How to stop forgetting your openings

When I start working with a student on their opening repertoire, the first thing I do is have them teach me one of their openings. I’ll ask questions like:

“What if they do [scary looking move]?”

“Why do you do this instead of [other logical move]”?

What I find is, very few players can answer these questions. They often struggle to remember their preparation, even in openings they’ve played for years. Clearly, what most people are doing to prepare the opening isn’t working.

To remember your openings – and use them to win games (!!!) – you need a rich, deeply interconnected understanding of what’s going on in the opening. Today I’ll explain the best drill for developing this.

Preparing for a test

First, a little backstory. The inspiration for this drill comes from an academic study.

In the study, students prepared for a test using two methods. The first group reread a passage. The second group tried to summarize the material in the passage from memory.

The researchers asked both groups how well they thought they would do. Then they tracked their performance on an actual test. The group who re-read their notes predicted they would do better, and they were able to do pretty well on a test given only five minutes after looking at the material. But on a test given a week later, the group that rewrote from memory did far better.

This makes sense. When rereading, it’s very easy to convince yourself you know the material – it’s right there in front of you. In contrast, trying to recall the material is difficult and uncomfortable. You’ll probably find there are gaps in your knowledge, which is why the second group was less confident. But ultimately this method was much more effective for performing well on the test.

The chess equivalent of rereading the chapter is “clicking through” your opening file (or book/course). When you do this, it’s very easy to convince yourself you know all the material. But just like rereading the textbook to prepare for a test, it doesn’t work. You might be able to cram for a game the same day, but the knowledge won’t last. This is why most players struggle to remember their openings.

What’s the chess equivalent of rewriting from memory?

The Blank Slate Drill

Open an empty Lichess study (or Chessbase file). Set a timer for half an hour and enter as much as you can about your opening preparation purely from memory – no books, courses, engine, or database. Just what you can remember.

How much of your repertoire you can cover depends on how much you already know. If you’re just getting started with opening preparation, you might be able to get down everything you can remember about your White repertoire in half an hour. If you have extremely detailed preparation, you might use the whole half hour for a sub-variation (e.g., Najdorf with 6. h3). Just do as much as you can in half an hour.

When you do this drill for the first time, you will probably find there are big gaps in your knowledge. That’s fine! Better to find out now than during a tournament game. Just make a note of those places so you can fill them in later.

Compared to other review methods, this will probably feel difficult and uncomfortable. That’s a good thing. To be effective, studying should be hard. If you can work through the discomfort, you’ll be better prepared than 99% of players.

After finishing the half hour, go back to fill in missing areas and answer questions. For this step you can use any resources that are helpful: books, courses, database, engine, etc. Use arrows and verbal explanations to capture the reasons for the moves.

You can repeat this exercise as often as you want, starting from an empty file each time. In my experience, repeating the exercise yields huge, observable improvement very quickly. It is not uncommon to remember twice as much on the second attempt as the first.

How is this different from Chessable?

The biggest question I get when I teach people this method is, “How is this different from Chessable?”

The difference is that with Chessable, the app plays the opponent’s moves, and you only have to play your moves. With the Blank Slate Drill, you have to play all the moves for both sides.

This means the drill is twice as hard because you have to remember twice as many moves. In practice, it’s more than twice as hard, because the opponent’s move provides a big clue for your move. Recreating all the moves for both sides forces you to develop a big-picture understanding of what’s going on in the opening. You have to understand the logic of what both sides are trying to accomplish.

You’ll probably also run into a lot of questions about the opponent’s moves: “Wait, why don’t they do this?” This is a good thing! That’s the sort of question you can be asking anyway. In the second part of the exercise, where you’re allowed to use outside resources, answer those questions and record your answers in the file.

Should you use this method to replace Chessable reviews? Personally, I do both. I like Chessable reviews because they’re a lightweight review method I can do on my phone whenever I have a few spare minutes. But I also periodically review my openings with the Blank Slate Drill to make sure I have a good understanding of the big picture and identify any gaps or problem areas.

Creating your file

A bonus side effect of doing this drill is that at the end you’ll have a file for your opening. Once you clean it up and fill in the gaps, you’ve got a record of all your preparation in that opening. Every time you play a game in that opening, you can go back and update the file based on what you learned.

If you want to do an even more effective version of the drill, teach your opening to another person without any notes. This adds a little more pressure, and the other person will probably ask questions you wouldn’t have thought of. Plus you’ll build up some karma.

For me, cleaning up my opening preparation was a big part of going from 2200 to 2400+, and I think this drill was a big part of it. But for some reason, I can never get people to try it. Probably because it’s hard. But if you can endure the discomfort of coming face-to-face with what you don’t know for half an hour, you’ll be better prepared than most of your opponents.