Best program for aggressive, varied openings?

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zola84

What's the best software to really give me an opening workout - repeatedly playing aggressive and varied lines within a subsystem (e.g. King's Gambit) that I specify? I need to practice getting to playable middlegames as Black. Rated 20xx.

I've been on a Mac these past few years, and although the software can of course crush me tactically in the middlegame, I haven't found the openings sparring partner I need to prepare for OTB human play.

Now that I've installed Parallels and Windows, I have access to much more software - but it's a new world to me. I realize this is a basic question - appreciate any pointers. Thanks.

DrawMaster

What you are looking for may not exist. Let me explain a bit. I will assume that what you see are human-like opening moves that aren't ordinarily listed as main lines. Getting a program to deviate from a strong book until it has actually left book is tricky. Human opening moves in lines like the King's Gambit ... moves that don't lose outright by an immediate or near-term tactic will be hard for an engine to choose WHILE still in book. After leaving book, there are - I believe - some programs that you can force to randomly choose between several playable lines. Again, making the engine choose a human move that is bad will be might hard to do, without dumbing down the program in the main.

Perhaps another poster can offer some specific program insights for us.

zola84

Yup, you understand exactly what I'm hoping to find - a program that can play varied attacking moves (within a specified system) that may not be theoretically "best," but are effective and common in human blitz play.

zola84

I may be asking a lot, but it seems much more relevant to our needs than improving a program from 3300 to 3400 - is that what chess programmers spend their day doing? (Those numbers don't even look like ratings!)