Changelog: March 2022

@Checkadoodles said in #20:
> That was an insanely nice reply, and it disturbingly addressed my insanely weird obsession/hangup with the French Defense. I am a man (yes, a real man) who wants to destroy the French Advance variation.
>
> I was intending to see something more along the lines of teaching us how to play the King's Indian Defense as white, step by step. If I play this, then black could play that. Then, I could play this, then black would play this.
>...cut
> I was looking for something more along those lines. If you can help, I thank you graciously.

Well, you can follow the lines from the explorer, say from the games masters play, and as you explore the moves will get recorded as variations in the window. Then if you click the 'sandwich button' on the bottom right, you can click the Study button, which will make you a study with those lines.

However, this really is *not* teaching how to play the opening! Because learning an opening is not just about learning move variations; one needs to understand what is going on in the positions. The positional, strategical, and tactical points that are present.

There are many studies on Lichess on the KID and KIA.
Here is one of mine:

@jomega said in #21:

> However, this really is *not* teaching how to play the opening! Because learning an opening is not just about learning move variations; one needs to understand what is going on in the positions. The positional, strategical, and tactical points that are present.

How do we highlight "this really is *not* teaching"?

QUE TAL AMGOS

So what are the new official variant teams for?

@jomega said in #21:
> However, this really is *not* teaching how to play the opening! Because learning an opening is not just about learning move variations; one needs to understand what is going on in the positions. The positional, strategical, and tactical points that are present.

The point of opening explorer is to let you look at the ensemble of variations, and their outcome odds as function of pair ratings.. Statistical purpose, about dropping in reasonable middle games... so unless you explore by yourself the less optimal (per stats) variations, just choosing the variations per best odds, is about learning to play reasonable odds middle-game continuations.

I use that in correspondence mode (hopefully i did not misunderstand the topic). Now there is a personal book as well.

And what jomega said, if using the opex for opening lines as learning objective. With some nuance.

With some repetition you might find some variations sequences more familiar which I guess might mean less need for rote memorization of them. One could view that as memory without hammering, hopefully with some divergence flexibility too, since the learning would be mostly subconscious, I would think.

The plans behind might not reveal themselves just by experiencing the same best lines. if not willing to put oneself in trouble using the opex, then the decision consequences would not be experienced, and then not even the intuitive part of learning, would have anything to feed on. I suspect, that debating by experience, might start populating the associations between early decisions, and later consequences in types of games, at least perhaps making room for such questions, creating a need for a more careful and conscious study of openings driven by such questions behind what plans ought to be.

So I agree in part with jomega, with complement about the intuition doing some part about plan level learning, if not blind about using statistics. It matters how one uses available tools to shape experience in an efficient manner. and the intuition is always active, might as well consider it as an official thing to discuss in details.

@Checkadoodles said in #20:
> That was an insanely nice reply, and it disturbingly addressed my insanely weird obsession/hangup with the French Defense. I am a man (yes, a real man) who wants to destroy the French Advance variation.

French advance is perfectly sound, but I think 3.Nc3 is a better try for advantage.

@Lichess said in #1:
> Checkout the Latest Lichess updates, such as scaling the tournament system to allow even larger tournaments, new practice lessons, official Variants teams and more:
>
> lichess.org/changelog
yay, Very very very Good! Excellent Job Lichess!

but seriously where do you practice the lessons?

OK Lichess

Great job lichess!