to any premium membership or
membership credits you may have. This will include whether the payment type is auto-renewing ,
the method of payment, and the date of expiration or auto-renew.
If you would like to sign up to a premium membership you can use the premium membership
signup page
If you have an auto-renew subscription purchased on the web site via paypal or credit card, you
can cancel the subscription here using the [ Cancel Subscription ] button. Your membership will
continue for the remainder of the membership period, but will not automatically renew once
cancelled. Note that auto-renew subscriptions made on mobile devices via the Apple app store or
Google Play can be cancelled by going to the list of active subscriptions on your device.
If you have purchased a group membership this section of the membership details of the settings
account section is where you will find the number of credits you currently have on hand, and the
interface for assigning credits to users.
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To assign any unused credits you have available, type the usernames of the users into the
usernames box, and then click the [ Assign Memberships ] button. Note that memberships cannot
be assigned to users with currently active auto-renew memberships, however users with existing
active one-time memberships can have their membership period extended by assigning credits to
their account.
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Chapter 9. My Stats
The "My Stats" page shows a variety of statistics and graphs related to the user’s activities on
Chesstempo.
The top of the summary page shows the total time spent solving (with very large solve times
removed, as they are usually the result of having left a problem with the clock running). The total
number of star ratings, comments and tags added to the system are also shown.
Rating
The current rating.
RD
The current RD. RD is a measure of rating stability , and is also used to determine if a user is
currently active. For problem ratings, having an RD less than 70 is the trigger for becoming
active. When your RD is high, you receive larger rating movements. As your RD decreases your
rating becomes more stable, and you receive smaller rating adjustments.
Active Rank
Shows the current rank for this rating type amongst all active users (assuming the user them self
is currently active).
Done
Shows the number of rated events for the rating type, for problems, this is the number of
problems done. The number of successful and unsuccessful events are shown (Correct and failed
problems for problem ratings), as is the total percentage success rate.
FIDE Estimate
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Blitz and Standard ratings have an associated FIDE rating estimate based on a regression
equation designed to estimate FIDE rating based on analysis of several factors and their
correlation with actual FIDE ratings.
NOTE: The FIDE rating estimate, is just that , an estimate, while on average it is within around
150 rating points of your actual FIDE rating, however there will be large differences for some
users, and therefore the estimate should not be taken too seriously.
The activity calendar shows a month by month daily view of your problem solving activity. The top
of the calendar shows the current year and month along with how many problems were done for
the month, how many were correct and the percentage success rate and number of hours spent
solving.
Each day shows the number correct, number done and success rate. You can hover your mouse
over each day to see further details of that day, including a breakdown of the different rating types,
and the gain or loss for each rating type across all attempts for each rating type during that day. The
total hours spent each day can also be seen on the mouse over details.
The calendar can be moved backwards and forwards in time by clicking the left and right arrows at
the top of the calendar.
The problem history table allows you to view a record of all your problem attempts, the following
columns are shown on the table:
#
The number of the problem attempt, the most recent problem is marked 1, the second most
recent 2, etc.
Time
The date and time the attempt was made, this should be displayed relative to your local time
zone.
Problem Id
The ID number of the problem attempted. The problem ids are also links, and clicking on them
will go to the problem page showing that particular problem.
Rating
The problem rating before the solving attempt.
Type
This is the type of problem set you were using when solving the problem, for example blitz,
standard etc. For custom problem sets, this will show the name of the custom problem set.
Av Secs
This column shows the average solve time for this problem, this is the current average solve
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time, which may not be the same as the average at the time the problem was solved.
Solve Time
This shows the amount of time required to solve the problem.
After First
This column shows the amount of time spent after the first move was made. This is important in
blitz mode where time after first is punished at a higher rate than time spent before the first
move.
User Rating
This column shows the users new rating, and the rating change made to reach it.
Wrong Move
For tactical problems this column shows the mistake move for incorrect problems.
The history table rows are colour coded to show success and failure, with green for correct
problems, and red for incorrect problems. Problems that were correct but lost rating points due to
taking too long in blitz or playing too many sub-optimal moves in endgame problems are shown in
a drab olive colour.
Beneath the history table is a [ Download History ] button that can be used to download the entire
history in a spreadsheet compatible format. This allows you to easily load your data into a
spreadsheet and perform your own analysis on the data.
By clicking the [ Show Filters ] button above the problem history table, you can enter search
criteria used to filter your problem attempt history. You also receive summary stats for the filtered
results, such as accuracy, performance rating, average time taken etc. By performing two searches
in a row, with different filter criteria,you can compare the differences between your solving
patterns based on the different filtering criteria. For example how your performance differs across
different time periods, or different tag types, or how performance changes when you take different
amounts of time on a problem. The following list describes the available filters:
Duplicate Status
Selects if matching problems including all attempts, or only duplicates or non-duplicates.
NOTE: Duplicate status is only accurate for problem attempts made after 26th of June 2010.
Problem Type
Allows you to choose if all problem attempts, or only tactic or endgame problems will be
returned.
Correct Status
Allows you to filter based on correct or incorrect problem attempts.
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Tactic Type
Allows you to select problems based on tags, for example selecting Pin and Attraction tags, will
only return problem attempts tagged with at least one of those tags (in other words multiple
selections are treated as "tag 1" OR "tag 2" OR "tag 3").
Endgame Type
Filters endgame problems based on the endgame type of the problem, like tactic type filtering
multiple selections are treated as "type 1" OR "type 2" OR "type 3".
Problem Set
Allows filtering based on the problem set an attempt came from. As well as the official rated
Standard, Blitz, Theory and Practice sets, you can also choose any of your custom sets here.
Time Used
Filters based on the number of seconds used to solve a problem, for example chosing a range of
0 to 10 will return all problems solved in 10 seconds or less.
Date Range
Choose the time range to filter problems attempts by. This filter criteria can be useful in
comparing performance changes over time, for example by comparing the previous 6 months, to
the 6 month period before that.
Attempt Range
Allows you to filter based on sequential attempt number, like the Date Range filter , this can also
be used to compare performace over time, for example, comparing problem attempts 1-1000 to
problem attempts 1001-2000. Problem attempt number 1 is always the most recent attempt, so as
the number for the end of the range grows, you are looking at older problem attempts.
Points Gained
Filter attempts based on how many rating points you gained (or lost). For example setting the
range to -100 to 0 would return problem attempts where you either gained no points, or lost up
to as much as 100 points. This kind of filter is useful for blitz or endgame filtering, where being
correct is not the only measure of problem success.
After clicking on the [ Filter ] button, you will be given a list of summary stats for the matching
problems, and if you had performed a previous filter, a comparison between the current filter and
previous filter will be shown in the "Change" column. The following summary statistics are
provided:
Performance Rating
A performance rating based only on the current filtered results.
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NOTE: Peformance rating is based purely on success rate and problem rating, it does not include
elements such as time taken, or number of moves, even if the problem attempts were done in
blitz or an endgame mode.
Accuracy
Percentage accuracy achieved over the filtered problem attempts.
Average Time
Your own average solve time over the filtered problem attempts.
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Total Non-Duplicates
The total number of non-duplicate problem attempts in your filtered problem attempts.
NOTE: Duplicate status is only accurate for problem attempts made after 26th of June 2010.
Total Duplicates
The total number of duplicate problem attempts in your filtered problem attempts.
NOTE: Duplicate status is only accurate for problem attempts made after 26th of June 2010.
Rating Graph
A graph of ratings across time. Like all the graphs on this page, more detail can be seen by
zooming in a particular area by selecting the area with the mouse. You can see the date associate
with any point in the graph by moving the mouse to that point, and the date and rating are
shown in the top left of the graph.
Percentile Rank
A graph showing the percentile rank of the user.
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rating for blitz and standard attempts are shown. Performance for problems tagged with Custom
Tags are also shown. This table can be used to identify relative tactical weaknesses, and you may
want to consider using this data to concentrate on motifs you are performing poorly on, via
custom problem sets specific to those motifs.
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Chapter 10. Training Targets
Training targets provide a way of setting training goals, such as the number of problems per day
you want to try to solve, or a particular rating you want to achieve. Feedback is provided on
progress towards your goal as you perform activities on the site related to your goals such as
problem solving or game playing.
To create a new training target go to the training targets page available on the training menu. Enter
your training target details and then click the create button to create your new target.
Training Type
The training area type such as Tactics, Endgames, Guess the Move and Playing. Setting this will
also display a second area specific type selector so you can choose sub types such as
Standard/Blitz/Mixed for tactics or Bullet/Blitz/Rapid etc for playing.
Target Type
The type of target you will be aiming for. Number targets target a number of attempts, so for
example 10 tactics attempted. Number won/correct targets only won games or correct problems.
Rating target, rank target and percentile target all target a particular rating, rank or percentile
rank for the activity.
Period Type
There are two period types. Calendar period types target a goal for a particular calendar period
(day, week, month or year). End date periods specify a target that must be completed by a
particular date. For calendar period types you need to pick the period (day, week, month or year)
, the period span (e.g. selecting 2 and days will create a target that needs to be achieved over two
days) and the start of the period (default to now if not selected). If you want the target to repeat
at the end of the period then tick the repeating target checkbox. For example if you want try to
solve 10 problems every day, then choose the calendar period type, a period of day and a span of
1, and then tick the repeating target checkbox. You will have until midnight in your current
timezone to complete the target, and the target will reset at the end of each day.
Assign to
The assignment field allows you to assign training targets to students. Multiple students can be
entered by separating their usernames with a comma. Coaches get extra details on student
training target progress on their student stats page.
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Chapter 11. Achievements
Achievements and achievement badges provide motivation and progress tracking. Badges and
associated points are awarded for completing tasks on the site. These tasks include achieving
personal bests, achieving volume based goals, such as number of problems solved or games played,
success and activity streaks and exploration of site features.
Your preferences has a tab for achievement related settings, and if you would like to turn off
achievement notifications you can do so there. Achievements will still be tracked, but you will need
to go to your achievement stats page to see which achievements have been completed. If you would
like less obtrusive noticiations, change notification method from dialog to notification panel which
will use an automatically hidden slide out panel to the right of the page to display all achievements
rather than a large dialog centered in the page. Note that for frequently awarded achievements
they will often be shown as notification panels instead of dialogs to avoid disrupting your sessions.
If you’d like to see details activity stats that the achievements are based on , you can see the details
on the activity stats tab of your stats page.
Activity Streaks
Badges awarded for consecutive days or weeks of continual activity in an area. For example, a
daily tactics streak of 10 is achieved by solving tactical problems for 10 consecutive days in a
row. A weekly tactics streak of 6 would be achieved by solving at least once a week for 6 weeks.
Activity streaks are tracked for tactics, endgames, guess the move, and online play. There is also
a global activity streak tracker which is a daily streak maintained by being active in any activity
on the site. For example if you solve tactics problems one day, and play games the next day, that
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would be an activity streak of 2. The current global activity streak is shown at the top of most
pages on the site, and a tick on the streak icon indicates you have achieved your daily activity
for today.
NOTE: Activity streak days are based on the time in your current timezone. Weeks are measured
with Monday as the first day of the week.
Comment Likes
Badges awarded based on the number of comment likes received from other users.
Success Sequences
Badges awarded for sequences of successful outcomes. For example when solving tactics, 10
correct in a row would be a success sequence of 10. Similarly, 10 won online games in a row
would also be a success sequence of 10. Success sequences are tracked for sub types of an
activity, so you if you get 5 blitz problems correct, then 1 standard problem wrong, then 5 more
blitz problems correct, that is still a success sequence of 10 in blitz problems. The same applies
for different rating types in online play.
Successes In Period
Successes in period tracks the number of successes for periods of an hour, day, week, month or
year. For example if you win 20 games in a week that is a weekly success number of 20.
Upsets
Badges for upsets are awarded for success against an opponent or training problem well above
your own rating.
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Chapter 12. Analysis Board
The Analysis Board allows you to explore different lines in a position, add and remove variations
and annotations, and copy the results to a comment if required.
Copy to Comment
Copies all of the current analysis to a comment on the entity the board was launched from. The
label for the copy comment button changes to reflect the target entity. For examples if you
launched the analysis board from a board showing a game in the chess database, then the label
will be "Copy to Game Comment".
Delete to End
This button deletes all moves from the currently selected move to the end of the line, any
variations and annotations attached to the deleted moves will also be copied. If you want to
delete the entire line, then select the first move before using this button.
Promote Variation
This button promotes a variation into a main line (or parent variation for deeply nested
variations). For the simple case where there is a variation straight off the main line, this button
will promote the variation to become the new main line, and the existing main line will become
a sub-variation to the main line. To operate the button, select any move in the variation you wish
to promote, and then click the button.
Annotation Entry
To add an annotation to your analysis, enter the text of your annotation comment in the before
move or after move annotation boxes, and then click on save, the comment will be added in the
appropriate position in the move list relative to the currently selected move.
Engine Analysis…
Displays the engine analysis panel. See the Engine Analysis Section of the User Guide for more
details.
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Chapter 13. Engine Analysis
Engine analysis allows you to use chess engines running on the Chesstempo servers.
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pressing the Space bar.
The evaluation shown before each line indicates the best material situation that the engine thinks
will result from playing the particular move (i.e. the evaluation of the position at the end of the best
line shown). The evaluation shown is in pawn units. So for example +1.00 would show the move
leads to a position that is 1 pawn ahead for the player playing the move, -1.00 would indicate the
move leads to a position that is 1 pawn behind for the person playing the move. +3.40 would show a
position where the player to move is up a piece worth of material, plus some extra evaluation
attributed to some positional advantage in the current position. By default, evaluations are shown
from the player to move’s point of view, this means a positive evaluation indicates a move that
leads to a position where the player to move is in front, and a negative evaluation indicates a
resulting position where the player to move would be behind. Many chess engine interfaces have
an alternative form of display where the evaluation is always shown from white’s perspective. For
example if it was black’s turn to move a +1.00 score would not be a 1 pawn advantage to black, but
instead a 1 pawn advantage to white, with black being behind. If you’d prefer to use this method of
evaluationd display select the 'Evaluation from white’s view' option available on the "Chess
Engines" tab of your user preferences (not the engine settings page).
Moves that would lead the player to move to be ahead of their opponent are marked green, and
moves that would lead the player to be behind are marked red, moves deemed to lead to even or
drawn positions are marked blue. Note that 'green' moves are not necessarily 'good' moves, for
example if the player is a rook up and a move might lead to being only 1 pawn up, that move will
be marked green as the player is still in front, but it would not be a good move.
The list of moves in each engine line will be coloured orange up to the point that they match the
line played in the current list. You can click on any move in the best line display and the moves upto
and including the clicked on move will be inserted into the move list for the current board.
During analysis, stats on the progress of the engine are displayed above the engine lines. The
current time spent analysing the current position is displayed, along with the current move being
examined (and the number of this move out of the list of candidate moves for the position). The
Nodes show the total number of positions examined, and the Nodes per Second (NPS) shows the
number of positions the engine is examining each second. The NPS will vary depending on the
speed of your machine, how busy your machine is with other tasks, and the nature of the position
being analysed.
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engine, with blunders and the improved lines inserted into the move list. You can also paste games
you have played elsewhere into the game database move list using the 'paste' button beneath the
board, and analyse those games inside the Chesstempo web page.
All evaluations inserted into the move list during engine annotations are from
white’s point of view, rather than the point of view of the player to move (so +1.00
would always indicate white is in front, even when attached to a black move).
To initiate game analysis click on the [ Annotate ] button which will launch a dialog that allows you
to select game annotation settings. The following settings are available:
NOTE: When a maximum time setting is used, some engines will not exit immediately upon
reaching the maximum time, but may continue until all moves at the current depth have been
examined.
Side to Analyse
Allows you to select only a particular side’s moves for analysis, for example when analysing
your own games, you may want to save time by requesting only moves from the side which you
played.
NOTE: Selecting a particular side does not completely prevent analysis for that side’s moves, as
analysis from the opposite side may still be required to determine when sub-optimal moves
have been played.
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rather than full moves, so 2 means one white move, and one black move.
Last Move
The move number of the last move to analyse, unlike the length setting, this number is defined
in terms of full game moves. It is set by default to the last move in the game. The first position to
analyse is chosen by selecting the start move before the [ Annotate ] button is clicked.
Output Threshold
The output threshold controls the evaluation gap required between the move played and the
best engine move before an annotation line is inserted into the move list. The value is in terms of
pawns, so 0.5 would indicate that the best engine move would need to be at least half a pawn
better than the move that was played for an annotation to be created. If you want every move
annotated you can set this value to zero.
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Chapter 14. Student/Coach Relationships
The Student/Coach relationships feature allows users to nominate a coach, who then receives
access to otherwise hidden stats, such as the students' per problem mistake moves, play versus
computer stats, tagging stats and FIDE rating estimates. Coaches can also edit their students'
preferences, including assigning custom problem sets to students. Coaches have a new tab on their
stats page showing a list of their students, and a summary of recent student accuracy. Coaches are
also able to download problem history for their students, and can use the new problem history
filtering on their students' problem attempts.
Tagging Stats
View the tag agreement/disagreement stats for each student.
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14.4. Coach Assigned Problem Sets
Coaches can assign problem sets in two ways. Firstly, when creating a new problem set, coaches
with students are given the option of assigning a problem set to a user. The assignment choice is
made after using the [ Crete Set ] button. Sets assigned in this manner belong to the student, rather
than the coach. Problem sets can also be assigned via the preferences button next to each student in
the coach’s student list. The current problem set can be changed and saved, just as any other
preference, and this allows you to assign previously created sets to the user.
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Chapter 15. Play Online
The Chesstempo play online feature allows you to play chess games against other Chesstempo
users. Chesstempo playing supports both correspondence, and non-correspondence play.
If you have no games to be played the challenge list display will be shown. The [ Create challenge ]
button will create a challenge that others can respond to. Responding to an existing challenge by
clicking the challenge, will lead the new game board to appear. You can toggle back and forth
between the game board view and the challenge view with the c key.
• You can use the Playing › Create challenge option in the top level playing menu to create a new
game challenge.
• You can go to the challenge view (Playing view menu › Challenges or the c key), then click on
any of the challenges you see listed. Double clicking on a challenge will bypass the confirmation
check.
• You can go to the user list (Playing view menu › Players), and click on the [ Challenge ] button
next to a user you wish to challenge.
• Any place you see a username in the playing interface you can click on the username to bring
up the player action menu and then select the Player actions › Challenge option.
• Lastly, you can click on the Friends panel, and challenge a friend to a game.
Please see the Challenge Dialog, Challenge List,User List, and Friends List sections of the user guide
for more details.
You can issue a challenge by clicking any of the time control buttons in the Challenge Dialog, and
then clicking the Ok button to confirm. Change the time control type to see default time controls for
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Bullet/Blitz/Rapid/Long/Correspondence.
If you want to create a challenge using the same parameters as your most recently created
challenge, then click the 'Ok' button immediately after the challenge dialog displays (the Ok button
label will show the current time control that will be used). To avoid confirming the challenge with
the 'Ok' button, you can double click on the challenge button which will automatically create a
challenge of that time control.
If a challenge created by another user matches your game challenge parameters, you will be
immediately matched up to play, otherwise your challenge will be added to the list of current
challenges, and a new game will start when someone either explicitly accepts your challenge, or
creates their own challenge with matching parameters. Automatic challenge matching will only
occur on challenges created by human players, challenges created by bots need to be accepted
manually, and will not be used to match your own challenges.
For time controls shorter than correspondence, any challenges you create that are
pending will be cancelled as soon as you start a new non-correspondence time
control game. This avoids the situation where you create a short time control
challenge, and then accept a direct challenge for a short game from another user,
but also have your original pending challenge accepted by a third user, thus
creating the situation where you now need to play two short time control games
simultaneously. You can still choose to play more than one short time control game
at once, but you need to choose to do so explicitly by accepting other active
challenges.
When you logout (or disconnect by closing your browser or losing your network connection), any
pending non-correspondence challenges will be automatically cancelled. Correspondence
challenges will survive logout, and will persist in the system until you either cancel them, or they
are accepted by another user.
The custom time control type allows you to create challenges with a time control not supported in
the quick select panel.
Chesstempo time controls are defined using three values, a start time, an increment time, and a
maximum time. The start time defines the initial time on the clock, the increment time, defines how
much time is added to the user’s clock after each time they move, and the maximum time defines a
ceiling on the total time after adding the increment. By ignoring the maximum time, you can define
most of the common time controls seen in online play. The maximum time allows you to define
some time control types more common in correspondece play. So for example, a correspondence
type time control with a start time of 1 day, an increment time of 1 day, and a maximum of 1 day is
equivalent to a 1 move per day time control. As no matter how many times you move in a day, the
increment will never increase your clock over 1 day, and each time you move, your clock will grow
back to 1 day, leaving 1 day until you must play again.
Another example is using the start time to provide an initial "time bank" where for example you set
it to 10 days with a increment of 1 day and a maximum of 10 days. You can miss playing for up to 10
days without timing out, if you have played all your previous moves on time. The 10 day time bank
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will start to decrease if you play less often than once per day, but can be replenished up to the
maximum if you play more quickly. Setting an initial "time bank" in this manner allows you some
flexibility during a game without having to resort to taking vacations. For example, if you need to
spend a couple of days away, the time bank makes this possible with minimal iconvenience.
If you’d like to play a correspodence game that is certain to finish within a particular time frame,
you could set the start time to say 30 days, and the game will go no longer than 60 days (maximum
30 days for each player). You can choose to play as slowly or as quickly as you like, but all of your
own moves must be played within the 30 days of total available time.
The rating filter allow you to define the rating range of the opponents who will see your challenge.
If you don’t want to play people outside of a particular range, please use this filter to avoid them
seeing the challenge. If you don’t use the filter, but instead attempt to filter your opponents by not
playing after the game starts, and forcing them to abort the game, you may be blocked from playing
in the future. NOTE: Using a restricted rating range on your challenges will likely increase the time
it takes to find an opponent.
By default a newly created challenge will be available to anyone that matches the challenge filter
parameters. If you want to send a direct challenge to a particular user, then enter their name in the
'Opponent name' field.
Challenges can be defined as being for rated or unrated games. If you are creating an unrated
challenge, you can also define which colour pieces you wish to play with, otherwise piece colour is
always assigned randomly.
If you create unrated challenges, you can choose to start the game from any position. You can paste
a FEN string into the 'Start position' field, or use the [ Setup ] button to setup a board with the
position you want. Other players will see the challenge in the challenge list, and will be able to
check the position they are opting in to before the game starts. Non-initial start posiiton games
might take a while to get a response, so they are probably more useful when either creating
correspondence challenges which can be responded to at any time, or when challening bots who
will accept any direct challenge for any start position.
If you regularly create custom challenges with custom time controls and filters, it can be annoying
to have to recreate the challenge parameters each time. Similarly if you play time controls from
multiple time control types, switching between types to find the challenge button can also be
annoying.
To avoid this, you can turn any set of challenge settings into a challenge 'favourite'. Enter the
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challenge parameters for your new favourite, and then click on the 'Create Favourite' button, and
enter the name of the new favourite. Challenge favourite buttons appear at the top of the challenge
panel, and can be clicked on the same way as the existing default challenge buttons.
When a favourite has been clicked, several new options appear in the buttons at the bottom of the
challenge dialog. There is a 'delete' button, and if you have more than one favourite, two left and
right buttons to re-order the favourites.
15.4. History
The history view shows a list of your games, with the most recent shown first. The history view can
be accessed via the blue action menu in the top level of the playing page, or by using the h key. You
can select individual games for viewing by clicking on the game board which loads the game into
the game view. By scrolling down the page more game boards from your history will be loaded into
view.
For more sophisticated history options, and the ability explore your games in the opening explorer
go to the Database › Your games top level menu option.
You can challenge a player to a game by clicking on their [ Challenge ] button. Other player specific
actions, such as friend requests or bringing up the player’s stats page can be accessed by clicking on
their username.
The player list can be filtered by username or rating range by clicking on the filter icon in the top
left corner of the player list panel. To filter by rating range, you will need to select the rating type
the range applies to. If you’d like to ignore the rating range filter, choose the 'Ignore' type for the
rating type. The username filter is a case sensitive substring search, so for example "ern" would not
match "Ernest", but "Ern" would.
Your own challenges will be shown at the top of the list, and can be cancelled by clicking on the
challenge.
Challenges can be filtered by rating range and whether they are rated or unrated by clicking on the
filter icon in the top right corner of the challenge list panel. You can also sort the challenge list by
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clicking on the column header of the criteria you wish to sort by.
The playing list can be filtered by username substring search, and rating type.
15.9. My Games
The my games panel allows you to see all your currently active games. Click on any of the game
boards to load the game.
Games are ordered first by those where it is your turn to play first, and then by the urgency based
on time left to play.
As moves are played, both by you , and your opponent, the games will re-sort the games so that the
most urgent games where it is your turn are always sorted first.
Moves can be made on the game board by either dragging the pieces or clicking on the piece and
then the target square.
Pre-moves are supported by making a move while it is your opponent’s turn, once your opponent
moves the move will be sent to the server.
Board Settings
The board settings panel is launched by clicking on the blue circle menu below the move list. The
settings panel lets you choose a number of board options and all options are stored in a browser
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cookie, so they are remembered as long as you use the same browser, on the same machine. For
more details see the board settings section of the user guide.
Pre-Moves
Pre-moves allows you to enter a move while it is your opponent’s turn to play. The move will be
automatically played after your opponent moves. Move legality is only checked after your opponent
moves, and illegal moves are not-played. You can cancel your pre-move by clicking anywhere on
the board. The pre-move will be highlighted using the method chosen in the board settings.
Pre-moves are only remembered when the board is still open, so they can’t be used
to play moves in correspondence games after you’ve logged off or disconnected
Game Clocks
The game clocks and player names are shown either to the right of the board or above and below
the board , depending on the preferences set. The currently ticking clock is shown in green (or red
when time is running low), and the time control of the current game can be seen by hovering over
the clock display with the mouse.
Move List
The move list displays all moves in the current game. You can move through the move list using the
navigation buttons beneath the move list, by clicking a move in the list, or by using the arrow keys
to move forwards and backwards in the move list.
Game Chat
The game chat window allows you to communicate with your opponent, other players viewing the
game can also participate in the chat, however game particpants and non-playing kibitzers are not
able to see each others chats made while the game is in progress. Special chat commands start with
a '/' character, you can see a full list of chat commands by typing /help into the chat entry box.
Game chats persist across logouts, so when returning to the game you can still read all previous
chats. This also applies to completed games, and chats can be reviewed at any time from the history
tab or by launching games in your database archive in the playing interface using the 'view in
playing' button.
The circular icon in the far right of the chat entry field shows if the chat is currently enabled or
disabled. If the icon is a green tick then the chat is enabled, if it is a red cross then the chat is
disabled. Click the icon to toggle between enabled/disabled.
When you disable chats, it is a global setting and you will not be shown any incoming chats in all
games, not just the current game. However, chat messages sent by others will still be archived even
when you have chat disabled. This means at a later point if you disable chat and view the game
again the archived chats will all be loaded. Your opponent or other game visitors kibitzing on the
game will be told when you disable or enable your chat status, and when you first connect to a
game, your opponent will be told if your chat is currently disabled.
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Game Actions
Several game actions are available as icon buttons under the move list:
Abort game
Chesstempo doesn’t allow you to arbitrarily abort a game that has started. However if your
opponent has not made their first move within a reasonable amount of time (specific to the time
control being played), you will be given the option to abort the game, with no result or rating
adjustment made for either player.
Users who continually refuse to play their first move , forcing their opponents
to abort because they didn’t like their opponent’s first move, opponent rating or
the colour they’ve been given may have their playing rights permanently
removed. If you want to play people in a specific rating range, created
challenges with a rating range limit.
Draw
This is a multi purpose draw button that allows you to both offer a draw AND claim draws that
require explicit claiming under FIDE rules, such as draws by repetition, and draws by the 50
move rule. Note that claimable draws will not be given unless you explicitly claim them. Where
a draw can be claimed either on the move or after the current move, the system will handle both
cases automatically. If you click draw and then make a move that would lead to a claimable
draw then the server will treat that as an 'after the current move' draw.
Resign
Resign the current game.
Analyse
Launch the analysis window. Only available once a game is over.
Next game
The next game button jumps to the next most urgent game when you are playing multiple games
(most commonly correspondence games). This button is not visible if you only have one game in
play.
Game Notes
Game notes allow you to write notes about the current game. This can be useful for
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correspondence games where you may need to keep track of plans across a large number of
games. It can also provide a way of providing some post-game analysis thoughts. Notes are
private by default, if you’d like to share your notes with others, chose the public option when
creating the note. Notes can be deleted or edited after they have been created.
Vacation/Sleep only applies to correspondence time control games, your clocks will
continue to tick on all non-correspondence time control games , so sleep/vacation
will not save you from timing out on shorter time control games.
15.11.1. Vacation
Vacation time allows you to take extended time off from playing during periods when it is difficult
for you regularly make moves, for example holidays, or extended illness.
All users start with 2 weeks of vacation time, and vacation time accumulates at 2 hours per day,
until reaching a maximum of 30 days. Each time you go on vacation you use a minimum of 1 day
vacation time, even if you return from vacation before 1 day is up. No extra vacation time
accumulates while you are actually on vacation.
Vacation should not be used as a strategic means of managing your clocks, but is
intended only for situations where circumstances make it difficult to play. Starting
too many correspondence games should not be a legitimate reason for vacation
time usage, consider resigning games if you’ve overcomitted your time.
15.11.2. Sleep
Sleep time is similar to vacation time, but applicable to shorter times away from playing. The main
purpose of sleep time is to allow relatively short correspondence time control games to be played. If
you wish to play a game with 24 hours per side, time zone or sleep pattern differences can give one
player a big advantage over the other. For example, if a player involved in a 24 hour game goes to
bed with 6 hours left on their clock after playing their last move, then their opponent can
immediately play their move, and then win on time if the sleeping player sleeps for more than 6
hours. Sleep time allows the first player to go into sleep mode before going to bed, and this would
prevent their clock from ticking again until they wake up, at which point, they would return from
sleep mode to play their next move.
After you set your state as "Sleeping", none of your correspondence time control game clocks will
tick until your sleeping time has run out. You have 10 hours of sleeping to use each day, and once
you have started sleeping, you use the entire 10 hours, even if you return from sleep before the 10
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hours expires. Once waking up, you cannot go to sleep again for at least another 10 hours, in other
words, your available sleep time is zero as soon as you wake up, and does not go back up to 10
hours until at least 10 hours has passed since waking.
The opening explorer on the player game archive page has a Rating Type filter above it which
allows you to filter games based on the rating type of the game. This selector also applies to any
game archive searches, as well as the opening explorer stats, allowing you to see opening stats
specific to each rating type.
The game archive page also has two "Games for position" tabs, one shows only games from the
player’s own archive (labelled as "Games for position: USERNAME"), and the other shows games
from the main chesstempo database. By switching between both while traversing the moves of one
of their own games, you can look at either your own previous games that followed the current line,
or look for master level games that also followed your line, and these may provide hints on
improvements that could be applied next time you play, or give you an idea on the kind of middle
or endgames that arise from your openings when played by masters.
Bullet
Estimated time of less than 3 minutes.
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Blitz
Estimated time greater than or equal to 3 minutes, and less than 15 minutes.
Rapid
Estimated time greater than or equal to 15 minutes, and less than 1 hour.
Long
Estimated time greater than or equal to 1 hour, and less than 12 hours.
Correspondence
Estimated time of 12 hours or greater.
Estimated time for games with no increment is simply the initial time on the clock. Time for games
with an increment are calculated by assuming the game will go for 40 moves. For example, 5
minutes start time with a 12 second increment would lead to an estimate time of 5*60+12*40 which
equals 780 seconds, or 13 minutes, leading to a classification as a blitz time control. Increasing the
increment to 18 seconds would produce 5*60+18*40, giving an estimate of 17 minutes, which would
now be classified as a rapid time control.
Challenge formulas can be very expressive, and can combine a number of logical and mathematical
operators to produce complex challenge preferences such as : (playing_time_left>5mins or
(from="bjork" and time=60mins)) or correspondence would only accept challenges that are either
correspondence challenges or non-correspondence challenges where you either have more than 5
minutes left in the current game you are playing, or the challenge is from a person with the
username "bjork" and she is asking for a game with initial time set to 60 minutes.
You can change your challenge formula using the Challenge Formula option in the playing menu at
the top of the page (only available when on the playing page). The default challenge formula looks
like this: ` !playing or (playing_time_left > 15 minutes and (correspondence or
playing_correspondence)) `
This only allows challenges if you are either not actively playing a game in the current game tab, or
the game you are actively playing has more than 15 minutes left on your clock, and either the
incoming challenge request is for a correspondence game, or the game you are playing is a
correspondence game.
This default rule prevents you receiving challenge requests for any type of game if you are low on
time in an actively played game, and prevents receiving challenges for live games when you are
already playing a live game. If you are not low on time, then if you are playing a live game you can
still receive correspondence challenges, or if you are playing a correspondence game then you can
receive challenges of any type.
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15.15.1. Challenge Formula Time Handling
Several challenge formula variables deal with time. All time stored in any variable is stored as
seconds in order to avoid confusion on which variables might be minutes or seconds, or indeed
hours or days for some longer time controls. In order to make this convenient , and avoid having to
do things like time = 24*60*60 to match 1 day, you can use the time operators of 'm','s','h','d' and 'y'
to provide the relevant time unit. For example etime>=50 days to match a correspondence game
which is estimated to take at least 50 days for both players' moves. time=5m would match a game
with start time of 5 minutes , while time<1 hour would match any start time below 1 hour. The
'm','s' etc markers are simply converting the time units into seconds for matching against the
seconds based time variables. You could do the same thing with multiplication but "time=1 year" is
much more convenient than "time=365*24*60*60".
The following logical and arithmetic operations are available for use within the challenge formula:
&,&&,and,AND
The AND operator returns true if it’s left and right arguments are both true. e.g. + rated and blitz
+
|,||,or,OR
The OR operator returns true if one of or both of it’s left or right arguments returns true. e.g. +
bullet or blitz +
!,not,NOT
The NOT operator negates its argument. e.g. + !playing +
=,==,equals
The equality operator returns true if both it’s left and right arguments are equal. e.g. +
from="bjork" +
<,⇐,>=,>
Inequality operators. e.g. + time>=5m or (inc>2 and inc<10) and (max_time>0) +
+,-,*,/
Arithmetic operators. e.g. + time>2m+20 && inc>time/20 && max_time<20*(inc+2) +
The current list of variables that can be used in a challenge formula are:
playing
true if you are currently playing a game in the active game tab. Note that if you have games you
are playing, but you currently have no game tabs open , or the game you are currently viewing
is over, then this will return false.
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playing_correspondence
Similar to the 'playing' variable, but only returns true if the game being played is a
correspondence game. Must be playing an in-progress correspondence game in the currently
active game tab to return true.
playing_live
Similar to the 'playing' variable, but only returns true if the game being played is a non-
correspondence game. Must be playing an in-progress non-correspondence game in the
currently active game tab to return true.
playing_time_left
If you are actively playing a game (i.e. the selected game tab is an in progress game) this variable
will return the time left in that game. For example: + playing_time_left > 5m + will match
situations where you are playing a game with more than 5 minutes left. This can be useful to
avoid distractions when you are running low on time. If the currently selected game tab does not
contain an in progress game or you dont have any game tabs open, this value will return 10
years. This ensures + playing_time_left > 5m + would match if you are not currently playing,
which is usually the desired behaviour.
playing_computer
True if the game in the currently active game tab is one you are playing against a computer. This
variable allows you to receive challenges you might not want to receive when playing against a
human, but would be happy to receive when playing against a computer.
playing_human
True if the game in the currently active game tab is one you are playing against a human. Note
that + playing_human != !playing_computer + as it is possible for both playing_human and
playing_computer to be false if you are not currently playing a game.
black
The challenge requests that the opponent plays as black
white
The challenge requests that the opponent plays as white
nocolour
true if the opponent did not request a colour preference, and auto-colour selection will be made.
autocolour
Synonym for nocolour. Set to true if the opponent did not request a colour preference, and auto-
colour selection will be made.
bullet
The challenge request is for a bullet time control.
blitz
The challenge request is for a blitz time control.
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rapid
The challenge request is for a rapid time control.
long
The challenge request is for a long time control.
correspondence
The challenge request is for a correspondence time control.
computer
The challenge request is from a computer. Note that currently computers do not send direct
challenges, so this variable is most useful when the challenge formula is used to filter the
challenge list, rather than incoming challenge direct challenge requests.
human
The challenge request is from a human.
time
The clock start time. Time is in seconds so use the time modifiers such as 'time=5m','time=1hour'
etc to conveniently refer to non-second based values here.
inc
The per move clock increment used in the time control. Set to 0 if no increment is used. Again,
this is stored in seconds, so use time modifiers if you want to specify increment matches in
larger than second values for example, + inc>1 day
max_inc_time
The maximum time the clock is allowed to increase to via per move increments for example: +
max_inc_time<(1 day+4 hours)
etime
The estimated total time for the game (i.e. includes time taken for both sides, so a 10 minute
game would have an etime of 20 minutes. This will be calculated using + 2*(start time +
increment time*40) + , allowing for the 'max time' truncation if any is set. Time is stored in
seconds.
myetime
The estimated total time available for your moves , this is half the etime. See etime for how this
value is calculated.
direct
true if the challenge is a direct challenge. This will always be true when filtering incoming direct
challenges, but is useful if you use the challenge formula as a filter on the challenge list or
challenge graph, and only want to see direct challenges there.
from
The name of the opponent creating the challenge. Using quotes around any matched name for
example: + from="han"
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rating
The rating of the opponent in the rating type relevent to this challenge.
rd
The rating deviation of the opponent , which is a measure of the reliability of the opponents
rating, and also their recent activity levels. The lower the rd value, the more active, and more
reliable the rating, for example: + rd<40 + would indicate a very active user.
myrating
Your rating in the rating type associated with the challenge. Useful for relative rather than
absolute rating comparison for example: + rating>=myrating-300 + would match only challenges
where the challenge creator had a rating no more than 300 points below your own rating.
ratingdiff
ratingdiff is the absolute value of the difference between your rating and the rating of the
challenge creator in the relevant rating type. For example, if your rating is 1600 and your
opponent’s rating is 1400 the ratingdiff is 200. If your rating is 1400, and your opponent’s rating
is 1600, the value will also be 200 (i.e. the ratingdiff variable is unsigned). This variable allows
concise specifications of relative rating ranges, so for example you can specify: + ratingdiff<200 +
as a short cut for + rating-myrating>-200 AND rating-myrating<200 + which restricts the
acceptible difference between your rating and the opponent rating to less than 200 rating points.
rated
True if the challenge is for a rated game.
unrated
True if the challenge is for an unrated game.
By default the challenge formula is only used to filter incoming direct challenges, however the
challenge list/challenge graph filters also have an option to allow the formula to be used as an
additional filter on top of the challenge list/graph filters. Open the challenge filters when on the
challenges tab to turn this option on. The option is stored in a cookie on the browser, so will be
recalled next time you visit the playing page on the same machine.
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Chapter 16. Opening Training
Opening training allows you to create and manage an opening repertoire, and then train to learn
the moves using spaced repetition. The opening repertoire also integrates into the Play online
feature by providing immediate post-game feedback on where your games deviated from your
opening repertoire.
To add new moves to your repertoire simply make the move on the board and it will be added to
the currently selected repertoire. When you have some moved entered, you can enter training
mode by clicking on the [ Train ] or [ Train branch ] buttons. [ Train branch ] will only train
moves from under the currently selected move in the opening tree panel. See the training mode
section for more details on training.
You may want to explore the different settings available. Settings can be viewed by clicking on the
blue circle menu under the board and then clicking on the settings icon.
By default any comments from your repertoire will be imported as private comments. If you’d like
your comments to be visible to others or ignored completely, you can choose those options on the
create repertoire dialog. NOTE: If you are using a PGN with comments made by someone else, such
as a chess book author, please do not make the comments public. If you are an author and find any
of your annotations being used in comments on Chesstempo, please contact us to have them
removed.
By default any alternative moves at the same position for the colour of your repertoire will be
imported enabled as alternative lines to train. You can optionally not import alternative moves or
choose to import them as disabled.
There is no size limit on the PGN, but there are quotas for the total number of positions you are
able to have across all your repertoires. For details on the quotas which differ by membership type ,
please see the Chesstempo memberships page.
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16.3. Adding repertoire moves
You can enter a new move for a repertoire any time you are not in training mode by playing the
move on the board. Played moves are automatically stored in your repertoire, and saved on the
server. Moves will be attached to the currently selected repertoire which is shown in the repertoire
tree to the left of the board.
To delete moves or branches of moves right click on the moves in the opening tree and choose the
delete option.
Most repertoires will have positions where your opponent has multiple choices, and in some cases
you may have more than one move you want to play in a position. The first move shown in the
opening tree will be the main line move, and the subsequent moves in the sub-positions will be
seen as sub-lines. If you’d like to change the order of lines you can right click on a sub-line in the
opening tree and use the promote line option. The line will move up in order, swapping with the
next highest line. If the line was one below the main line, then it will swap with the main line, and
become the new main line move for that positions.
By default if you are seeing a move for the first time you’ll be shown an arrow indicating the
correct move. Similarly if you have turned on the preview moves wrong on last attempt option in
your settings, and are seeing a move you got wrong last time you’ll also see an arrow showing the
correct move.
If you want to focus only on moves from lines up to a particular depth , then you can set the
Maximum learning depth in your opening training settings. When a maximum depth is set , the
summary stats shown under the board will reflect the current depth limit. NOTE: Graphs showing
training status always use the full depth when displaying data.
The training depth option can be used to create a good compromise between the main lines first
and breadth over depth learning priority settings. With main lines first selected, you can end up
having to learn some very deep lines before seeing any side branches further up the tree. By setting
a maximum depth you can force the main line learning priority to start to select side lines earlier
than would otherwise be the case, creating a hybrid priority between main line and breadth over
depth options.
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16.4.3. Spaced repetition
Spaced repetition is a learning method that tries to optimize your time so less time is spent on items
you know well, and more time is spent on items that are causing trouble. Once a move is first
served up for training it is given a scheduled time for its next appearance. If you continue to get the
move correct, the next scheduled time will be moved further and further into the future. If you get
the move incorrect the system will decide you have forgotten the move and will start to present it
more frequently. This process of serving up mistakes more quickly, and delaying the reappearance
of correct moves allows you to maximize the time you spend on the moves you are having the most
problem remembering.
When you get a move wrong, you are shown the move and can play it to move on to the next
scheduled move. If you choose to play the move at this point it will not be considered a correct
response for the purposes of the spaced repetition system, so will not impact how soon you will see
the mistake again.
Incorrect moves are by default scheduled almost immediately for review. This means as soon as
you finish all the moves that were already scheduled due when you started your current training
session, you’ll be able to review the mistakes you made during the session.
Before you begin training none of your moves will be scheduled. Any time there are no moves
scheduled and you start training when there are still moves left that have not been scheduled, the
system will display choose an as yet unseen move and from that point will start to schedule it using
the spaced repetition system.
There are two ways of choosing how the system choose which of the unseen moves from your
repertoire will be used first, and these are controlled via the Learning priority setting in your
opening training settings. The first method (and the default) is to try to show main lines first. Most
repertoires will have multiple lines for your opponent in many positions, and in some cases for
your own moves. The "Main lines first" option will take the main lines before side lines. When all
the main lines are done it will start to look at the first sub-lines in each position. Note that once a
parent sub-line is taken its main line children will be preferred over any sub-line children of the
parent. Another way of looking at this option is that it is doing a traversal of your repertoire
preferring to go as deep as possible in main lines instead of trying to broaden your knowledge
across many lines.
The second method is the opposite of the main lines first approach, and that is the "Breadth over
depth" option which will look at all the main line AND sub-moves at 1 move deep in your
repertoire, then when they are all added to the training set, all moves 2 moves deep in your
repertoire etc. This option allows you to get a broad but shallow view of your repertoire, but will
not prioritize the main lines which are likely to be more commonly met.
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Learning priority settings only impact which moves are taken from an unseen
state into a scheduled state, an operation that only occurs when you elect to
continue training when no moves already being trained are scheduled. For moves
already scheduled, the spaced repetition system rather than the learning priority
will dictate which moves are selected. Eventually you will reach a state where all
moves have been introduced into training and are scheduled for serving. At that
point the main lines first and breadth over depth options will not be relevant
again until you add new moves into your repertoire.
When a move is scheduled for training (or added from the set of unseen moves), the system may
choose to add some context moves to help orientate you to the position. Once you have a large
repertoire, it can be confusing to jump from random position to random position without any
context.
To determine how much context is shown, the system looks at the full line from the move chosen
for display up to the start position in the game. If the moves are extremely well known the system
may skip them completely, if they are somewhat less known the system will choose to display them
as context, with how well known dictating how fast the system will move through the moves. This
enables the system to provide you some context, but make sure you are not wasting your time
seeing context that is already second nature to you. The system may also decide that a move that
appears earlier in the line than the move that is chosen for display was close to being scheduled,
and so present that move as a training move before reaching the target move. This further
optimizes the use of context by using the context to present more than one training target from the
context line for training. There are several settings to control the context behaviours in your
opening training settings.
If you click on the folder holding the white or black repertoires before you start training, positions
will be taken from all the repertoires of that colour. NOTE: that with a high level repertoire
selected, some operations are not allowed, such as adding moves, or deleting lines. If you want to
remove moves or add new moves you’ll need to have a single repertoire selected first.
Resistant moves are moves that you’ve been training for some time, but are still having trouble
consistently getting right. Once a move is deemed to be resistant, it will take more than one correct
answer in a row to move back to being non-resistant. While the spaced repetition system does a
reasonably good job of prioritize moves you keep getting wrong, the resistant moves may still need
extra attention, especially if you are still getting them right sometimes, just not consistently enough
to indicate mastery has been achieved. To help prioritize your time on these types of moves, there
are two specific global repertoires available in the repertoire tree that hold all the white and black
resistant moves. This allows you to select the resistant repertoire and then start training in order to
preferentially target scheduled moves that are proving difficult to master.
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16.4.8. Transpositions
The underlying representation of your repertoire uses positions as the primary entity, rather than
explicit move orders. This allows a natural treatment of transpositions as moves are secondary to
positions and there is only one instance of each position, no matter how many repertoires or
transpositions it appears in. If a particular repertoire contains a transposition to another line
already stored elsewhere in the repertoire, the opening tree will not fill in a move branch for the
transposition. If you play the transposition move on the board the tree will jump to the
transposition position in the tree where the rest of the line will be presented.
Transpositions across repertoires are handled slightly differently, to avoid confusion a move that
transposes from repertoire A to repertoire B will have the full line appear in both repertoires
within the opening tree. However, In both the single repertoire and cross repertoire transposition
cases there is only one representation of the position in the underlying repertoire data. It doesn’t
matter which path you reach a position from, once you’ve transposed into a line the learning stats
and spaced repetition scheduling treats the positions the same. So if you train moves in repertoire A
that are from positions that transposed to repertoire B you’ll get credit in both repertoires, because
in the internal representation the positions are the same.
The same is true for any overlap between multiple repertoires, not just transpositions. If you have
two repertoires that overlap, training in one will also impact the scheduling of the same moves in
any other repertoire in which the same position and move exists.
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Preview moves wrong on last attempt
Show the correct move via an arrow if it was wrong on the last attempt.
Learning priority
How new moves are moved from the as yet unseen moves into the learning set. 'Main lines first'
takes moves from main lines first and sidelines later. 'Breadth over depth' mode takes all moves
at depth 1 first then moves on to all moves at depth 2, continually increasing the depth until all
moves have been added to the learning set.
Moves can be deleted by right clicking on any move in the tree and selecting the delete option. That
move and all moves under it will be deleted. On mobile devices right click can be simulated by
pressing and holding on the relevant move in the tree.
Parts of the opening tree can also be disabled or enabled by right clicking on clicking on the enable
or disable line option. Disabling allows you to keep lines in your repertoire that will not be trained.
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Lines can be copied from one repertoire to another by again right clicking on the move to start the
copy from, and then choosing the Copy line option. The destination repertoire will be prompted for
after the option is selected, after the copy the line will exist in both the original and destination
repertoires. When copying, it is the sub-tree under the selected move that will be copied. In
addition, the moves from the selected move up to the root of the opening tree will also be copied to
ensure the destination repertoire has a branch on which to attach the copied sub-tree.
If you’ve created any shortcuts, they will be displayed under their parent repertoires. Clicking on a
shortcut will load the parent repertoire into the opening tree (if not already loaded) and jump to
the shortcut position.
Each repertoire with positions currently in learning state will have either a number or time shown
to the right of the repertoire name. A number indicates the current number of positions due for
presentation via the spaced repetition algorithm. If none are due it will be a time until the earliest
item is scheduled due.
Note that these scheduling stats are not updated dynamically so unless you visit the repertoire, the
number may say Caro-Kann (7) for example, but 7 is the number scheduled when the page loads, so
you may find when you click on the repertoire the number scheduled has grown if positions have
moved into being scheduled since you loaded the page. Similarly, if it says Caro-Kann (20 minutes)
to indicate the next item is due in 20 minutes , while the 20 minutes will dynamically update, when
it gets to 'now' it will not change to 1 but rather start to show how long ago the most recent position
was scheduled, e.g Caro-Kann (5 minutes ago).
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16.11. Candidate moves
The candidate moves list tells you which moves are available in the current position. Usually this
panel is hidden during training, however you can choose to unhide it if you feel you need the hints.
When outside training mode, you can use the candidate moves to traverse your repertoire. Clicking
on a move will play that move. The up and down arrow keys will change the currently selected
move, and the forward arrow will play the currently selected move. The currently selected move
will default to the next move in the move list if you are currently traversing a move list. Moves in
the candidate move list are labeled with the repertoire they come from. If you play a move that
appears in a different repertoire from the one you have currently selected, that repertoire will
become the current repertoire, and the opening tree view will be updated to reflect the change of
repertoire.
16.13. Annotations
If you press the 'a' key or launch the annotation window from the move list blue action menu , the
annotation panel will load , allowing you to add annotation symbols to moves such as '!', '?', '+=' etc.
Like engine move evaluations , these are permanently stored and available in any PGN exports.
16.14. Comments
Comments can be made on either the move or position level. A move comment should be specific to
the move just made, whereas a position comment applies to the current position, and is not
necessarily tied to a particular move (although it may mention one or more moves in the position).
You can choose to have your comment public or private. If you are making comments from a book
you own, and are copying the analysis thoughts of the book author in a way which would be
considered plagiarism, please keep the comment private.
The comments for the opening trainer are displayed in a slightly different way to the comments on
other parts of the site. Instead of always ordering the comments in chronological order, the system
chooses what it believes to be the best comment, and then displays the other comments in
chronological order after that. Any comment you’ve made yourself will be considered to be the
'best' comment when you are reading comments, if you have not commented on a position then the
system chooses the comment with the highest vote sum. If a tie break is required, then the
comment makers with the highest problem rating (in any problem solving mode) is chosen.
Due to the above ranking method, comment voting in opening training should be approached in a
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slightly different manner to problem comments. Because we want the most useful comment to be at
the top, if you see a comment that you believe is better than the best comment , even if you think
the best comment is ok, then you should down vote the current best comment, and up vote the
comment that you believe to be better.
If you’d like to see the current 'best' comment quickly without opening the comments panel, you
can do so by pressing the 'c' key which will show a pop-up panel with the best comment. Press 'c'
again to quickly hide the panel.
To embed a board into a comment , first launch the analysis board (magnifying glass icon under the
move list). You can then enter moves, and add any analysis you’d like. Once done , click on the
menu expander in the top left of the analysis board panel and choose one of the copy to comment
options. 'Copy to comment' copies the entire analysis board analysis to a comment, 'Copy move to
comment' copies only the current position, and 'Copy selection to comment' copies the moves from
the analysis that you’ve highlighted for selection with the mouse.
You can add arrow and square highlight annotations by right clicking on the board squares (square
highlighting) or right clicking and dragging. Combinations of Ctrl and Shift keys change the colour
of the highlighting, so right click without keys draws Green, Ctrl-Right-Click = Yellow, Shift-Right-
Click = Red and Ctrl-Shift-Right-Click gives Blue. If you move away from the current position (or
click on the board with anything but a right click), any annotations will be reset. If you’ve made
annotations you want to save before moving to the next move, press the 's' key before moving on.
Once you’ve copied your analysis to the comment, you can add further text to the comment and
then submit the comment once finished.
This option allows to add moves from a PGN file into an existing repertoire. Select the repertoire to
import the PGN into before selection this action.
Repertoires can be exported as PGN via the export option from the actions menu (the blue menu
under the board).
You can choose to export the current repertoire, all white repertoires, all black repertoires, or all
repertoires of both colours. When outputting more than one repertoire, each repertoire is output as
a separate game in the PGN file.
By default any alternative moves at the same position for the colour of your repertoire will be
imported enabled as alternative lines to train. You can optionally not import alternative moves or
choose to import them as disabled.
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16.15.3. Reset training
The reset option of the actions menu resets all the learning data from the current repertoire.
+ WARNING: Resetting training in a repertoire that shares positions with other repertoires will also
reset the training data for the shared positions as all learning data for a position is shared across all
repertoires the position may appear in.
Global stats shows statistics across all repertoires, either single values aggregated across all the
repertoires or a list of all repertoires comparing performance on each repertoire.
Available graphs:
History
Shows how the total number of moves in Learning, Learnt and Uncertain status change over
time. Learning is the state moves are in that have been scheduled via spaced repetition at least
once, but are not yet known well enough to be deemed Learnt. Once a move has been correct
several times in a row, it moves to Learnt status. If an incorrect attempt is made, it will revert
back to "Learning" status. Uncertain status is for moves that were Learnt , and have been
scheduled some time ago for review, but are not yet reviewed. Their status is uncertain until the
review occurs, at which point a correct answer will place them back in "Learnt", and an
incorrect answer move them back into "Learning".
The repertoire stats drill down into the currently selected repertoire to show repertoire specific
stats.
Available graphs:
Scheduled
Shows how many items are already due, and how many are scheduled Today, in the next week,
month, year and beyond a year.
Sequences
Two graphs that shows how many moves have been correct or incorrect in a row 1 time, 2 times,
3 times etc. A third graph shows a histogram of the number of moves have been played 1 time, 2
times, 3 times etc.
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Chapter 17. Guess The Move
Guess The Move is a training feature which allows you to play through master games, and get a
rating based on how well you go. You are assessed based on how often you match the master move,
and engine evaluations are used to assess moves that differ from the master’s choice.
In addition to the score, you are told the engine evaluation for your move, the master move, and
the move the engine considered the best move if it is different to the master move or the move you
played. The best engine move itself is not shown if it is different from the played or master moves ,
as often the best move can remain the best move for several moves in a row, and providing the
actual engine move would provide unwarranted hints, hence only the evaluation is shown.
The score from 0-12 is fed into a rating calculation (using the glicko rating system) which takes into
account the rating of the current position, and your current rating to calculate a rating adjustment.
If you are playing a game in unrated mode, the rating adjustments will be zero, however the rating
adjustment that would have been made in rated mode is shown in square brackets e.g. User: 1830.2
(0 [+4.1]) indicates your rating adjustment was 0, but if solving in rated mode it would have gone up
4.1 points.
Rating each position in a game provides the advantage of being able to produce a user rating based
not only on the matchup rate of your moves, but also factors in how easy it was to find those moves.
A system which only scores based on comparison to the master or best engine move ends up giving
the same result for playing the master move in a simple obvious retake as it would in a move
requiring long calculation, or subtle positional evaluation.
A consequence of the rating system is that easy positions (compared to your current rating) will
require a better move to gain rating points compared to a harder position. For example, playing a
move that scores 5 on a very easy position that is well below your rating may lead to a rating point
loss, but may be enough to gain rating points on a much harder problem. One way of interpreting
the score and the impact on the rating outcome is that a 0 score is equivalent to a rating outcome
that would arise if you lost a game, 10 leads to a rating adjustment equivalent to winning a game,
and 5 is equivalent to drawing a game. A score of 10 will always gain at least some points, no matter
how easy the position is. However, as mentioned in the previous example, whether you gain or lose
points with scores below 10 will depend on how the position rating compares to your own rating.
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17.2. Score Calculation
The score given for a particular move depends on a number of factors:
• Matching the master move will score 10 points as long as the master move was not deemed a
blunder. What is considered a blunder will depend on the specifics of the situation, for example
missing a mate in 10, and playing a mate in 5 would not be considered a blunder. Similarly,
being up considerable material and playing a move that is only a pawn worse than the best
move would not be considered a blunder, whereas playing a move that is a pawn worse than
the best move in an even position could be considered a blunder.
• When in the opening, a move which did not match the master move , but matched a relatively
main line opening move (as decided by opening explorer statistics) would also receive a score of
10 (the same as playing the master move).
• Moves which the engine thinks are significantly better than the master move receive up to a
two point bonus, giving a maximum score of up to 12 points.
• Moves which match neither a common opening move or the master move (or the master move
was a blunder), are scored based on exmaning engine evaluations of the move you played , the
best move available, and the move the master played. For example missing the master move in
a position where your move is only deemed half a pawn worse than the master move in a
position where you are still clearly winning would be given a higher score than playing the
same move in an even position where a half pawn positional advantage might be an important
factor.
Rating Change
The total rating change so far during the game.
Engine Matches
The number of moves which matched the best engine move.
Master Matches
The number of moves which matched the master move.
Moves Played
The total number of moves played so far.
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and the total number of moves that the position in the game was considered winning.
Total Time
The total amount of time used in all moves up to the current move.
Average Score
The average of per move scores for the game so far.
In addition to the per move position comment view, there is also an "All Comments" view which is a
covenient way of reading over all comments made on a game. You can jump to any position in the
"All Comments" view by clicking on the move header for the relevant move. The "All Comments"
view also allows adding an additional comment to allready commented moves.
The game selector also shows some statistics related to the problem, such as the average move
score you achieved last time you played the game (in brackets next to the ast date played column),
and the current rating of the problem (which is an average of the rating of all of the positions in the
game).
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clicking 'replay' next to a previously played game, and choosing 'review' when asked to choose
being replaying unrated, or reviewing the previous game.
In the review mode move list , a move you played is marked as "PLAYED", a move the master played
is marked with "MASTER" and the best engine move is marked as "ENGINE". So for example a move
that you played, that was also the master move AND the best engine move will be labeled
"MASTER/PLAYED/ENGINE". For the moves that you played, they will also be coloured based on the
score, good moves are green, bad moves red, and moves in between the two as khaki.
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Chapter 18. PGN Viewer
The PGN viewer can be accessed on the PGN viewer page.
Resizable board
The board can be resized by dragging on the resize handles to the right of the board.
Board Preferences
The Viewer has a settings button in the top left which allows board preferences to be set, these
will be remembered in a browser cookie for when you next return to using the viewer.
Move entry
The viewer can be used to enter your own list of moves by moving the pieces, or to add or
investigate side variations to an existing game.
Show/Download PGN
The Show PGN button allows you to see the source PGN of the game, and to download the PGN to
your machine, this is especially useful if you have been annotating a game, and wish to save the
results.
Variation folding
Variations can be hidden and expanded by the user, this often helps makes complicated games
with lots of variations much more readable.
Annotation Window
The annotation window allows you to add or edit comments on the game you are viewing. It can
also be used to add Annotation Symbols such as !, ? etc to moves or positions. The annotation
window is also used to turn folding on and off, and to perform variation manipulations such as
promoting or deleting variations.
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Keyboard bindings
The viewer supports a large range of keyboard bindings, that allow for rapid annotation of
games using only the keyboard, without the need for mouse interactions for most operations.
Left/Right arrow
Move back and forward in the move list.
Home/End keys
Jump to start/end of the move list
Up/Down keys
Move through variations on a move. If you are in a variation, or have the parent move of a
variation selected, you can cycle through the variations by using the up/down arrow keys.
a
Bring up the annotation window, with the current move selected for annotation.
A
Same as the 'a' key, brings up the annotation window, but with the comment entry set to add a
comment BEFORE the current move.
c
Focus on comment entry area. When the annotation window is open, the 'c' key focuses on the
comment text entry, if you are moving through the move list with the arrow keys, commenting
on a lot of moves, you can use the 'c' key in combination with the ESC key and arrow keys to
avoid having to use the mouse during game annotation.
s
Saves and closes the annotation window (in reality this is mostly just a close, as annotation
window changes are automatically saved almost immediately after any edits).
! and ?
These toggle the good move and bad move glyphs on a move, for example if you start with 1.e4
and press '!' once, it changes to '1.e4!', if you press it again it changes to '1.e4!!', and one more
press resets it back to '1.e4'.
f
Toggles folding on the current variation, if folding was previously not turned off, it will be
turned on.
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toggles 'fold all/unfold all' variations.
t
Traverse all moves in the move list from the current move onwards. This will allow you to visit
every move in every variation in the game from the current position. In other words it will visit
all moves in all variations by traversing the entire game tree, it will visit all variations and sub-
variations of the current move before moving on to the next one. The traversal is relative to the
starting move, so if you start within a variation it will only traverse the following moves in that
variation. To traverse every move in the game, start traversing from the first move. Each time
you press the 't' key, you traverse to the next move in the traverse. This can also be used as a
primitive temporary bookmarking system, as once you have first pressed 't' , you can click
around the move list (or move around using the arrow keys), and pressing 't' again will jump
you back to the next move after the last one you visited with the last 't' press.
T
Start new traversal. If you’ve already used the 't' key, and want to start traversing from a new
location, use the 'T' key.
p
Promote the current variation one level, this will make the current variation the parent
variation, and the previous parent, the child variation. If you are promoting a variation directly
off the main line, the promoted variation will become the main line, and the old main line will
become a variation of the new main line.
d
Delete line to end. Deletes all moves from the current move onwards. Choosing the first move in
the main line will delete all moves in the game, choosing the first move in a variation will delete
that variation (and any sub-variation).
18.3.1. Arrows
` [%cal Gc2c3,Rc3d4] `
This comment draws a Green arrow from c2 to c3 and a Red arrow from c3 to d4.
` [%csl Ra3,Ga4] `
This comment highlights the a3 square in red and the a4 square in green.
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18.3.3. Mini Boards
` [%cal Gc2c3] # `
The '#' places a mini board in the move list for the current position.
If you’d like to display games on your own website, you can include a few HTML snippets in your
page to allow you to load the viewer on external web sites.
The Chess Tempo PGN Viewer is licensed under a Creative Commons License. You
are able to use the viewer for free on your non-commercial web site(s) on the
condition that you place a visible link to http://chesstempo.com on the page(s)
where you are using the viewer. If you’d like permission to use the viewer on your
commercial website, please contact Chesstempo admin.
To use the PGN Viewer on your own site add the following HTML tags to the <head> section of your
HTML page:
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<link href="https://c2a.chesstempo.com/pgnviewer/v1/pgnviewerext.vers2.css"
media="all" rel="stylesheet" crossorigin>
<script defer language="javascript"
src="https://c1a.chesstempo.com/pgnviewer/v1/pgnviewerext.bundle.vers2.js"
crossorigin></script>
<link
href="https://c1a.chesstempo.com/fonts/MaterialIcons-Regular.woff2"
rel="stylesheet" crossorigin>
To create an instance of the viewer add the following tag inside your HTML body to create a viewer
from PGN:
<ct-pgn-viewer>
PGN HERE
</ct-pgn-viewer>
To load the PGN from a URL instead of inside the ct-pgn-viewer tag use:
<ct-pgn-viewer has-url="true">
URL TO PGN HERE
</ct-pgn-viewer>
Layout can be tweaked in various ways by overriding the CSS used by the viewer. For example:
The PGN viewer has a wide range of configuration options that are controlled via attributes on the
ct-pgn-viewer tag.
For example to set the piece style to merida use the following form:
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<ct-pgn-viewer board-pieceStyle="merida">
1. d4
</ct-pgn-viewer>
For configuration options with boolean types, and default values of false, you can change the value
to true by using option_name="true".
option_name="false" should not be used for Boolean options with default values of
false. If you want to use the default value of false, don’t list the option as one of the
ct-pgn-viewer tag attributes.
The option names themselves are case insensitive, but it is important for options
with String values that the case is used exactly as described in the table below, as
"Merida" will not be the same as "merida", if in doubt, use lower case, as currently
all string option values have lower case values only.
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Name Type Default Description
board-marks String Unset Allows you to set arrows, and square highlights
for the board without needing a PGN string with
marker comments. See the PGN viewer
comment annotations section for more details
on the format of the marker string. You can have
more than one annotation in the board-marks
value, separated by spaces.
board- Boolean false Allow right click to draw arrows and highlight
allowdrawing squares.
board-coords- String four-sides Set the style of the board coordinates. Options
style are four-sides, left-bottom, internal and none.
board- Boolean false Enables board resizing
resizable
board- Boolean false Do not allow users to move the pieces on the
disablePieceMo board.
vement
board-fen String Unset Set the board into the position defined in the
provided FEN string.
board-never- Boolean false Board never takes active keyboard focus, so will
active not respond to the usual key combination such
as arrow keys etc.
board-dont- Boolean false By default each pgn viewer starts in active
start-active keyboard focus mode, this setting disables that,
requiring the user to move over the viewer with
the mouse before the viewer will respond to key
presses.
board- Boolean false Highlight the last move made using an arrow.
highlight-
move-arrow
board- Boolean false Highlight the last move made by highlighting the
highlight- source and destination squares with colour.
move-square-
colour
board- String merida- Piece style to use. Available piece styles
pieceStyle gradient are:merida-gradient, merida, goodcomp-
gradient, goodcomp, alpha, blindfold1,
blindfold2, blindfold3, blindfold4, case, eyes,
fantasy, kingdom, kosal, leipzig, maya, skulls,
spatial and wiki.
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Name Type Default Description
board- String blue-gradient Board style to use. Available board styles
boardStyle are:blue-gradient, blue, brown-cream,
brown,cadet-grey-gradient,camouflage,cracked-
stone,fabric, gold-silver,granite,grass,green-
plasma,green-white,green,grey-diagonals, grey-
gradient,grey,leather,light-grey,marble-
brown,marble-green,metal, sand-
snow,stucco,teal-gradient,white-grey,wood-
dark,wood-dark2,wood-light,wood-medium and
wood-pine.
board- Number 150 The speed of the piece movement animation in
pieceMovemen milliseconds.
tSpeed
board-disable- Boolean false Disable piece movement sounds.
sound
board- String medium Size of the board coordinate lettering. Options
coordsSize are tiny, small, medium, large, very-large
board- Boolean false Turns on move confirmation for moves made on
confirmMoves the board by the user.
board- Boolean true Enable (or disable) drag and drop piece
dragAndDrop movement.
board- Boolean true Enable (or disable) click-click piece movement.
clickAndClick
board-actions- String rotary The direction in which the board action options
menu-direction expand, options are
right,left,up,down,under,grid-above,brid-below
and rotary
board-size String auto Set board size, can be either auto or a CSS size
such as "400px"
board-auto- Boolean false Set the viewer board height to auto and the
height width to the value in board-size (when board-
size is set to anything but auto)
gameSelectFor String {White} vs Set the format of game labels used in the game
matString {Black} selector when multiple games are available. Any
{Result} of the PGN tags can be used in the string by
enclosing them in {}.
has-url Boolean false If set to true assumes the body of the ct-pgn-
viewer tag is a URL to load a PGN file from
rather than the PGN text itself.
flip Boolean false If true, the board will be shown with black
pieces on the bottom.
use-game- Boolean false Enables showing the game details header above
header the move list.
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Name Type Default Description
buttons-above- Boolean false By default the move list buttons are shown
moves below the move list, this changes the position to
above the move list.
move-list- String right Location of the move list relative to the board.
position Options are right or under.
18.6.3. Theming
In addition to the board and piece styles that can be configured using the options mentioned in the
previous section (or by users via the board settings menu), there are also colour themes that can be
set for the viewer UI elements. These are configured by adding a CSS class to to the ct-pgn-viewer
tag , for example <ct-pgn-viewer class="ct-theme-light"></ct-pgn-viewer>
Currently ct-theme-light and ct-theme-dark are the only supported themes, but any of the UI styles
can be overidden via CSS styling if required.
By default the PGN viewer interface is provided in English, if you’d like to use one of the translated
languages we support add the following to your html page:
<script src="https://c1a.chesstempo.com/translations/fr_FR-
pgnviewer.vers1259.json"></script>
and replace fr_FR with the country code for the language you want to use. Please make sure this
script loads before the PGN viewer javascript.
The latter 4 are not completely up to date, and may have some translations missing, if you’d like to
help out with updating any translation please contact Chesstempo admin.
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18.6.5. Per user persistent board and move list settings
By default the PGN viewer setting changes made by users via the board settings panel (such as piece
and board styles) will not be saved. if you wish to have people browsing your site control board
settings, you need to add the following attributes to the ct-pgn-viewer tag to set the name used to
save and restore these settings: - move-list-persistId board-persistId e.g <ct-pgn-viewer move-list-
persistId="pgnCookie" board-persistId="pgnCookie">
If you’d like all viewers on your site to share settings then use the same persistIds across all boards,
but if you’d like users to be able to have different settings on different boards, then you can use a
different persistId for each board.
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Appendix A: Problem Comment Guidelines
Chesstempo’s problem comments are a strength of the site and there is a large range of very
interesting and helpful comments. To ensure the problem comments are as useful as possible I’m
providing the following guidelines for writing comments, comments not meeting these guidelines
(especially those deemed to be offensive or insulting) may be deleted.
Before adding a comment consider if other users will be interested in reading that comment. For
example, while hearing about your thought processes during the problem is an interesting and
useful comment, simply stating how long you took to solve the problem without any other details is
not particularly interesting. Similarly "I got this one right." is not that useful by itself and neither is
a comment consisting of single words such as "easy" or "hard". Marking personal milestones is ok,
for example, "I got this one right and it was one of the hardest problems I’ve solved." is acceptable.
"I got this one right, but struggled for a while on move 3 due to not noticing move X" is also fine.
Be polite at all times. Don’t insult other users when writing comments. There are various forms of
this, "You’d have to be a fool to get this one wrong." is one example. A more direct example is, "I
read your analysis in the previous comment, and you are a fool!". People make mistakes in their
analysis , it is why they are training, it is ok (and highly encouraged) to point out the mistakes, but
please do so politely. Remember other users of the site cover a wide range of abilities, insulting
someone because they didn’t understand something is not only rude, but will likely discourage
them from further training. Users insulting others or being generally rude may have their
commenting rights removed.
Don’t use language that could be seen as offensive in the comments. Different people have different
levels of tolerance of "bad" language, what one person might find acceptable, another may not,
please keep that in mind. Furthermore there are children using the system, and parents should be
able to feel comfortable that their children can use the site without being exposed to inappropriate
language. If you see a comment you find offensive please contact me immediately. Users using
offensive language may have their commenting rights removed.
Remember that the problems are computer checked. If you think you’ve found a refutation for the
"best move" then you almost certainly haven’t. If you think you’ve found a move that takes a lot
more material or wins more quickly than the best move it is possible , but unlikely. If you’ve think
you’ve found a move that might win that was marked wrong and you think it should be an
alternative then this is more possible, but is still often the result of an analysis error. In the above
situations (especially the first two) it is strongly recommended that you check your idea with a
chess engine before posting in the comments. Human analysis is still very welcome (and sometimes
very necessary for situations the engine doesn’t deal with well), but a quick check with an engine
can avoid embarrassing comments like, "1.f6 is mate, but I lost points!" when in fact 1.f6 was mate
for your opponent :-) Comments containing accurate and detailed analysis are amongst the most
useful in the system.
If you do find a problem you believe is "wrong" (the best move is not best or a winning line leads to
a failure instead of a "try again") AND you have performed an engine analysis which supports you,
then you might want to report this in the Forum "Chess Problems" area where it’s more likely to
receive timely action. (Put the problem number in the Subject line. In the body of your post, explain
the situation and include concrete variations.)
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Following on from the last guideline, it is ok to say "I don’t see why 1.f6 doesn’t/does work, can
someone explain." as sometimes the point of a problem can be unclear. However it would be ideal
if you checked the position yourself before posting, that way you can help others out with a "I tried
1.f6 , but it didn’t work due to 2..Be4+" comment. You can be certain that if you have a question
about the position others also do, for that reason if you don’t have time to do the engine analysis
yourself, I’d still prefer if you posted the "Why doesn’t 1.f6 work" question as someone else can
answer it, helping not just you but others who have the same question.
When posting analysis or move descriptions, please include move numbers to avoid confusion, this
makes it much easier for people who want to reply to your comment. Where possible it is probably
best if you can use algebraic notation with English piece designations as it will be understood by
the widest number of people. For further details see the Wikipedia Algebraic Chess Notation article.
If all you want to point out is that the problem employs a fork, discovery, back rank mate, etc. then
use the "Vote For Tag" button to the left of the board.
Read all previous comments before starting work on yours, sometimes the point you want to make
may have already been made by a previous comment.
Criticism of the problems is encouraged, but if you want to post "this problem is terrible", then
please say what you thought was wrong with it , e.g. "this problem is terrible, there was only one
legal move!" or "this problem is terrible, I played 1.f6 and was marked wrong but it looks like it
wins due to the following line 1..x etc" are both ok. A constant stream of "this problem sucks" with
no other details provided will likely get your commenting privileges removed (especially if you’re
almost always wrong - bad problems exist, but bad analysis is much more common).
If you see comments that don’t meet the above guidelines they should be voted down. If you see a
question being asked that was already answered in a previous comment, then these should also be
voted down. Problem comments which ask for clarification on a move/line are fine, but mistaken
claims like '1.Nf7 is mate in 2, but I was marked wrong' when in fact 1.Nf7 is not mate and lead to a
losing position should also be voted down. However when voting down these types of comments, it
would be useful if you added a new comment explaining why 1.Nf7 did not mate (without referring
directly to the original voted down comment), for example 'Some people are playing 1.Nf7 here,
assuming it mates, however it does not mate due to 1…Bxf2+ etc'. Sometimes you will see existing
comments of this type that have already had replies, in that case if the reply makes reference to the
original mistaken comment, the original comment should not be voted down if it makes the reply
difficult to understand without the context of the original comment.
If you find a comment particularly useful or interesting, you can vote the comment up. This will
help protect good comments (and commentors) from inappropriate down votes, but it will also
make it possible to eventually provide a view of comments which sorts comments by quality.
The last guideline is not to let yourself feel too hemmed in by the rules! Don’t be afraid to write a
long comment, contradict a previous comment, or simply express a contrasting point of view.
Whatever you’ve wondered, someone else has probably wondered too and you’re performing a
public service. Your voice deserves to be heard and your opinion matters as much as anyone else’s.
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