Well said, Jim! I went through a phase where I wanted to copy all of the core variations from Chessable courses to my files in ChessBase, and I was way too greedy with how many courses I'd taken on over the months.
1. I wasn't smart enough to be more selective with courses, and
2. I let myself be tempted by quantity > quality, so my understanding of the moves was superficial.
I feel I had the exact mirror experience with chessable(even tough maybe it is because I am quite a bit weaker as a player, around 2200 fide). Similarly as the author, also for me openings were a weakness, and saw chessable as a way to put an end to this weakness. In a year I bought 3 lifetime's repertoires and completely changed my openings, learning variations by heart with spaced repetition (but clearly also trying to understand what I could).
The point is that the results form me were completely the opposite! After 10 months of this I did my best performance ever in a tournament achieving an IM norm. I think those chessable courses were an important part of that: in at least 3 games I overprepared IM level opposition, getting 1 draw and two wins as my opponents overpressed. So I really feel that against strong opponents Chessable repertoires transformed my results. But I agree that against lower/much lower rating opponents it is not such a great advantage. Especially with black, I already lost quite a bit of rating making dull draws in mainlines against 1900. So I ask, isn't maybe that bad tournament an exception due to poor form? Were those bad results repeated in time? Also, I think work with these repertoires lasts for long time, once variations are learned with spaced repetition one can slowly understand and assimilate them. Hopefully in the years to come you will be able to unleash all the power of the openings learned!
Thanks for sharing your experience, Lorenzo. Three Lifetime Repertoires sounds very manageable, and it sounds like they helped your game. Congrats on your IM norm!
Against strong players, I agree it can be helpful to have these variations from Chessable, Modern Chess etc. that you can study as a resource, especially if you only take it as a starting point and do your own digging. Yes, when needing to win as Black against lower-rated opposition, it can be better to play your own pet lines or find some deviations they might not be familiar with rather than some long main line variations which could be studied by everyone.
My bad tournament was a mix of several things, but my results through 2022 were subpar, and in hindsight it's clear that I was:
1. overestimating the importance my new opening knowledge would have on games, while my understanding was not deep enough
2. spending too much time on openings in a way that didn't help the other areas of my game.
Now for openings I play, review, study model games and spam games by model players. I don't think I'll do spaced repetition though, I prefer to absorb through studying in ChessBase and playing—let's just say I had a few months in 2021 where I did enough spaced repetition for this life. :-)
Thanks for the good wishes. I'm sure the 'work' I've done will help me in the long run, as I have a better idea of how to work on my chess now. I need to keep reminding myself though—openings should never be the #1 priority.
“If you find having to enter in/copy-paste the moves manually from Chessable too much work…” If a player finds it too much *work* to enter a line by hand, I’d argue that they’re not really trying hard to learn the line in the first place. You can’t read an opening line like speed-reading a novel; actually making the move on the (virtual) board helps to cement the move and resulting position in your brain/memory. Adding annotations—in your own words—to remind yourself and explain to yourself why this move makes sense also further strengthens your mental associations to the move/position.
Well said, Jim! I went through a phase where I wanted to copy all of the core variations from Chessable courses to my files in ChessBase, and I was way too greedy with how many courses I'd taken on over the months.
1. I wasn't smart enough to be more selective with courses, and
2. I let myself be tempted by quantity > quality, so my understanding of the moves was superficial.
I feel I had the exact mirror experience with chessable(even tough maybe it is because I am quite a bit weaker as a player, around 2200 fide). Similarly as the author, also for me openings were a weakness, and saw chessable as a way to put an end to this weakness. In a year I bought 3 lifetime's repertoires and completely changed my openings, learning variations by heart with spaced repetition (but clearly also trying to understand what I could).
The point is that the results form me were completely the opposite! After 10 months of this I did my best performance ever in a tournament achieving an IM norm. I think those chessable courses were an important part of that: in at least 3 games I overprepared IM level opposition, getting 1 draw and two wins as my opponents overpressed. So I really feel that against strong opponents Chessable repertoires transformed my results. But I agree that against lower/much lower rating opponents it is not such a great advantage. Especially with black, I already lost quite a bit of rating making dull draws in mainlines against 1900. So I ask, isn't maybe that bad tournament an exception due to poor form? Were those bad results repeated in time? Also, I think work with these repertoires lasts for long time, once variations are learned with spaced repetition one can slowly understand and assimilate them. Hopefully in the years to come you will be able to unleash all the power of the openings learned!
Thanks for sharing your experience, Lorenzo. Three Lifetime Repertoires sounds very manageable, and it sounds like they helped your game. Congrats on your IM norm!
Against strong players, I agree it can be helpful to have these variations from Chessable, Modern Chess etc. that you can study as a resource, especially if you only take it as a starting point and do your own digging. Yes, when needing to win as Black against lower-rated opposition, it can be better to play your own pet lines or find some deviations they might not be familiar with rather than some long main line variations which could be studied by everyone.
My bad tournament was a mix of several things, but my results through 2022 were subpar, and in hindsight it's clear that I was:
1. overestimating the importance my new opening knowledge would have on games, while my understanding was not deep enough
2. spending too much time on openings in a way that didn't help the other areas of my game.
Now for openings I play, review, study model games and spam games by model players. I don't think I'll do spaced repetition though, I prefer to absorb through studying in ChessBase and playing—let's just say I had a few months in 2021 where I did enough spaced repetition for this life. :-)
Thanks for the good wishes. I'm sure the 'work' I've done will help me in the long run, as I have a better idea of how to work on my chess now. I need to keep reminding myself though—openings should never be the #1 priority.
“If you find having to enter in/copy-paste the moves manually from Chessable too much work…” If a player finds it too much *work* to enter a line by hand, I’d argue that they’re not really trying hard to learn the line in the first place. You can’t read an opening line like speed-reading a novel; actually making the move on the (virtual) board helps to cement the move and resulting position in your brain/memory. Adding annotations—in your own words—to remind yourself and explain to yourself why this move makes sense also further strengthens your mental associations to the move/position.