My Challenge: Learning an Opening through the ChessMood Method

How to learn an opening?  Everyone asks this question.  I have tried several different methods, with varying degrees of success.  Let's try something new: for the rest of 2023, I will try the ChessMood approach to memorizing an opening.  

I've meant to try this for awhile now but had other priorities come up.  With those priorities lessening and GM Shankland finishing his Neo-Catalan repertoire yesterday, there's no better time.

This post will describe the general process and explain how I plan to finish 2023 chess-wise.  Let's go.

The Process

You can read the article up top for the full details, but here's my simplified version:

1. No Notes During the Lecture: GM Grigoryan calls this "107% Focus", which basically means, during a chapter or a video lesson, don't make notes.  Don't write anything down.  Focus completely on the chess content.
2. Make Notes After: At some later point, make notes on what you learned.  Effectively, this means re-creating the lesson by Chessbase PGN or similar.  You do this 100% yourself, and naturally, you probably won't get it all.  That leads to...
3. Fill The Gaps: Where you don't remember or are not sure, double-check.  Go back and look it up.  It's not explicitly stated, but I assume this means watching or reading the lessons again, without taking notes, and then filling them in after.  Because we are only looking for a few select areas and are already familiar with the material, this should be easier.
   
4. Test and Repeat: Once you are able to re-create the opening by yourself, time to try it in some training games.  Play games with the opening, check what you did right, where you went wrong, and fill in those gaps.  Repeat until known.

Why This Intrigues Me

From what I understand, steps 1 and 2 are supported by neuro-science.  When you write something down, you are cognitively offloading your memory.  Our brains don't need to worry about it anymore, because they know the info is safe and sound.  The chances of forgetting increase.  Conversely, not writing something down keeps it in our mind.  Our brains have to stay active, mulling the info over, keeping it present, ingraining the knowledge deeper.  At least, that's what a few random YouTube videos have told me.

It seems right, though.  Anecdotally, I have gone to university lectures and typed a complete transcript of what the professor said ... and not remembered anything 10min later.  Completely blank.  I am definitely engaged, but my memory is out to lunch.  Maybe that tells you something about me more than people generally, but as I said, the idea intrigues me.

That is not the big thing, though.  I am most interested in the Step 2 recreation process: sitting at a board, by yourself, with no prompts or outside cues, and recreating the opening lines... for both sides.  I think this is critical.

I was a Chessable power user.  I spent an embarassing amount of time trying to optimize that site, but I never quite managed it.  Something was always off.  I'll write about that at another time.  For now, I will focus on one likely culprit: Chessable only quizzes you on your moves.

This makes intuitive sense, but it hides a weakness.  You never think about your opponent.  You simply make a move and the computer reacts.  You then react to that move, and then you get another prompt.  The process devolves into a cycle of reaction, where you are in danger of missing the forest from the trees.  I have reviewed lines perfectly and then sat and wondered, is this the mainline?  A side line?  Is it likely to be played?  Was it entirely forced, or are there alternatives?  Heck, what is the evaluation?

For most lines, I didn't know the answer to these questions.  I got so absorbed into the flow that my brain started turning off.  I could react properly but I couldn't explain it.  Seeing as one of the tests for knowing something is whether you can explain it to others, this seems like a failure, and it likely explains why I felt so uneasy during my actual games.

The ChessMood approach seems to correct for this.  To recreate the opening lines, I need to understand the opening well enough to know not just what I am doing, but what my opponent's main tries are.  I need to be engaged, or "107% focused".  Certainly, if I can recreate an entire chapter of an opening course by myself, with no notes, explaining the key themes for both sides ... that must mean I know the opening.  

Intuitively, I love this idea, and I want to see if it works.

My Process

Now that I've listed the theory, here's how I will actually do it:

1. Watch a Video: Yes, I bought the overpriced Chessable videos.  It's worth it to support Sam.  Anyway, Shankland's videos are generally concise and action-packed.  He rarely goes beyond an hour, and 25-40min is the usual range.  I should be able to do that in one sitting.
2. Wait: I will take some time before I try to recreate what I saw.  I'm not completely sure how long, but it might not be completely up to me.  Work demands a lot of time, after all.  It may be video one day, recreate it the next.  That would be very challenging ... but challenges excite me. 
3. Recreate Lines: I will use ChessPositionTrainer, because it makes this extremely easy and has unparalleled transposition detection.  If I have to re-watch the video, I will.
   
4. Review Thematic Sections: The hard part often isn't memorizing a given line, it's not mixing it up with similar positions.  Hence why I want to spend extra time on these thematic sessions.  I don't know exactly how this will work, but at a minimum, each "Part" will get reviewed separately.
5. Test Intermittently: Related to the above.  I don't know the exact schedule, but every two weeks or so I will check what I have learned and see if it sticks.  This will adjust as needed.
6. Repeat Until Done.

Sam's three courses have 11, 10 and 8.5 hours of video, respectively.  That's basically 30hrs, and I'll likely have to watch most of that more than once.  Getting all of this done before 2023 will be a stretch.  At the same time, there's no obligation to learn everything; all opening courses contain lines that are largely irrelevant, so the actual workload is likely much less than the 30hrs initial says.

Anyway, that's the plan: use the ChessMood "recreation" method to learn a new opening.  Hopefully it works, and I'll give intermittent updates.  With any luck, the next time I write about this I'll be fluent in Catalan.