It's OK. I'm not a Professional - nor do I play one on TV.

Q: What's the difference between a Professional Chess Player and Large Cheese Pizza?

A: A Large cheese Pizza can feed a family of four.

All this talk lately about opening preparation with chessbase ( which is awesome... and if I had the time, of course I'd like to emulate my Hero Gary Kasparov...of which it's going on 2 weeks since I washed the hand that shook the hand when he was in Boston...but enough of the digression) has me feeling YET AGAIN, that there is ANOTHER part of my game I can improve. Then I got to thinking that the tool I do use, Bookup is adequate for my opening preparation because .... not to surprise anyone here... I am not a professional chess player. I get a little annoyed by Mike Leahy ( proprietor of the software) when he comes up with a new and improved version and insists I transition. I refused the last round of updates... I may live to regret but I don't care. I also get annoyed at myself for falling into the hype being generated over "novel" approaches. Sorry, I refuse to feel left out of this one.

I go with what works for me. I am transitioning from pure Rote memorization of lines to more of an understanding of where my openings are heading. Long story short, a couple years ago I stumbled on book that was a treatise on an opening system ( the London). A system versus a full blown opening variation, is one of much less theoretical understanding and more of a positional understanding and targets piece placement. This being a simple opening to understand and learn, I learned it from the bottom up. I could see the positions that would arise from typical responses and "knew" how to handle Black's responses rather well. Last year I transitioned from that system because as "simple" as it was... it too was a simple one to defend. But the way i learned it was novel to me.

I used Bookup to import games. I found the program easy to import PGN games and all. Plus there was an actual bookup book that was on the London. I added to the "canned" data base ocncepts from the books I had and off I went. I used the training mode to first work on depth and secondly to work on variations. I liked the training mode in Bookup over chess base and stuck with it.

Fast forward to what I have today. I have a separate book that I MADE for each of my 1.e4 openings, and defenses as black. I put MY OWN annotations in and check it with the "Starting out" series or even verify it with Chess base search on positions. Yes that can be tedious but since I have my repertoire base already established in Bookup, I didn't see the value add of transitioning to Chess base and re-entering all my lines again. I have to pick and choose what I do with my study time carefully.

Besides, Openings is not where I lose most of my games. I'm still tactically deficient despite the seven circles of hell and my continuing spin into further circles. I've learned that openings can provide a false sense of security but once exposed in the middle game, who's your daddy? Topic of a whole other post. Which I may continue... if I have the time.