Master your chess openings with focused training

Chess Prep Pro is for building your opening repertoires and then training your memory of them. The tutorial in the app's settings page gives a more detailed walk-through.

Yes, typically you should create separate repertoires for White and Black. When you play White, you start the game and choose your opening moves. When you play Black, you respond to your opponent's opening. These require different strategies and move sequences, so it makes sense to organise them separately. You can name your repertoires clearly (like "My White Repertoire" and "My Black Repertoire") to keep them organised, and you can create as many repertoires as you want.

Free features include creating unlimited repertoires, the basic training modes (Entire Repertoire and Single Variation), importing and exporting PGN, the analysis board with engine, and the opening book. Premium adds Smart Train (spaced repetition), Often Failed Positions and New Positions training modes, Blind Spot Finder, Smart Trim, re-train failed positions, unlimited repertoire downloads, cloud backup and sync, and an ad-free experience.

Smart Train uses spaced repetition; Entire Repertoire covers all positions; Single Variation focuses on one specific line; Often Failed Positions targets your weak spots; and New Positions practises recently added moves.

Training is both structured and randomised so it feels like real games. It starts from the beginning of your repertoire and plays through one complete line at a time. When your opponent has multiple possible moves, the app randomly picks one for you to respond to. After reaching the end of a line, it rewinds back through that line to check whether there are other opponent moves you have not practised yet, then continues from one of those. Training therefore never jumps randomly between unrelated positions; it systematically explores each branch while randomising the opponent's choices, so over many sessions every position gets equal practice. Training filters and training modes can further narrow which positions appear.

When a position has multiple possible opponent moves, the app returns to it so you can practise responding to each one. If your opponent has three possible moves from a position, you will meet that position three times. If you have imported a large PGN and want to train only the main lines, enable "Train main lines only" in the Additional Training Settings menu.

Training modes determine which positions to practise: Entire Repertoire, Single Variation, Smart Train, Often Failed Positions, and New Positions. Training filters are additional restrictions you apply on top of any mode, such as depth limits (for example, only train the first ten moves), move history filters, or training main lines only. You will find them in the Additional Training Settings menu.

Yes. You can retrain missed positions after a session or target positions you often fail using the training filters and Often Failed Positions mode.

There is no fixed amount that guarantees a particular result. Smart Train schedules positions for you automatically; with the other modes, choose a short, regular routine you can sustain and use your training history to decide where to focus. Consistency matters more than session length.

"<<" rewinds to the last branching point in your repertoire, meaning the last position where several moves are saved. "<" rewinds by one move. ">" goes forward one move using the first saved move in your repertoire. ">>" goes forward to the next branching point, following the first saved move in each position along the way.

Yes. Hold the move in the list and drag it down to the position you want.

Transpositions occur when different move orders lead to the same position. For example, 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 reaches the same position as 1.Nf3 Nc6 2.e4 e5. Chess Prep Pro handles transpositions automatically, recognising when positions are identical regardless of how you reached them.

The opening book, also called the Lichess explorer, is a database of real chess games. In the analysis board you can enable it to see how often each move is played from the current position, along with win, draw and loss statistics. This helps you find the likely opponent responses and prepare for them. Enable the opening book option in the analysis board and the statistics appear next to each possible move.

Chess Prep Pro includes a built-in opening statistics database covering around 10,000 of the most common positions for each rating level, with the play rate, win rate and draw rate for every move.

That only covers the most popular openings. If you play less common lines, or want statistics deeper into your repertoire, connecting a free Lichess account lets the app reach the full Lichess opening database, giving you statistics on virtually every position in the opening book. A connection is also what lets Blind Spot Finder and Smart Trim scan your entire repertoire; without one they still work, but only against the limited local database.

To connect, open the analysis board, go to the opening book settings and tap the connection status. The app only uses the connection to read the game database. No personal data is read from your Lichess account, and a throwaway account works fine.

The opening database shows common moves from the current position. Blind Spot Finder scans positions and variations throughout your repertoire to identify likely opponent continuations you have not prepared for.

Both are premium features that optimise your repertoire. Blind Spot Finder scans your repertoire against the game database to find likely opponent moves you have not prepared for, filling the gaps in your preparation. Smart Trim does the opposite: it identifies opponent moves in your repertoire that rarely occur in real games, so you can focus on what matters.

Chess Prep Pro comfortably handles a few hundred to a few thousand positions per repertoire. It is designed for building and training opening repertoires rather than storing large chess databases, so importing very large PGN files may cause performance issues.

These are ready-made repertoires you can download if you are stuck creating your own. They are built from various YouTube videos, Lichess studies, or our own repertoires, and the original source is listed in the repertoire description where applicable. Building a custom repertoire to match your own playing style is usually better, but a downloaded one is a solid foundation you can modify.

Yes. Downloaded repertoires are fully editable: you can add moves, delete moves, reorder them, and change comments. They are useful templates to get started, and you can customise them until they suit the way you play.

The levels reflect the developer's own assessment, based mainly on the size of the repertoire and the complexity of the opening ideas. Get in touch if you believe a repertoire has an inaccurate level.

In the analysis board, tap the settings icon and choose Import/Export. You can paste PGN text directly, import a PGN file from your device storage, or import a Lichess study. For a Lichess study, use the Study PGN button in the share section on Lichess to download the file first, then select it in the app.

Export the repertoire as PGN text or a PGN file, then send it to someone who can import it into their own repertoire.

You need an account to download premade repertoires, back up your repertoires, or purchase premium. You can use the other core functionality without an account.

Premium is linked to your Chess Prep Pro account, so you can use it on another supported device after signing into the same account. You lose access to premium features while signed out.

You keep access to your premium features until the date your subscription would have renewed. You can cancel any time and resubscribe any time.

Yes. With a premium account your progress and repertoires can be backed up and synced across multiple devices; sign in on any device to reach your data. Without premium you can export your repertoires with the PGN export feature and import them elsewhere.

With premium you can back up repertoires to your Chess Prep Pro account from the repertoire's analysis screen: tap the gear icon and choose Backup. The backup is manual because it works as a checkpoint system, so you can either upload your latest changes or restore the last saved checkpoint. Once you sign in on a new device, your backed-up repertoires appear in My Repertoires. Free users can export repertoires to PGN files and re-import them after reinstalling.

Please back up before uninstalling: if you uninstall the app, your repertoires are lost unless you have used the premium backup, exported PGN files, or your device has its own backup system. PGN backups preserve moves and comments only. They do not save the statistics and move training history that Smart Train and the other modes rely on, so backing up to your account keeps more.

Most app features work offline. You need a connection for downloading repertoires, the opening database, Blind Spot Finder, and account-related actions.

Email ChessPrepProHelp@gmail.com to suggest an improvement, report a bug, or ask a question.