Repertoire Deviations
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Location: Tools > Repertoire Deviations
The Repertoire Deviations tool highlights the critical points where your actual games diverge from your prepared repertoire. By comparing your played moves against your study material, it reveals which openings and positions need attention, helping you refine your training and close knowledge gaps with precision.
Rather than reviewing games in isolation, Repertoire Deviations automatically identifies the exact moments where you or your opponents left your prepared theory. This allows you to focus your study time on the lines that matter most — reinforcing weak spots, expanding coverage, and converting real-game experience into refined repertoire knowledge.
This application allows you to:
- + Import games from Chess.com, Lichess.org, and PGN files to analyze against your repertoires
- + Automatically detect deviations from your prepared lines for both you and your opponents
- + Analyze deviation positions with engine evaluation and database statistics before adding to repertoire
Controls
This section is used to import your games from supported sources and configure the analysis parameters.
For Chess.com and Lichess.org, enter your username and specify the number of games to load. Click the settings cog to configure additional filters:
- ◦ Date range
- ◦ Time controls
You can also add games by uploading one or more PGN files. When uploading PGNs, you will be prompted to enter one or more player names. These names are used to match you against the PGN metadata so the system can correctly determine which side you were playing and identify deviations accordingly.
Once all details are entered, click Import Games to begin loading and analyzing your games against your saved repertoires.
Deviation Summary
After your games are analyzed, this section displays a comprehensive table showing how your games matched against each of your repertoires.
For each repertoire, you can view:
- ◦ Games – total number of matched games
- ◦ Win % – your win percentage in these games
- ◦ W/D/L – win, draw, and loss breakdown
- ◦ Avg Deviation Ply – average move number where deviations occurred
- ◦ Player Deviations – number of times you deviated from your repertoire
- ◦ Unique Deviations – total number of distinct deviation positions for both you and your opponents
Use the toggle at the top to filter between White Repertoires and Black Repertoires.
Click on any row to open the Repertoire Deviation Details view for in-depth analysis of that specific repertoire.
Repertoire Deviation Details
The detailed view provides a comprehensive interface for examining and acting on deviations for an individual repertoire.
Interactive Chessboard
The chessboard allows you to play through your repertoire and review the deviation positions. Navigate through the moves to understand the context of each deviation and how it fits into the broader opening structure.
Moves Card
The moves card displays your complete repertoire tree with deviation moves highlighted in yellow. This visual distinction makes it easy to identify exactly where theory was abandoned in your games.
You can click on any highlighted deviation to immediately add it to your repertoire, expanding your coverage based on real-game experience.
At the bottom of the card, several filters allow you to refine what deviations are displayed:
- ◦ Min and Max Ply – filter deviations to only show those occurring within a specific move range
- ◦ Deviation Moves Length – control how many moves of the deviation continuation are shown
- ◦ Show Only Your Deviations – toggle to filter out opponent deviations and focus solely on positions where you left your prepared theory
You can also use the Next Deviation Position button to quickly jump between deviation points without manually navigating the move tree.
Analytics Cards
In the detailed view, you have access to multiple analytics cards that provide crucial context for evaluating deviation positions before deciding whether to add them to your repertoire.
- ◦ Stockfish – displays real-time engine evaluation of the current position, showing the best moves, evaluations, and principal variations to help you understand the objective strength of deviation moves and identify tactical opportunities or mistakes
- ◦ Masters Database – shows how top-level players (masters and grandmasters) have handled the current position, displaying game statistics, common continuations, and win/draw/loss percentages from high-level play to provide insight into theoretical soundness and practical results
- ◦ Lichess Database – provides statistics from millions of online games played on Lichess.org, showing the most popular moves, win rates at various rating levels, and how frequently the position has been reached, particularly useful for understanding practical tendencies and common responses at different skill levels
- ◦ ChessDB – an extensive opening explorer that aggregates data from multiple sources including master games, engine analysis, and online databases, offering comprehensive statistics, move popularity, and evaluation trends to help you make informed decisions about expanding your repertoire coverage