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Creating ChessBase Training Positions
Coaching and Training Tools for Teachers, Schools and Clubs

Creating ChessBase Training Positions

by Steve Lopez

Chess computer software has become more than a convenience to chess coaches over the last several years - it has become invaluable. These electronic tools allow teachers to create and deliver lessons and training to their students using a variety of media. Several chess software packages make it easy for a coach to create worksheets in traditional printed form. But an underused feature of many chess programs is the ability to create lessons in wholly electronic form; such lessons can be given to a student on a disk or even sent to him via e-mail, eliminating the requirement of a physical face-to-face meeting.

This article will illustrate one such lesson type which uses ChessBase software: the ability to create timed (and scored) training questions to test a student's chess knowledge. If you own a copy of ChessBase this article might teach you some new tricks for using this flexible piece of software. If you're not a current ChessBase user (or user of any chess software for that matter), the article will serve as a window to the versatility of the electronic medium in preparing tutorial materials.

In creating a timed training position, you can start in several different ways. You might enter a board position by hand (perhaps a tactics or "mate in x" position from a chess book, magazine, or maybe one of your own devising). Another approach is to use an existing game from the database which came with your ChessBase database program. Literally any game can be used as the base for a training question (or series of them, as we'll see).

For our examples, we're going to use the game Taimanov - Aronin, USSR Team Ch. 1954. This game was selected more or less randomly. The purpose of the article is to illustrate how to use the software; the positions selected may or may not be of especial interest.

After 31.Ra8 we see the following position on the chessboard:

Chessbase Training for Coaches, Schools, Clubs

As an instructor, you might have been teaching the student the value of "in-between" moves and wish to stress it at this point. You'd like your student to consider the move 31...Bxg2 (as was actually played in the game) instead of the more reflexive 31...Rxa8. So how can we set this up as a timed training question in ChessBase?

Start by right-clicking on the move at which you want a training question to appear. In this example, we'd right-click on the move 31...Bxg2. A pop-up menu will appear; select "Special annotation", and then "Training annotation" from the submenu:

After clicking on "Training annotation", a new dialogue will appear:

This dialogue is the place where you'll create a training question for your student to answer. We're not going to examine everything this dialogue can do, just the main features which you'd be likely to use. Consult the ChessBase Help file for more information.

First, take a look at the "Seconds" box; this is where you set a time limit for your student to provide an answer to the problem. In most cases you'll wish to give a relatively generous amount of time (enough to simulate the conditions the student might encounter in an actual game), which is why the default value is 300 seconds (five minutes). On the other hand, you might be interested in "pressuring" the student (in the case of an obvious tactical solution or perhaps to simulate tournament time pressure); you can always reduce the amount of allotted time (with 30 seconds being a suggested minimum).

Notice under "Move" that the move actually played in the game appears by default. This may or may not be the "correct" move for the training question you're creating; in this case it is, so we'll use this move as a starting point for exploring more of this dialogue. Since 31...Bxg2 is the answer we want our student to provide, we'll leave this move alone. We do, however, need to assign it a score (the number of points the student will receive for a correct answer). The default value is "10", so we'll leave this as it is.

We'll add more possible answers to this dialogue after a bit, but we'll first want to supply a question. This question is part of what the student will see when the training question dialogue pops up on his computer screen. Although a verbal question isn't strictly necessary for a training question to work, it's a nice interactive touch. So let's type a bit of text in the "Question" box:

You'll recall our original scenario: that our student has been learning the value of in-between moves. This is why our question is worded as it is - although something like 31...Kg7 is also playable, it doesn't really provoke a specific reply from White.

Note that there are a number of language tabs at the top of the dialogue. These do not translate text from language to language; these refer to the default language the student's software is set up to use (and are really the subject of a separate technical article, so simply use the tab for your native language).

Additional buttons allow us to provide extra text. "Default wrong" lets us type in the text the student will see if he provides an incorrect answer. When you click this button, a new dialogue appears and provides a place to add this text:

After you type this text and click "OK", you're returned to the previous dialogue. You'll now see an asterisk added to the "Default wrong" button, a reminder that you've added this type of text to the question.

Two additional "Help" buttons let you provide hints to the student. You should give a general hint in the "Help1" dialogue (since this is what the student will see the first time he uses the "Hint" button); a more specific hint should be provided in the "Help2" dialogue.

The "Feedback" button brings up a dialogue which resembles that of the "Default wrong" and "Help" buttons, giving you a place to provide a text response to a correct answer:

You can also add colored arrows and squares on the small chessboard when using the "Feedback" and "Help" buttons; this works the same way as adding them on the main chessboard. See ChessBase's Help file for more information on how to use this special annotation form.

After you've added any of this additional text, you can click "OK" to end the process at this point - you've created a (technically) complete training question. Once you click "OK" remember to use the "Replace game" command to save your work.

At this point, you can stop if you wish; you've created a training question of the "pass/fail" variety. If the student doesn't make the move 31...Bxg2 on the board, the software will inform him that he's provided an incorrect answer.

You may, however, wish to provide points for plausible answers which aren't necessarily the answer you're after. To do this, simply type the algebraic notation for an alternate move into the box to the left of the "New" button, then click the "New" button to add it to the list of moves which will offer commentary and/or a numeric score:

With the new move highlighted, you can assign it a score (I'd award 5 points for 31...Kg7), add "hint" text, and provide a comment on the move which will appear if the student selects it. You can repeat the process of adding moves and extra comments for as many legal moves as are in the position (if you wish; you'll likely never do this, but the possibility does exist).

Please remember to use the "Replace" command in ChessBase's File menu to save your work before closing the game window.

It's worthwhile to take a slight detour here to discuss how the scoring system works when you create timed training positions. When you assign a score to a position, this is (theoretically) the maximum score which can be awarded for a correct answer. I say "theoretically" because the software will assign bonus points for a rapid correct answer: i.e., if the student answers quickly enough, he can actually score higher than 100% of a training game's total point score.

If the student fails to answer a question correctly within the allotted time, he scores no points for the training question. Each incorrect answer also deducts points, as does each request for a hint.

When you create training questions and add score for particular moves, it's possible to assign a negative score to a candidate move. This should be reserved for disastrous moves which leads to immediate checkmate or catastrophic loss of material.

It is also possible to create multiple training questions in a single game. It's natural to do this; for example, if you use a game which has ten "crisis/decision points" which are suitable for use as training questions, you could add a training question at each of these spots, assign ten points for each correct answer, and thus create a 100 point test. ChessBase and ChessBase Light will keep track of the score/success percentage for a training database; if an instructor creates, say, a database of ten games, each with one hundred points' worth of training questions (for a possible total score of 1,000 points), the teacher and student can review the score later just as one would with a school exam.

There's one more special feature we should consider. You can also add audio commentary to your training questions. Any of the training question dialogues which contain the "microphone" button can have an audio component added at that point. If you click on the button (which, obviously, contains a picture of a microphone), the following dialogue will appear:

Without going into a major tutorial on digital audio recording, here's the basic rundown on the elements of this dialogue. The radio buttons allow you to set the audio recording level (the bitrate); the higher the bitrate, the better the sound. The radio button beside "CD" offers the best quality. Bear in mind, however, that the better the quality the larger the audio file; this may be an important factor if you plan to send a training game or database to a student via e-mail.

There are three buttons which control the recording process itself. The right-hand button containing the red square is the "Record" button; click this to begin recording. The left-hand button is the "Playback" button, used to play back a recording you've just made (allowing you to check it for quality). The center button is the "Stop" button, which you'll use to stop recording or to halt a playback.

If you play back a recording and don't like it, you can click the "Delete" button and record another take. When you're satisfied with a recording after a playback, click "OK" and the audio comment will become a part of the game. Don't forget to use "Replace" before closing the game in ChessBase or you'll lose your work.

Obviously you won't be able to record audio without a microphone. Many newer computers come equipped with a built-in mike. There are quite a few inexpensive microphones available for computer use which should be adequate for recording spoken audio.

As a former radio professional and sound engineer, I will offer you a simple recording tip which will save you lots of effort and grief. When recording, avoid using rooms with flat, hard surfaces; these produce echoes and give that "bottom of a deep well" sound. Carpeted rooms containing lots of cushioned furniture and curtained windows are ideal for home recording.

Let's see how a training question will typically appear to the student. When he opens a game which contains a training question the Notation pane will appear like this:

The three asterisks indicate that a training question is present at that point. The game's remaining moves (after the training question) are intentionally obscured.

After the student advances the game one move (to the point at which the asterisks appear), this window will pop up:

If you've created an audio component for the training question, it will play at this point. The written question appears just as you typed it. There's also the Help button which the student can use to ask for a hint, as well as a "Try again" button which will activate after the student makes an incorrect move on the board. The timer near the bottom of the dialogue gives the remaining time in "countdown" mode, while other informational displays show the possible score for a correct answer, as well as the total score for all training questions in the game, the number of points the student has scored, and these two figures expressed as a percentage.

That covers the basics of creating timed training questions using ChessBase. Other annotation forms, as well as methods of distributing lessons and training databases will be covered in other tutorials on this site; look for these if you're not sure about your knowledge of these topics.

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