Software that saves critical positions for study?

I am looking for a chess software program that would allow me to save critical positions from my games. I would like a format that would allow me to efficiently review my saved positions --perhaps make it easy to run through them quickly like flash cards.

Does such a program exist? Does anybody have any suggestions?

Thank you for any input.

The first thing that comes to mind is taking something like SCID and then making a PGN file for each position that pretty much just has the initial FEN of the position and not much else. Not the most straightforward, but it's definitely doable.

Thanks for your answer. Forgive me, but what is SCID?

It's the best free chess database. Google it and the first result in the page will be the sourceforge site where you can download it or get useful infos about the software. See if that suits to you.

What games ?  OTB or those played on sites like this ?

Games played on sites like this.

Before you pay out on expensive software you might want to try what I do when I save positions from my games...

At any point in a game on this site, you can save the current position by copying & pasting the FEN string from the FEN field (it's to the right of the moves list). In case you don't know, a FEN string is a line of printable characters which defines the position of all the pieces on the board, which player is due to play next, which players may still castle, the current move number & so on (see Wikipedia-it has some excellent information on FEN's & PGN's).

I do this a lot as I'm playing a game & save them all in one text file for later use. You can then paste any FEN string into the PGN editor on this site & analysise the position as you want, adding moves from there on with variations & annotating your moves.

When the FEN isn't available, you can always make your own with a little practice - it's surprisingly easy - or create a position using the Position Setup mode of the editor.  Now all this won't do exactly what you are asking for above but it is a cheap alternative & I know it works because I use it myself !

Edit:  I have some hints on how to use the PGN Editor/Game Editor on this site if they'd be of any use - you only have to ask.

You can use my program "Guess the Move", found in the download section of chess.com, or at my web site: https://sites.google.com/site/fredm/ (which also includes the documentation). This allows you to save a position from a pgn file (of your games), by clicking on a button when you scroll through a game and reach the position(s) you wish to save.  The program was not written for that purpose but I would think it would suffice.

Chess pad is free. It reads FEN and you could make a data base of FEN positons.

http://www.chess.com/download/view/chesspad-2

Setting up an epd (extended position description) file would be another possible solution, as long as you don't need to add any analysis or variations to the epd file. An epd file can almost be described as a text file consisting of a FEN string on each line of the file.

Most better GUIs can handle epd files. Arena, Scid, and I think Shredder, Fritz, etc. 

Thanks to all for your very thoughtful and helpful replies. Let me explain a little more about what I am seeking: Probably you have heard of the early chess training of the Polgar sisters. AsI understand it, the girls' father made a card catalogue of thousands of positions and it was the girls' task to commit them to memory.

I would like to do something similar by making an electronic card catalogue of critical positions from my games. I will have already studied them before I enter them into the database. Then from time to time, I wish to replay them in rapid succession -- only stopping if I have forgotten the ideas behind a position. I want it to be easy to do--a few clicks at most.

If the folks at Chess.com are listening, it would also be helpful to have an option to store tactics trainer problems in a similar way.

I think you need to first decide what you want the file to do for you. Do you want it to just throw up one position after another? Should it do that, but also be able to tell you a single best move for each position? Or do you want it to be able to give you a complete sequence of moves for each position?

If all you need is a position, then an epd file would be the easiest answer,  although a pgn file would also work but would require more setup work.

If you need a position and a best move, then it's the same answer as before; An epd file would be the easiest answer,  although a pgn file would also work but would require more setup work.

If you need a position and a sequence of moves, then I think only a pgn file would work. (I created a pgn file like this once with positions from a tactics book, and I used it in Scid. It worked OK. You could even hide the answers if you desired.)

Arena should be real handy for working with either pgn or epd files, although I'm not sure if you can hide the answers (maybe not). You can scroll through a pgn file of games, and when you get to a position you're interested in, you can add that position to an epd file with just a few mouse clicks. And when you get the epd file completed, you can open the epd file and go through the positions one by one with just a single mouse click for each position.

I'm not familiar with using epd files in Scid, but it might be just as easy to use as Arena. And like I said before, I suspect many other GUIs might also work. 

Chess Position Trainer (version 3.3 not the latest as it doesn't handle FEN positions) or Anki would be the best tools I know for what you want to do.

However, any pgn reader could be used too as a 'quick and dirty' solution, though it would be less flexible (you can't randomize the set for example...)

I haven't had any luck installing CPT 3.3 into Win 7 (some people have, but not me), so I'll pass on CPT. I've never heard of Anki, sounds interesting. I'll look into that one. (I assume it's limited to fen diagrams only, since I've only seen fen plugins for Anki.) 

You're right, most chess GUIs can't randomize files. I heard that the next version of Scid vs. PC (the version after 4.7.1) will be able to randomize pgn files, but I don't think it will randomize epd files.

True, CPT 3.3. doesn't work smoothly in Win7, but if you want to give it a last try :

- install Microsoft.NET Framework 1.1

- download CPT 3.3 and execute it in compatibility mode (XP SP2 with option 'Aero' off)

In my opinion, CPT 3.3, though a bit buggy, is a fantastic training tool, so you may want to give it a second chance

Then it's quite easy to create a repertoire with your training position and variations (you can basically copy/paste FEN). CPT handles the repetition itself, according to your ability to remember or not the right answers...

OTOH, I don't think Anki accepts FENs, but you could simply copy a diagram to use as the question and write the solution as your answer.

PS : if you find an Anki plugin to insert FENs, please tell me - I haven't used Anki for chess for some time, so maybe there are new tools available

If you store your positions in SCID, you can ask for a random position from the database (that's a SCID function).  I have used the free program http://www.mnemosyne-proj.org/ to learn chess positions as follows. 1. Store the position in a SCID database.  2. Store the "question" as the game number (within the SCID database).  3. When mnemosyne presents me with the question (it does so randomly, based on how successfully I have answered it in the past), I ask SCID to fetch that game. 4.  Based on my success I score my answer for mnemosyne (MN). 5.  I check my answer via SCID by using its engine (or you can store the answer as part of the SCID game).  This is a fairly round-about system, but it works.  If you have the entire pgn score of the game you are interested in, you can move through the game in SCID, arrive at the position you want to save, extract the FEN from SCID (you can copy/paste from SCID), put the FEN in a separate SCID database.  If I thought there was sufficient demand, I would write a program that does all this more easily.  I can still recomend my program GTM for arriving at your position inside a pgn file. GTM puts the position on the clipboard (as a pgn game with one position), from which you can easily add it to a SCID database in about one or two clicks.

You can also store images (e.g JPEGs of chess positions) directly in MN.  Or, you could store the FEN in MN and use SCID (or something else) to present the position to you (via cut/paste from MN into SCID).  Of course you can also store the answer directly in MN (as the move in algebraic notation).  I have not played with the latest (greatly enhanced) version of MN.  It might be possible to hold a script within MN that can invoke a program, passing it the FEN question. MN is a fantastic tool for learning just about anything, but it is not tooled for chess.

BTW, if you wish to capture the FEN from a diagram on you desktop (e.g. from tactics trainer), you can use my free program "convert chessboard image to FEN", available in the download section of chess.com, or from my website.

I've only found one plugin so far, I don't know if any others exist. I haven't installed it yet, so I'm not sure how well it works.

http://uucode.com/blog/2011/06/27/chess-fen-plugin-for-anki/

Regarding CPT 3.3, my Win 7 already has Microsoft.NET Framework 4 installed. Do I still need to install ver 1.1? And will there be any conflicts between the two Framework versions?

CPT 3.3 needs the older version to work. I've had both running on my PC for over a year now and haven't noticed any undesirable side-effect so far.

Thanks for the Anki plugin. I'll try it !

For middlegame and endgame positions, CPT doesn't do the trick anymore : I recommend Anki.

pmcglotlin;

The first question I would ask is what kind of software do you have now. Many GUIs have what you want already built in.