Express to Professional

Mike here. Let me say this up front. Your Express version of Chess Openings Wizard has everything you need to craft your opening repertoire.

Sort millions of games? Yes.

Edit terabytes of opening trees? You bet.

Import unlimited PGN files? Of course.

Use any UCI engine and copy and paste its analysis? Sure.

Automatically watch PGN files so that those games are added to your black and white repertoires as soon as you play them? Your Express version does that too.

Create new positions? You bet.

Dropbox integration? It uses a free Dropbox account to backup your ebooks to the cloud.

Share your data with the iPad, iPhone, and Android versions? Yes!

So what does the Professional version add?

In short, lots of power tools.

And certain perks of membership.

Mike hosts webinars for the Professional users, walking them through the more sophisticated functions so that they get the most from their software.

The king of the power tools may be backsolving which works backwards from all the leaf nodes in the tree of your opening analysis to show the value of each position, based on best play for both sides, according to the contents of your opening tree. Backsolving automatically points out the holes in your repertoire.

Here is a YouTube video detailing the advantages of Backsolving.

And here is a video of a real life example of using Backsolving.

This video shows grandmaster analysis causing Chess Openings Wizard to show a hole in a repertoire.

The Professional version will find novelties by comparing the assessment from an engine with the stored Informant rate symbol. It makes a list of all positions where the engine thinks it has a better move so you can check each of them. If you are looking for ideas on where best to expand your repertoire, this function will be your favorite tool.

You can have a chess engine analyze your entire repertoire overnight. Here is a video showing the power of overnight analysis. Then once it’s analyzed, you can more effectively search for novelties – or just plain bad moves in your opening plans.

Every ebook displays the Pedigree moves which is a ribbon of the relative number of white wins, black wins, and draws using only moves from games between two super grandmasters. There is also a function to add all “Pedigree” moves to any opening position. When there is no Pedigree information, it’s useful to know that the opening move has never been tried in contests between super GMs.

Speed Learning and Speed Testing are two ways to get a group of positions (for example, all the positions where White is to move in your White repertoire) and then testing you on them flashcard style.

The Professional version allows you to combine separate repertoires or prune a repertoire of orphaned positions after deleting candidate moves.

Batch processes will clear all color codes or position assessments (numbers from an engine) or Informant rate symbols.

Entire ebooks can be exported to PGN either as an annotated game (each line as a sub-variation) or as many unique game lines.

The Professional app can show whether there are matching positions in a separate ebook.

To upgrade from Express to Professional, login and use your private link that gives you a discount equal to the price of your Express version.

In short, you can build a perfect house with a hammer and a saw. But once you know how to use those tools, a nail gun and power saw can speed things up dramatically. No professional would be without these tools.