Author: Stephen Ham
Date: 07:25:18 03/01/06
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On February 28, 2006 at 19:05:46, Mark Boylan wrote: >After reading what everyone had to say on this topic, I've come up with a >plan... > >What Stephen says makes perfect sense to me. Memorizing opening moves is silly >if you don't understand them. But I tend to learn better if I verbalize the >ideas by writing them down. And bookup seems like the perfect virtual notebook >for recording ideas related to chess positions. > >So, taking Mike's "one move for one side, all moves for the other" approach a >step further, I've decided to do this: > >I will use an opening introduction as Joseph suggested (but a book instead of a >video. I can just picture myself rewinding & fast-forwarding over & over) to >enter the moves as I read. But instead of entering only the response that I want >to give, as Mike suggested, I will also enter the other possible responses as >the leaf nodes. This will give me a place to record why I don't like that move. >And I will only extend the nodes that follow the move that I wish to make. As I >enter each position I will explain why I've chosen to make that move or why I've >chosen to avoid that move. > >I think this is probably much different from how a more experienced player >probably uses bookup, but I think it will work for me. Hopefully I'll get into >some middlegames that aren't already lost. And years from now, I can go back and >read how naive I was. :) Dear Mark, Bookup is very flexible and so many "plans" exist for learning openings. Mike's idea of entering only one move for your side, as a response to various moves from your opponent, can indeed be helpful to those who are relatively new to chess and desirous of learning the openings. Another plan, from several, is to manually add ALL moves to all openings and build your own "ECO", making one large book. And, as you manually add moves for all openings, you also enter comments manually regarding these specific moves. Doing this all long-hand - the entering of the moves, examining them on the screen, writing out the comments, helps one to both memorize AND comprehend what's going on. One of the nice features of Bookup is that there's an option to have Bookup randomly play moves from your Bookup database against you, just like in a real game. Then you can test both your memory and comprehension to see if, on your own, you're able to select the moves that you previously entered as "best." Bookup is simply a great tool to have. Don't forget that you can use it to learn how to play endgames in the exact same fashion. Since you're a beginner, Mark, you should spend some time learning endgames. Some advise that you should spend more time on endgames than openings. If you play correspondence chess, Mark, entering opening theory into Bookup will help you sort that huge amount of data into something meaningful. Since Bookup both backsolves and catches ALL transpositions, it effectively organizes opening theory for you. It's been invaluable to me as a correspondence chess player. All the best, Steve
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