How To Study Openings According to the Dojo 

I really appreciate that y’all are willing to adapt and grow as you recognize things that are off. It shows a level of commitment that I feel a lot of chess training resources are missing.

Love the regular updates on dojo features

This is great. I need to set time constraints on opening study. My file is never “done.”

Hear me out on what I believe a slightly better system would be for openings, talking of course about 1200+ cohorts but mainly focused on the higher rated you go. The main issue that I'm trying to fix with the current system is that I believe you should have a % completion on opening work that you have written down to a file. Progress doesn't reset for it. And I believe you should have a hourly completion on opening work trying to memorize/study what you have already written down. Progress should reset on it. Here's my proposal, copied from what I wrote on discord: 1) There should be a % complete for your opening file (as white, against e4, against d4, against Nf3/c4). This is something that doesn't reset over time. Similar to how it was before. When someone is first writing down what they want to play against the various openings, it takes time (yes), but it takes commitment to cover what you are actually likely to face. I do believe the % complete is important for each player to estimate, or for Jack magic to automatically estimate it for us based on lichess/masters database, etc. This would never reset because it's about what you have written down and not what you have in your head actually memorized. Using a chessable course lets you get this % completion quite quickly. Working through it yourself takes a lot of time and effort. Both methods should be accepted. Someone can always manually lower the % completed if they switch openings for instance. Or they could raise the % completed if they feel they estimated poorly before. 2) There should be an hour-based tracker for your different openings that is about studying/memorizing what you have actually put down. This is for when you're doing the so-called chessable memorization. Just as spaced repetition asks you to repeat something that you've already got written down, the dojo too should have a category that calls for overall repetition. This is similar to what is currently there after this most recent dojo update. I'm fine with it being hour-based, but should probably be less hours and the hour-progress gets reset more often. Example for me at 1900. I think reviewing what I play as white every few months makes sense. Say 5 hours total that resets every 2-3 months or so. Then something like 3 hours for each black response makes a total of say 11 hours of opening memorization/spaced repetition work due every 2-3 months. That's a lot less than chessable would recommend, but hey - we're trying to get people not to overdo their opening work here in the dojo. 3) I do believe, as Kostya recommends, that learning ideas from model games is huge. So having the model games task for each opening definitely should stay. I'm fine with the numbers recommended already as a good approximation of what it takes, even though others such as BeingBetterAtChess have a lot more games but less annotations on each of them. 4) Keep sparring exactly as it is after this most recent update. Hour-based and progress resets every X amount of time. 1 year is fine. I think that's definitely better than "number of reps" as it was before, which made a lot less sense to me.

THE WAY to study chess openings

Personally, I preferred the old way of describing your file in terms of opening points. 10 hours for a 1600 player to build up a file against 1. e4... nowhere near enough. How could you ask someone 1600 to build up their white repertoire in only 15 hours? It'd take more than 15 hours just to start to learn the Ruy Lopez, let alone something against the French, Sicilian, Caro, Pirc, Petrov, etc. If someone doesn't have a chessable course already there spelling it out to you, creating a file takes a lot of time. And only once you've created your file can you discuss spending a measly 15 hours on your opening - that'd be just the time it takes to review your opening and try and commit it to memory.

From by own experience, opening study isn't something I can really quantify. It's easy to say: I've gone through X number of tactics exercises of difficulty A, or I've gone through Silman's Endgames up to Elo X and I feel like I understand them, or I've played X classical games and annotated Y or them... But when it comes to openings, it's meaningless to say: I studied X openings. Instead, the way I approach openings is that when I'm paired in my weekly Dojo Open opponent, I spend some time looking up his openings, and if he plays something I know, I refresh my lines; otherwise I pick a new line that I'm going to play against them, and I prepare a file, research that given line as much as possible (maybe find a Naroditsky video on it, or find some examples games), and then review the lines I put in my file to make sure I'm comfortable in that variation. The rest of the time, I'm really just polishing my repertoire... Maybe I'm making a Google Sheets file of the lines in the Sicilian I think I need to study deeper, or looking for some alternatives to openings that I don't do well against, or scrolling through the Lichess database after my Blitz games; but in short, it's not really a structured thing.

I have followed Jesse's recommendation for the openings for about a year now, and it is seldomly I play under 95 % accuracy in the openings even against stronger players, like 2000 lichess classical.. Trust this guy! He actually knows what he is talking about.!! -And come join us at the Dojo.

So for Dojo members (like myself lol), who are under 1000, where do we look to for instruction on principled chess? Because at my rating level, our reading is 100% organized around tactics. But I'm not sure I know what the phrase "principled chess" actually refers to?

Hammer!

While you can try out that new-fangled papyrus stuff, we recommend tried and true stone tablets. Studies show that to ingrain on stone is to ingrain on the brain! As my games vs Morphy attest.

Watch a video, play, make a file, memorize, play, update the file, memorize, play. Trust the process instead of changing the opening. Thats all what you need.

I suppose its fair to say players below a certain level dont need to study openings. Could probably play things like the four knights scotch by accident just by staying principled.

Off topic: Haven't you played for Viernheim ages ago? In case you don't know: Viernheim will probably win the Bundesliga this year.

17% non dojo content, you're stinking it up a little bauss 🙄 ontopic: tracking time spent does make a lot more sense, nice change

Hello 🇮🇳🇮🇳🇮🇳🇮🇳

🔥

I regret opening study so much. It made the game less fun.

get chessable and never forget your openings again