About RChess


Yes, there are a number of chess database programs. Therefor the question about the motivation for the development of RChess is valid. Working with the known programs I was frustrated mainly be these points:
  1. None of the programs could provide all information I am interested in in a single view. For example I would like to see at the same time which moves my next opponent had played in a certain position, how successful he was, what strong players had played in the same position and how successful they were. Additionaly it would be nice to see also my personal score in this position.
  2. None of the programs use the capabilities of nodern computers. Especially in the product of the market leader badly implemented algorithms shine everywhere. The goal of RChess was not to implement all features of other programs but to implement the central functionality really good.
  3. And: I had my own ideas and found it difficult to implement them as part of one of the open source projects.
The name RChess shall remind that I intend to realize a second goal in this program. Until now I have not found a satisfying solution to manage an opening repertoire. The most common solution is to handle this using a set of commented games. But this is not satisfying:
  1. To manage a repertoire with lot of move transpositions is not easy. It is difficult to detect that a position has been already checked somewhere else in the variation tree.
  2. When a replay some game I don't know what is in my repertoire for this position. I cannot easily find out whether it is part of my repertoire. I cannot find out which moves from this position I have investigated.
  3. It is difficult to update the repertoire with information found when replaying an arbitrary game.
  4. When I review a collection of new games, the repertoire does not help me to find the interesting ones quickly.
RChess supports multiple repertoires. So the user can have a dedicated white and black repertoire or a risky and a save one. There is also a focus to generate a first version of an personal repertoire quickly by evaluating already played own games.