Book > Import
A book is a database with positions. The book consists of millions of positions. For each position the book has full information on which moves were played, how often and with what result. Browsing the book gives you quick insight into the openings played in practice. You can create your own books, for example a book with all games of your next opponent. The engine can use the book too.
For example, you can create a book with all games of Ton Sijbrands playing with the white color. When you browse the book you know that the white moves are played by Ton Sijbrands and the black moves by his opponents (assuming there are no positions with changed colors). This way you can study the white opening repertoire of Sijbrands. You can do the same with all the games of Ton Sijbrands with the black color to study his black opening repertoire.
When you create a book (Book > Create) the book is empty. It has zero positions. To fill the book with positions you have to import games.
Choose Book > Import to import games.
In the Import dialog box select the database you want to add to the book.
Then use this dialog box to set the options:
All games are imported by default.
To change selection enter first game and/or last game.
All positions are imported by default (Moves = 999).
To avoid huge books you can limit the number of moves.
In the next example we create a book with all positions ever occurred in all games available.
•Choose View > Windows > Book to display the Book Window (if it is not already visible).
•Choose Book > New to create a new book and name it BIG.
•The Book Window is empty and the book name BIG is displayed in the upper left corner.
•Choose Book > Import and choose MEGA2020.
•The Book Import dialog box appears.
•Don’t change the numbers at the right of Games (we want to import all games).
•Don’t change the 999 to the right of Moves (we want to import the complete games).
•Select Ok to start generating the book.
The process of creating a book consists of a cycle of three steps:
1) replaying games
2) sorting positions and
3) saving positions.
This cycle repeats until the book is finished. While ‘replaying games’ and ‘saving positions’ counters are displayed so that you can see the program is busy. The counter while ‘saving positions’ sometimes stops shortly and then continues again. During ‘sorting positions’ no counter is displayed. Sorting can take a while, depending on the number of positions to sort. Please be patient.
When all cycles are ready the program creates an index and shows the number of positions added. The Book Window is updated right away with the position in the Board Window (only if this position is in the book, of course).
Minimum system requirements
Mega2020 contains about 580 thousand games with 46 million unique positions. A book with that many positions requires 700 MB. While generating a book twice this space is needed for temporary files: 1,4 GB.
Important: Creating a book requires lot of computer resources concerning processor, hard disk and memory. We recommend to close the engines first.