Answers.Body: <p>You're already an experienced player. Take your last games, analyze them, find improvements in the openings you played. Rinse and repeat. There's no point in learning a new opening by memorizing every line from scratch as if you had never seen a chess board before. It's also a more efficient method since you'll put the focus on the lines that occur most frequently in your games. If you're changing your opening repertoire completely, then you may want to watch a couple of instructional videos first (mainly focusing on common middlegames plans and ideas), but you should try to start putting it into practice as soon as possible.</p>
  <p>There's some sort of weird myths and mystery about &quot;theory&quot; among newcomers. It's not that special. My experience is that many people want to use not having studied opening theory as an easy excuse for why they don't improve.</p>
  <p>As for the question in the comments about time controls, if you're trying to work on your openings it could be benefitial to play faster games so you can put in more volume and get to play more lines. For more general progress I think it's good to play a wide variety of time controls to get used to different types of time pressure.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2023-04-18T12:12:39.530Z
Answers.Text: Even though I'm a proponent of the slower time controls I really like the idea of practicing openings in faster time controls to get the necessary repetitions. I think I'll follow your advice and try that out somewhen.
Answers.UserDisplayName: Christian
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2023-04-18T07:08:25.730Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2023-04-18T07:08:25.730Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: David
Body: <p>I have tried learning openings recently, as I feel my opening isn't very strong and most of my games openings just lead to a slow decline in my position. I have a lichess blitz rating of 2075. I have had friends who also recommended me to start learning openings too.</p>
  <p>I have tried memorizing openings using online tools such as Chessable, but whenever I tried using the openings in games, I always start to forget them. Am I doing something wrong? Maybe I'm not putting in enough time to study these openings?</p>
  <p>When playing some of my friends, they sometimes notice I &quot;sort of&quot; know how to counter a opening, but that's just because I play whatever I like and that I thought it was the best move personally, not because I studied openings. Maybe that's hindering my memorization?</p>
  
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2023-04-17T22:54:38.113Z
Comments.Text: You're already a somewhat experienced player. Take your last games, analyze it, find improvements in the opening you played. Rinse and repeat. There's no point in learning opening by memorizing every line from scratch as if you had never seen a chess board before.
Comments.UserDisplayName: David
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2023-04-17T22:58:35.817Z
Comments.Text: @David ah thanks, 1 more question, does being a fast player affect my progress in improving my games?
Comments.UserDisplayName: DialFrost
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2023-04-17T23:21:24.687Z
Comments.Text: Do you blunder a lot? @DialFrost
Comments.UserDisplayName: Starship
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2023-04-17T23:22:40.820Z
Comments.Text: @Starshipisgoforlaunch it depends. I usually play tons of hypbullet and ultrabullet and blunder a lot, but in slower time controls I dont usually blunder
Comments.UserDisplayName: DialFrost
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2023-04-18T07:01:06.377Z
Comments.Text: @DialFrost if you're trying to work on your openings it could be benefitial to play faster games so you can put in more volume and get to play more lines. For more general progress I think it's good to play a wide variety of time controls to get used to different types of time pressure.
Comments.UserDisplayName: David
Tags: <opening><memorization>
Title: Memorizing openings
ThreadText: # Memorizing openings
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2023-04-17)
  
  I have tried learning openings recently, as I feel my opening isn't very strong and most of my games openings just lead to a slow decline in my position. I have a lichess blitz rating of 2075. I have had friends who also recommended me to start learning openings too.
  
  I have tried memorizing openings using online tools such as Chessable, but whenever I tried using the openings in games, I always start to forget them. Am I doing something wrong? Maybe I'm not putting in enough time to study these openings?
  
  When playing some of my friends, they sometimes notice I "sort of" know how to counter a opening, but that's just because I play whatever I like and that I thought it was the best move personally, not because I studied openings. Maybe that's hindering my memorization?
  
  **Tags:** opening, memorization
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_1**: You're already a somewhat experienced player. Take your last games, analyze it, find improvements in the opening you played. Rinse and repeat. There's no point in learning opening by memorizing every line from scratch as if you had never seen a chess board before.  
  > **username_0**: @username_1 ah thanks, 1 more question, does being a fast player affect my progress in improving my games?  
  > **username_2**: Do you blunder a lot? @username_0  
  > **username_0**: @Starshipisgoforlaunch it depends. I usually play tons of hypbullet and ultrabullet and blunder a lot, but in slower time controls I dont usually blunder  
  > **username_1**: @username_0 if you're trying to work on your openings it could be benefitial to play faster games so you can put in more volume and get to play more lines. For more general progress I think it's good to play a wide variety of time controls to get used to different types of time pressure.  
  
  ---
  
  ## 1 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_1 on 2023-04-18. Score: 2 | Accepted answer
  
  You're already an experienced player. Take your last games, analyze them, find improvements in the openings you played. Rinse and repeat. There's no point in learning a new opening by memorizing every line from scratch as if you had never seen a chess board before. It's also a more efficient method since you'll put the focus on the lines that occur most frequently in your games. If you're changing your opening repertoire completely, then you may want to watch a couple of instructional videos first (mainly focusing on common middlegames plans and ideas), but you should try to start putting it into practice as soon as possible.
  
  There's some sort of weird myths and mystery about "theory" among newcomers. It's not that special. My experience is that many people want to use not having studied opening theory as an easy excuse for why they don't improve.
  
  As for the question in the comments about time controls, if you're trying to work on your openings it could be benefitial to play faster games so you can put in more volume and get to play more lines. For more general progress I think it's good to play a wide variety of time controls to get used to different types of time pressure.
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_3**: Even though I'm a proponent of the slower time controls I really like the idea of practicing openings in faster time controls to get the necessary repetitions. I think I'll follow your advice and try that out somewhen.  
  
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