TheOpeningTrainer

A Scid database can be used as a repertoire, each game representing an opening line. The games can contain variations and may also contain NAG values to specify values for each line, and thus allowing to mark preferred or dubious lines. To be a valid database for the opening trainer it is also required to be of proper type. That is, if openings for white are to be trained, the database has to be of type Openings for White (similar for Black and both colors). The type can be set via the Maintenance window by selecting the icon or via the database switchers context menu.

Creating a repertoir base

Before running the opening trainer, please be aware that the entire repertoire database will be loaded into the trainer. For this reason, it is good to use a smaller database. It is a good idea to first assemble a large database of quality games, then filter the database for a specific opening (e.g. the Ruy Lopez). These filtered games could then be copied to a new database for that specific opening you had in mind (please name it intelligently, so you can easily understand which opening it is for). Then instead of an entire 2 million or so game database, you have a much smaller repertoire database that will be loaded quickly into the opening trainer.

Once you have a smaller database aimed at just the opening you require, set the type as mentioned using the Maintenance window. You will need to restart Scid to use the opening trainer with this new repertoire database.

If you choose, for the opening trainer to work better, you may flag certain games as "White opening" or "Black opening". An exhaustive way of doing this would be to go through the entire database 'by hand' and assign the flags individually. A quicker way, may be to filter your database for white openings, then set the flag for all those filtered games, and similarly for black openings. Remember you can have a repertoire for both white and black in the same database. You can set the flags in this way via the Maintenance window. How you choose to filter the games for flagging is entirely up to the user. One possible way is to filter 1-0 games for white openings, and 0-1 for black openings. This way is not the best however, and it is left to the user to find the system they feel most comfortable with.

Finally, to work best, the Opening Trainer can use NAG values to understand how a move in the opening is to be rated. Please refer to the NAG annotation help for more information.

Using the opening trainer

To use the opening trainer first of all open the repertoire database you created, or one of the proper type. Then choose Play / Training / Opening Trainer. The upcoming dialogue offers some choices about the next training session
white/black/both is used to select the side of the opening to train
Allow only best moves will treat lower rated moves as error. The rating of a line is given by NAG values.
Opponent plays best moves Scid will always play the best continuation according to the repertoire database. If unchecked Scid is allowed to choose also lower rated continuations. This is helpful to learn the refutations as well.
Only flagged lines Scid will only play lines from games flagged as Opening for White or Opening for Black.
Reset statistics will reset the statistics before the training session.
Press the Continue button to proceed with the training.

The actual opening trainer will show up. Here one can display possible candidate moves (hidden by default) and also display their values by just enabling these functions. If Show statistics is enabled, the current statistics is shown in the color coded fields below the checkbox. Otherwise the overall statistics can be accessed by the button Show report
Opening trainer statistics

Four numbers are displayed showing statistics for current position:
Green the number of moves played by the user that are good moves
Yellow the number of dubious moves played that are in the repertoire
Red the number of moves played that are not in the repertoire
White the number of times the position was encountered

The report

The report shows statistics for the whole repertoire and gives information about user's knowledge :
Positions in repertoire the total number of positions in the repertoire (all lines in database)
Positions not played the positions that were never encountered
Positions played the positions that were played and the sum of the number of times they were encountered. Note that this figure represents the sum of occurrences of a position in all opening lines: this number can quickly become big for positions that are close to the start position
Success the number of good moves made by the player
Dubious moves the number of weak moves made by the player
Out of repertoire the number of moves made by the player that were not in repertoire

[purefan]

Hello and thank you for Scid!

When training a line I eventually reach the end of the variation and Scid seems to just stop, there is no prompt to train another variation or re-start or anything, is this a bug or am I missing something?

(Im running 5.0 beta for linux portable)

[Nick Parfene]

I noticed this, too. What I currently do is restart the trainer, but I choose not to reset the statistics. Having to load the trainer is annoying however...