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How to Study Chess Openings

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There's only one way to study chess openings. Diligently.

There's only one way to study chess openings. Diligently.

Article is mostly advertising for your course. The videos don't help learn openings, instead they explain how to use your platform. I tried 6 sessions of it. I get to memorize a lot of moves without knowing, what I am doing them for. Not my case. Also, I was searching specifically a course on how to defend against the King's Gambit. Nothing found.

Article is mostly advertising for your course. The videos don't help learn openings, instead they explain how to use your platform. I tried 6 sessions of it. I get to memorize a lot of moves without knowing, what I am doing them for. Not my case. Also, I was searching specifically a course on how to defend against the King's Gambit. Nothing found.

Thanks for your feedback. You’re right that memorizing openings blindly without understanding is not the right approach. We’re working to improve the course selection on the site. Also adding more high quality comments explaining the ideas. Still a ways to go, but the quality of the courses now is much better. Not sure which course you looked at but you can see the # of comments compared to number of moves on the store page.

If you’d prefer not to train the opening, you can use the read full course mode, or explore the opening tree.

Re the video, that’s correct, they’re showing how to use the site. The article discusses the approach of the site to learning openings. If anything is unclear in the article or how to use the site, let me know if I can help!
Cheers, Geordie

Thanks for your feedback. You’re right that memorizing openings blindly without understanding is not the right approach. We’re working to improve the course selection on the site. Also adding more high quality comments explaining the ideas. Still a ways to go, but the quality of the courses now is much better. Not sure which course you looked at but you can see the # of comments compared to number of moves on the store page. If you’d prefer not to train the opening, you can use the read full course mode, or explore the opening tree. Re the video, that’s correct, they’re showing how to use the site. The article discusses the approach of the site to learning openings. If anything is unclear in the article or how to use the site, let me know if I can help! Cheers, Geordie

Great work and post, thanks!

Great work and post, thanks!

This post is just trying to sell you another opening-learning tool with useless AI nonsense.

This post is just trying to sell you another opening-learning tool with useless AI nonsense.

Hi Benny! I can understand your frustration, there’s a lot of low effort tools out there. I was quite frustrated for a long time myself with the lack of innovation in the chess world as an adult improver.

We’ve been working on our site for over a year and a half, we got an early investment and have had 11 people working on it. The openings platform is one of many tools we’re building.

Let me know if you have any specific criticisms of what we’re doing, very happy to chat about what we could do better.

Cheers,
Geordie

https://www.ChessFlow.org/team
https://www.chessflow.org/science

Hi Benny! I can understand your frustration, there’s a lot of low effort tools out there. I was quite frustrated for a long time myself with the lack of innovation in the chess world as an adult improver. We’ve been working on our site for over a year and a half, we got an early investment and have had 11 people working on it. The openings platform is one of many tools we’re building. Let me know if you have any specific criticisms of what we’re doing, very happy to chat about what we could do better. Cheers, Geordie https://www.ChessFlow.org/team https://www.chessflow.org/science

Some memorization is part of learning any kind of mentally challenging game like chess. It is also essential in fast games to have some stuff memorized, like the first few moves in common openings. But for any position, including starting positions, you have incorporate understanding of what the next move leads to. This is the essence of chess. How people learn to do this and how good they are at it are not things you can easily teach. I looked at a few videos and some were helpful, but in the end, it was a waste of time. A careful study on your own at the board, or with a decent book, is about the only sure way to improve. Most people like me don't have the time or the patience for this, and they never improve as much as they could. For me, the most important thing is that the game has to be fun to play.

Some memorization is part of learning any kind of mentally challenging game like chess. It is also essential in fast games to have some stuff memorized, like the first few moves in common openings. But for any position, including starting positions, you have incorporate understanding of what the next move leads to. This is the essence of chess. How people learn to do this and how good they are at it are not things you can easily teach. I looked at a few videos and some were helpful, but in the end, it was a waste of time. A careful study on your own at the board, or with a decent book, is about the only sure way to improve. Most people like me don't have the time or the patience for this, and they never improve as much as they could. For me, the most important thing is that the game has to be fun to play.