You’ll forget that opening. Opening School is counting on it

Opening School is Rovian’s study space for memorizing chess openings with short lessons and spaced repetition. It shows you each move with the reason behind it, quizzes you, then asks again right before you start to forget. Each of the 13 openings has its own course, and the system tells you what to study every day.

If you studied a line last night and got lost on move six today, that’s not a personal failing. Memory fades fast without review. Learning two answers to the same position muddles both. Opening School is built against both traps: one answer per position, brought back on the day it starts to slip.

What happens in an Opening School lesson?

Every lesson replays a line from the start and teaches at most 4 new moves. That limit is deliberate: short-term memory only holds a few pieces at once. The steps at the top of the screen guide you through it.

1. Learn: the new move appears with an arrow and a short “why” note. You play it yourself.

2. Recall: the same line comes back without arrows. You find your move; if you’re unsure, take a hint.

3. Mixed: the new moves are asked one by one in shuffled order, with one or two older moves that are due.

4. Mistakes: any move you missed or needed a hint for comes back at the end of the session, up to 3 times.

Play a wrong move and the board steps back, shows the right one with an arrow and its reason, and you play it. When the lesson ends, you can keep testing the line against the computer from that position.

How does spaced repetition work in chess?

Timing comes from FSRS, an open-source algorithm also used in flashcard apps like Anki. For every move it estimates how firmly you know it and how hard it is for you. It schedules the next question for the day your chance of recalling that move drops to about 90 percent. In your review queue, the move closest to slipping comes first.

Early reviews come quickly: a new move returns within 1 day, then within 3, 7 and 21 days. After that the algorithm stretches the gap, up to 365 days. A move you forget returns the next day. Due dates roll over at midnight, so a move learned in the evening is ready the next morning.

Nobody asks you “How well did you know it?”, because people often misjudge their own learning. The system grades you: a wrong move or a hint counts as forgotten. A correct answer after more than 12 seconds counts as hard, and a quick correct answer counts as known.

If you forget often, the pace changes too. When more than 15 percent of your reviews in the last 14 days (with at least 20 reviews) are misses, the target recall rises to 93 percent; above 20 percent, it rises to 95 percent and reviews come sooner. Once a week, the algorithm’s settings are also recalculated from real review data on Rovian. That calibration kicks in once there are at least 3,000 reviews from 30 users; at the time of writing, the default settings were still in use.

Which openings have a course?

Each of the 13 openings in the Variation Library has its own course. The courses sit in three groups.

1. As White: Italian Game, Ruy Lopez (Spanish Game), Queen’s Gambit, London System and English Opening.

2. As Black against 1.e4: Caro-Kann Defense, Sicilian Defense (Dragon), French Defense, Scandinavian Defense and Pirc Defense.

3. As Black against 1.d4: Slav Defense, King’s Indian Defense and Nimzo-Indian Defense.

Each course opens with a “Basics” unit, and the units after it deal with your opponent’s different replies; there are 16 to 20 lessons in all. Every new move has a “why” note in Turkish and English, and the course lines were checked with Stockfish. New to openings? The first course in each group, the Italian Game, Caro-Kann and Slav, together build a small starter repertoire.

You can’t enroll in two courses from the same group, because they teach different moves for the same position. When you try to switch, the system shows the clashing position and offers “Switch to this course”. Progress in the course you leave is kept, so you can pick up where you left off.

How is it different from the Opening Trainer?

The Opening Trainer we covered in July walks you through a chosen variation move by move. It’s good practice, but it forgot what you knew once the session closed. On top of that, in 22.5 percent of the library positions where it was your move, different lines asked for different moves. Drilling them back to back mixed up what you had learned.

Opening School stores every move like a separate card, knows when to ask it again and teaches one answer per position. The trainer hasn’t gone anywhere: it now lives in the Variation Library, with all 1,939 lines and a move tree. Like a line there? “Add to my repertoire” puts it into spaced repetition, split into lessons of at most 4 new moves.

How much should I study each day?

The same “Today’s study” card sits on the Learn page in the menu and in Opening School. It combines your due reviews with your next lesson, and the Start button shows an estimated time. A session asks at most 30 reviews.

After 3 lessons in a day, no new lesson is added to today’s plan, because new material settles during sleep. The limit is soft; you can keep going from the course page. Streaks and XP are tracked too, and a single missed day within a 7-day window won’t break your streak.

Pending reviews show as a badge on the Learn icon in the menu. After a game, the Repertoire check in your game review shows where you left your repertoire, and one click adds that move to today’s review.

You can start without an account: your progress is saved in that browser. Sign in and it moves to your account and continues on all your devices.

Pick your first course today

Openings don’t stick overnight, but a few minutes a day with questions at the right moment make them last. Open Opening School, pick one White and one Black course and finish your first lesson. Tomorrow, the system will tell you what to study.

When you want to test the line against a real opponent, play live video chess. Open your camera. Make your move.