I do not buy into the “you don’t need to study openings, if you have not mastered the other phases of the game yet” mantra: the opening is the only phase of the game that you are guaranteed to play, every single time, so why not to invest time there? Furthermore, creating an opening repertoire takes time, and the sooner you start, the better it is for your “chess career”, in my opinion!

So, here is what I am doing – no rocket science, and nothing I have invented, just me sharing my approach here!

To create my own opening repertoire, I wanted two things:

1)      An approach

2)      A tool to help me learning the repertoire

Part 1 – The Approach

My approach has been the following

1)      Identify a target opening repertoire. I wanted a repertoire that was solid enough (nothing fancy, based on the surprise factor or something that would work only if the opponent doesn’t know what to do), not too deep from a theory standpoint (I don’t have that much time to study), and close to my playing style. Based on this, I came out with the “Torre Attack” as white, the Scandinavian as black against 1.e4, and the Chebanenko Slav against 1.d4: yes, I know this doesn’t cover it all, but I am following the 80%/20% rule there, investing my time in the openings I am encountering in the vast majority of the games I am playing.

2)      Build the repertoire. This is an iterative process, which I am doing in the following way:

a.       Start with the main line. First things first -  what is the main line? What are the key ideas behind it? I do this via books and DB games;

b.      Review master games. Memorizing a sequence of moves is not learning a repertoire. Reviewing master games on a specific line is doing wonders for me to understand the why behind each move. Here, again, I use both DB and a good book;

c.       Play and practice and expand the tree. By playing, I do two things at the same time. Number 1, I put in practice the line(s) I have studied (if the game allows that, of course), and I get experience in the middle game resulting from those moves. By encountering alternative to the main line, during the review phase I just go back to my repertoire, and I add those lines, repeating the a/b/c/ process.

By following this process, I have the enormous advantage that I build the repertoire a bit at a time, so the process is not overwhelming, and I build it based on the most typical replies I get from my typical opponents, which I encounter at my level, so I maximize the benefit.

Part 2 – The Tool

Now, for all this, I wanted a tool, and the best I have found (which is, by the way, absolute freeware!) is www.chesspositiontrainer.com .

This tool is just fantastic. First of all, it lets you create your repertoire and sub-repertoirs, and then it gives you the possibility to practice them, keeping track of your “score” (how well you know it) and proposing you the lines which you haven’t studied yet or which you didn’t master yet.

I am including two pictures, to give you a feeling about the tool: in the first one, you can see a sample of the training window at the end of a line (you can select, of course, if you want to be tested on the whole line, or if you prefer to stop the test at any given depth); the second is showing a sample of a repertoire page, in this case my repertoire for Black, with the tabs (sub-repertoirs), one for the reply against e4, the other against d4.

That’s it, I would say. Again, I know I didn’t invent anything new, and I didn’t want to teach anything to anyone, given I only have to learn, but I wanted to share my approach with you, may be someone could benefit from it and I could also get some feedback for improvement!

Thank for having read so far, and good luck with your study!

The Training Window, showed at the end of a line

A sample of the Repertoire Management window