Treevis.org
visualize and manage your opening repertoire
How to use TreeVis
The PGN textbox can be used to import and export the current repertoire. It is updated with each action
and has options to include/exclude information like comments, example moves or unsaved moves.
The buttons at the bottom can be used to change the color of the selected move.
The main toolbar includes 6 buttons:
- Switch between “Standard” and “Squid” visualization (TAB).
- Toggle whether new moves should be saved or not (CTRL + ENTER).
- Show/hide comments (C).
- Toggle normal/example move (E).
- Toggle saved/unsaved move (ENTER).
- Remove selected move or comment (DELETE).
Undo (CTRL+Z) and Redo (CTRL+Y) will appear at the top left if available.
The toolbar of the chessbox includes
- Zoom in/out
- Show/hide analysis box
- Flip board (F)
- Copy FEN
- Show variation lines (V)
- Clear all arrows and circles of the selected moves.
- Engine: Stockfish 16 to evaluate positions
- Explorer: Browse lichess master's/user's most common moves and their win rates
- Assistant: Search moves (ctrl+f), add annotations and in the future suggest moves to prepare against
- Hold 'Q' while promotion to a queen.
- Hold 'R' while promotion to a rook.
- Hold 'B' while promotion to a bishop.
- Hold 'N' while promotion to a knight.
- 'Ctrl' + 'Left' to move a node to the left.
- 'Ctrl' + 'Right' to move a node to the right.
What is an opening repertoire
The game of chess is often divided into opening, middle game and end game.
An Opening repertoire is a collection of specific lines and traps, general ideas and example games. It is used to avoid disadvantageous positions or even generate favorable ones in the beginning. Another advantage of having a repertoire is having to spend less time in the early stage of the game.
Beginners are advised to study more general opening principles like grabbing space in the center, developing the minor pieces (knights and bishops) and castling. But from a certain level onward studying openings is a huge part of improving the players success. Grandmasters have vast repertoires that reach very deep, often far into the middle game or even end game in some specific lines.
Managing an opening repertoire includes:
An Opening repertoire is a collection of specific lines and traps, general ideas and example games. It is used to avoid disadvantageous positions or even generate favorable ones in the beginning. Another advantage of having a repertoire is having to spend less time in the early stage of the game.
Beginners are advised to study more general opening principles like grabbing space in the center, developing the minor pieces (knights and bishops) and castling. But from a certain level onward studying openings is a huge part of improving the players success. Grandmasters have vast repertoires that reach very deep, often far into the middle game or even end game in some specific lines.
Managing an opening repertoire includes:
- Reviewing different resources (books, videos, databases, games, …)
- Deciding what openings and moves to add or remove
- Documenting general ideas like important squares following specific positions
- Recording example games that include or demonstrate some of those ideas
- Studying and memorizing the collected data
- Training the opening phase and specific lines that were chosen and learned before
- Preparing for specific opponents
- Determine what parts of the repertoire need to be worked on next
Example Opening Repertoires
Different tools
- lichess.org/analysis offers a free engine to analyze positions and review multiple lines suggested by stockfish.
- lichess.org/opening allows you to look at the most commonly played moves of different player groups as well as their win rates for white and black.
- lichess.org/study can be used to manage your opening repertoire with multiple tabs.
- chessbook.com offers a tool that assists you in deciding what moves to play and building your opening repertoire.
- chesstempo.com/opening-training is a great tool for visualizing your opening PGN with a unique circular view of the moves.
- chessbase.com is often mentioned as the tool for serious chess players as it offers multiple mega databases (not free).
- chessable.com is a website that offers many courses and different tools for mastering chess.
- 365chess.com/opening.php is another tool for most common moves and win rates.
- openingtree.com can show you the most common moves of a player based on their online games and create a PGN file for further investigation.
- chesstree.net visualizes the opening moves, their names as well as win rates for white and black of different player groups.
- listudy.org/en/
- chessply.com
- chesstempo.com/opening-training/
- chessable.com
- mymoves.chessbase.com/en/Openings
- chess-repertoire-companion.com
- chesspositiontrainer.com/index.php/ is a desktop software for managing and training opening repertoires.
- scid.sourceforge.net is another powerful software for managing and training opening repertoires but takes some time to learn.
- Chess Repertoire Trainer is a mobile app for training specific opening lines of a PGN.
- chessvision.ai for scanning chess pictures in your browser.
Why another website?
The main purpose of this website is to offer a golden source for managing and reviewing all the information revolving around your openings. The tree visualization makes it easier to navigate your lines and notes compared to a traditional pgn text. The option to color the moves can be used to make navigation easier, mark traps and mistakes, highlight lines that need further review or whatever information you want to convey.Another important option is to differentiate between normal lines, examples, and unsaved moves. While you may want to store an instructive game to display important ideas of a specific opening, you don’t want it to show up in the training software you use to drill your prepared lines. This usually means you can’t store specific lines for training and example games in the same pgn, but here you can comfortably export your pgn without example moves for your training software.
The idea behind unsaved moves is that using tools like the Lichess analysis board to review the engines evaluation of certain positions automatically adds all the moves to your pgn file. This can lead to a confusing collection of moves where you are unsure which lines were here before and which ones were just added. By displaying the new moves as unsaved it is easier to decide which lines to actually add.
Links to videos or articles can also be added as comments and opened comfortably.
Secondary features include tools that help you to decide what moves to add like the stockfish engine and move suggestion based on the lichess database, e.g. moves that are commonly played by the opposing color but not included in your opening repertoire yet. The “squid vision” allows you to quickly browse through all your ending positions to help you decide where to expand next.
Special thanks to
- a very good friend that always helps me with my programming questions
- Trevor Fitzgerald, creator of rosen-score.vercel.app, who inspired my first chess related website project that taught me the fundamentals to create treevis.org later
- lichess.org for all the awesome and free features!
- chess.js, chessboard.js and panzoom - all great ressources for this project.
- google and chatGPT 3.5 & 4.0
- angel-rs filter generator that is used for changing the icon colors
Licensing
TreeVis.org is intended for private, non-commercial use under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.If you wish to use it for content creation or other commercial uses, you must ask for permission first. I retain the right to withdraw my permission for future commercial use at any point.
Feedback and questions
You can send any feedback, questions, and bug reports to lehrerboea@gmail.com.Please keep in mind that this website is maintained by one person with no real background in programming, a real life job, friends, family and other hobbies! :)
So responses might be slow, bug fixes will take a while and new features even longer. Thinking of new features takes a few seconds or minutes, but implementing them usually means several hours of planning, figuring out details and edge cases, coding, testing and debugging.
Some already planned features include:
- Engine for evaluation of positions ✓
- Opening Explorer for common replies and their win rate ✓
- Assistant that helps choosing what line to prepare against next
- More variation of different trees (e.g. sideways instead of downwards)
- Handling transpositions ✓
