How To Make Fritz Chess Software Play a Specific Chess Opening Part Two

For our example, we'll say that you've been studying the King's Gambit and you want to practice playing it against Fritz. You've decided to create a small opening book containing just the variations you've studied so far:

* 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 g5 etc. (The Classical Variation)
* 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 d5 etc.
* 1.e4 e5 2.f4 d5 etc. (The Falkbeer Countergambit)
* 1.e4 e5 2.f4 Bc5 etc.

Obviously you're going to want to extend these variations so they're longer, plus add some side variations (so that there are occasional surprises along the way), but these variations constitute our basic roadmap of what we intend to do with our "handmade" opening book.

The first step is to fire up Fritz. In the main chessboard screen, go to the Game menu and select "New game" (this is to reset the chessboard and clear the Notation pane). Now we're going to create a new (empty) opening book. Go to the File menu, select "New", and then "Openings book" from the submenu to get to this dialogue: This is nothing more than the standard Windows file select dialogue which you've doubtless seen when using other programs. You can select a folder in which to house the book you're about to create, as well as give the book file a name. The default will be a "Books" folder which was created when you installed Fritz (the folder path will be \My Documents\ChessBase\Books; another way of getting there is via the path C:\Documents and Settings\[user name]\My Documents\ChessBase\Books). Just name the file in the "Filename" box and click "OK"; a new empty opening book has now been created on your harddrive.

For this example we're going to name our opening book "kinggamb.ctg" as shown below: .and then we'll click "OK". The dialogue will disappear and we'll see the Notation pane switch automatically to this view under the "Openings book" tab:The book is currently empty because we haven't added any moves to it yet.

We need to do two more things before we start adding moves to the book. First we need to go to the Engine menu and click on "Switch off engine"; this will put a check beside that command to show that the engine is "off":

When the chess engine is turned off, Fritz won't respond after we move a piece on the chessboard. Next we need to right-click in the Notation pane and select "Allow move adding":Enabling this feature means that we can manually add moves to the opening book. Now we're ready to start putting in the moves. Let's say that we want to add this variation to the opening tree:

1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 g5 4.h4 g4 5.Ne5 Nf6 6.d4 d6 7.Nd3 Nxe4 8.Bxf4 Qe7 9.Qe2 Nc6 10.c3 Bf5 11.Nd2 0-0-0 12.0-0-0 Re8

All we need to do is start making these moves on Fritz' chessboard; as we do so, they will be added to the opening book. For example. after we make the move 1.e4 on the board (and then step back one move by using the Left Cursor ["left arrow"] key on the keyboard), the Notation pane under the "Openings book" tab will look like this: We see that the move 1.e4 has been added to the book. Single-click on this "1.e4" entry in the book (to make that move on the board again), then make the move 1...e5 for Black, and follow it up with the rest of the moves in the variation. After making the move 12...Re8, we can double-check the work by stepping back one move and looking at the Notation pane:.and we can see that the variation has been entered successfully.

Let's say now that we want to add another variation which starts with the same first three moves (1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 g5) but branches off beginning with the move 4.Bc4. Use the left cursor key on your keyboard to step back through the moves until we get to the position after 3...g5 has been played. Now we just make the move 4.Bc4; when the following dialogue appears, just click the "New variation" button: It's interesting to note here that the value listed for "probability" has changed from the "100" we saw in earlier views to "50"; since we now have a branching point (and one in which there are two possible moves), the engine's probability of playing a particular move has changed to 50%.

We can continue to add variations in this manner for as long as we like. You'll recall that we listed four main King's Gambit "systems" earlier in this article. We can add "main variations" for all four of these systems, plus branching subvariations for each of them as well. Later (after we've finished constructing this book), as Fritz plays the opening and reaches one of these branching points it will randomly play one of the moves it finds in the opening book.

After we've finished adding variations to our opening book, we need to turn off "Allow move adding"; otherwise the moves of the games that we play will be added to the book. Right-click on an empty spot in the opening tree and click on "Allow move adding" to uncheck it in the popup menu. We also need to turn the chess engine back "on", so we'll go to the Engine menu and click on "Switch off engine" to uncheck that as well.

We're now ready to play a game using our new opening book, so we just set our levels or time controls as usual and then start playing against Fritz. Since our new opening book contains only King's Gambit moves, we're forcing Fritz to play nothing but that opening.

Creating such an opening book by hand is a good training tool, since entering the moves manually helps reinforce those variations in our memories. And using such a book in actual play against Fritz is also good training because we'll always know when we've played a move which isn't in the opening book (either because we've reached the end of a variation or because we've erred and played a "non-standard" move): at the point at which we've departed from what's in the book, we'll see Fritz' engine analysis pane spring to life as it shows us what the engine is "thinking". As long as we're playing moves which are in the opening book, Fritz will reply without delay (or after a very minimal one of a second or so), but as soon as we depart from the "known territory" of the opening book's moves, Fritz will start calculating moves instead of playing "book" replies.

We can create as many of these specialized opening books as we like, easily switching between them as we decide to train in different openings. If we want to load another opening book (be it one we've created or the one which came with the Fritz program), all we have to do is go to the File menu, select "Open", and then "Openings book" to get to this dialogue: ust double-click on the name of the opening book you wish to load.

Now you know how to create a special opening book by hand; in the last article in this series we're going to learn how to take Fritz' database games and create an opening book from them.
http://www.chesscentral.com/Chess_Opening_Book_a/137.htm