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Suggestion for new training mode: Early opening training

Hi,

I am a 14-1500 player with a *very* poor opening repertoire, as such I tend to play the same openings again and again. I think it would be really cool if it was possible to build a opening trainer to practice the earliest start of the opening. When I look at my own games and compare my openers to an opening database, it is evident I often deviate from the main line around move 2. I think it would be interesting if it was possible to build a opening trainer mode which practiced the very early opening positions. This is different from the current opening trainer in that the objective is to play several moves, and the start position is one the player has seen before. Don't get me wrong, I like the current opening trainer, but as a lowly 14-1500 player I do not know how I would obtain the positions I commonly see there.

I would suggest something like this:
Lichess has access to an opening book limited to lines with many games (for instance hundreds of games). The book is limited to "top" moves, for instance by retaining the moves which (taken together) corresponds to 75% of the games played in that position. You play against a computer which always play according to the opening book.

The objective is for the human to play several consecutive moves in an opening line against the computer. The number of move and the starting position of the opening line controls the difficulty. The start positions should be from the first move to a few moves in. The player "win" when he/she has played a few moves within book from the opening position. It might make sense to also show (possibly using arrows) alternative moves available after the player has entered his move.

I think the above would be quite useful for someone like me, especially if one could select the start positions both arbitrarily and from a drop down list of named positions (kings indian, ruy-lopez, etc. I at least must admit I don't know which position goes with these names).

To be consistent with the other trainers it might be good to "gamify" the opening trainer, however I would hope it could also allow a purely exploratory mode as outlined above. The trainer could be gamified by re-using ideas from the current opening trainer interface. For instance:

1) player is presented with a start position (for instance e4-e5 and playing white)
2) player must find the top moves according to the book (as current opening trainer). Sub-optimal but playeable moves are marked as blue (as now).
3) a random move of those selected is played & black plays a random top book move.
4) this continues a few moves deep.

In this manner a puzzle corresponds to the opening position & a few of the moves played by black and white, and the puzzle/player can be rated as they currently are.

As a final afterthought, in the game analysis mode, the opening trainer could be integrated with those moves played by the player. For instance the move in which the player departs from the main line could be indicated by a small yellow dot (or similar) and there could be a link: play position as opening puzzle such that the player could explore how and where he went wrong.

I realize this is properly a lot of work and the above idea can properly be improved in many ways, but I think many (especially low-rated players) would find it useful.

Cheers!

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