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Fritz 17 - Learn Chess Openings

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In Fritz 17 you will find several new opening management and training functions:

Manage your openings with "My Moves"

The new opening repertoire in Fritz 17 is called "My Moves." It is separate for White and Black. You add variations to your repertoire by clicking on a move anywhere in the program and marking it as "My Move." This will include the whole variation up to this move into your repertoire. Marking moves is the only way to store variations, but this also saves a lot of time from entering moves one by one, copying from a source.

Manage and drill your opening repertoire

Your "My Moves" repertoire is stored online. You can access it from any machine, and also from a web browser. But the goodies don't stop there. Imagine you are watching a live game in Playchess, whether a casual blitz, or a broadcast from a top GM tournament. You can instantly check to see if a game played is following an opening from your repertoire.

In the LiveBook in Fritz (and via the web app as in the image below) the moves will be color coded, and you can see if the move is in your repertoire already. If it isn't, just click on it to add it.

Blue = This move is in your repertoire for White.
Green = Move is in your repertoire for Black.
Cyan = You play this move with both colors.
* (an asterisk) = Marked as 'My Move'.
** (to asterisks) = Marked as 'Important for me'.

Memorizing Opening Variations

Chess database software creates a seductive illusion. The well structured management of opening variations in your personal analysis creates the impression that one can reproduce them easily over the board. Of course pure opening research is fun. However for practical success you really have to be able to recall everything from memory. Fritz 17 introduces the Drill as an efficient and entertaining way to help with this.

When Drilling, you play your lines and Fritz answers in a way that you stay within your prepared repertoires. Moves are played according to their frequency in master games.

After some time, Fritz 17 detects which variations you know well and which you don’t. Then the shakier systems are offered more frequently so that you can solidify your memory in an efficient way. 

The drill dialog displays your "Memory Score." If you reproduce the correct move for a position five times in a row, this position is counted as fully learned and scores one point. You have learned your repertoire 100% if you achieve this for any position.

Standard Repertoires

Fritz 17 provides access to standard opening repertoires for nearly every prominent line in chess. Those repertoires are regularly updated to current theory and recent games on our server. You can either drill them with Free Drill or upload them to My Moves. Or you pick single lines by marking moves. Of course you may simply store them in your traditional databases. Open a list by calling "Openings → Standard Repertoires." Click on any entry and it will automatically load.

Standard Repertoires are available in four levels: Easy – Club – Tournament and Professional. This saves work: As a normal club player you don’t have to extract the best moves from a deeply nested professional repertoire suitable only for master level players.

Opening Theory "Laid Back"

The best way to memorize opening variations is to execute moves physically. On the screen or even better on a board. Your brain will be more engaged in what you do. However, sometimes at the end of a long day you just might want to lean back, relax and leave mouse and keyboard untouched.

To satisfy this, Fritz 17 introduces the replay of variation trees. You can watch your repertoire being played out on the screen. Lines are picked randomly and repeated as often as you like. Just let it run, set the speed and watch.

Standard Repertoires and Full Tree Replay