4. Rebel Opening Books

4.1. Three Types of Rebel Opening Books

4.2. Rebel Tournament Book

The Rebel tournament book is a small 4-5 Kb opening book with only good lines for Rebel. The tournament book is a "guide" to pick the good lines from the main book (REBEL.MVS). Rebel searches first in the tournament book and if this fails (no book move found) the normal main book (REBEL.MVS) is searched. Therefore the tournament book contains only very short opening lines to guide the main book. You can watch that process in Rebel when the display on the screen switches from "Tournament" to "REBEL.MVS".

Because the tournament book is buildin into the Rebel executable, you can either use this book, or switch it off, but never exchange this book.

4.3. Rebel Books

Schröder BV offers a large number of Rebel books (see Rebel Gold). Also opening books in Genius 3/4/5, Fritz 3/4, or ChessMaster 4000/5000 format can be imported into the Rebel book format directly by Rebel Century. Genius .BOK opening books can also be imported in renaming them to .CGS. Several small Rebel books can be joined into one bigger Rebel book in Rebel Century ("Join opening book").

4.4. Rebel User Books

A large number of (unedited) opening books in Rebel user book format can be downloaded from the Schröder BV download page.

Own Rebel user books can either be created from scratch ("New user book") or from a Rebel database ("Make userbook from DB").

Rebel user books are plain ASCII files. Several Rebel user books can therefore simply be joined by concatenating the files.

4.5. Converting Rebel User Books to Rebel Books

Rebel user books can be converted into Rebel books by the freeware utility program rbmtomvs.exe.

4.6. How to View the Evaluation of Analysed Rebel Books

Rebel Century can analyse the Rebel opening books (.MVS files). You can do so by using the function 'Analyze MVS-book' in the menu BKS (shortcut F5). See the Rebel Century manual for further details. As a result you will get a .VAL file beside your already existing .MVS file. The main Rebel Century opening book REBEL.MVS is delivered with such a .VAL file (REBEL.VAL). After converting your own books (Rebel user books: .RBM files) into the Rebel book format, you can use this function to create evaluations for your own books. To make things easier, Schröder BV offers a lot of dedicated opening books for free download at the Rebel Century subscription area. See Rebel Century subscription for more information.

Let's now describe, how to show the evaluations of the opening move with the example file ALEKHINE.ZIP (from the Rebel subscription area):

• Extract the files ALEKHINE.MVS and ALEKHINE.VAL from the archive ALEKHINE.ZIP to the directory CENTURY\BOOKS
• Start Rebel Century
• Open the menu OPT (shortcut F3). Activate 'Player <> Player'.
• Open the menu CFG (shortcut F6). Deactivate 'Tournament Book' and 'User book', if activated. Activate 'Book opening'
• Open the menu BKS (shortcut F5). Deactivate 'Show book scores'. Select the function 'Load opening book' (shortcut ALT E). Select the file 'ALEKHINE.MVS' in the Rebel file selectorbox.

You will now see all available moves (and its evaluation, calculated by Rebel Century) in the info box at the bottom of the screen. If you want to play one of the given moves, just point with the mouse on the move and press the left mouse button.

One remark about the shown evaluation values: the values are shown in so called centipawn units, i.e. a value of -100 means one pawn unit down.

• Back to top of page
• Back to Rebel Century FAQ Index
• Schröder BV Rebel Homepage