Build your opening repertoire

Use Library to prepare responses to the openings you meet in your own games. These two tools help you choose what to prepare and build your repertoire:

Tool	What it helps you do
Opening Assistant	Find openings from your games and create Studies for them.
Opening Builder	Extend a Study with opponent responses selected by popularity.

Start by connecting Chess.com or Lichess. You can also build a repertoire manually from existing Studies or imported PGN.

Opening Assistant

1. Open Opening Assistant in Library.
2. Select the game source and playing color you want to examine.
3. Adjust the available game and opening filters to focus the results.
4. Compare how often you reach each opening and how you score in it.
5. Click Create Study beside an opening you want to prepare.

The filters let you focus on relevant material, such as White openings or positions you have not yet added to a Study. Sort by frequency when you want to start with the openings you face most often.

Treat game results as a prompt for investigation. Losing a game that began with a particular opening does not by itself show that the opening caused the loss. Review the games before deciding what to change.

Opening Builder

Open an opening Study and select the position from which you want to expand. Check the side you are studying, then turn on Opening Builder.

Builder searches within the branch starting at the selected position and adds opponent responses based on their popularity. Your task is to choose and add the moves you want to play against them.

1. Inspect the opponent's response.
2. Compare candidate moves using the opening explorer, engine, and matching videos.
3. Play the response you want to include in your repertoire.
4. Repeat for the next useful branch.
5. Click Quit Builder when you have added enough material for this session.

Popular moves are useful preparation targets, but popularity and move quality are different things. Check the resulting position and make sure you understand your response.

For a manageable first Study, prepare the main replies you regularly face before extending every line deeply. Pin an explanation or add a comment at a position where the plan is easy to forget.

Train the repertoire

Enable Opening Flashcards for the Study. Then use Flashcards to select material and start a training session.

The Opening tag and Opening Flashcards serve different purposes: the tag identifies material for opening Insights; Flashcards enable recall practice. Check both when preparing an opening Study.

After playing, follow Learn from your games with Insights to review gaps in preparation and decide what to practice next.