How Repertoire Practice works
You have written your opening lines down. This is the system that finds out whether you can actually play them, and keeps you from forgetting the ones you can.
Ask me just before I would have forgotten
Memory fades on a curve. Re-reading a line an hour after you saw it teaches you almost nothing, because you have not had time to forget it yet. The useful moment is later, right at the edge of recall, when getting it right actually costs you something.
So practice does not drill everything every day. It waits. Each position you answer correctly is pushed further into the future than the last time, and only comes back when it is about to slip. Get one wrong and it comes back sooner.
Everything else on this page follows from that one decision.
Four stages, and what moves you between them
Every position where it is your turn and you have prepared a reply sits on one of four rungs. This is the vocabulary used everywhere in the product.
You wrote the line down. Nobody has asked you about it yet. A brand new repertoire is entirely here.
Answered, but at the bottom of the ladder. Either it is new to you, or you slipped and it was sent back here.
Holding. You have answered it right, and each correct answer pushes the next showing further out.
You have got it right often enough running that the next check is more than a month away.
What it takes to climb
The gaps grow: 1 day, then 6 days, then about 16, then about 45. So Mastered is four clean answers spread over roughly three weeks. It cannot be rushed in an afternoon, and that is the point.
A clean answer means all three of: first try, no hint, and your own main line. Anything less still counts as an answer, it just climbs more slowly.
And what sends you back down
One wrong move, even if you then find the right one, returns the position to Learning and resets the gap to a day. That is deliberate: you did not know it, you worked it out. It is the sharpest edge in the whole system, and it is the reason a session you worked hard at can leave the bars looking flat.
Mastered is not permanent. Stop practicing and everything slides back down, because that is the honest description of what your memory is doing.
Due, waiting, and the 24 hour rule
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Due | You have practiced it before and the gap has run out. The schedule says now. |
| Never practiced | Written down, never asked. There is no gap to run out, so it is always available. |
| Waiting | Due plus never practiced. This is the number on the Practice button: everything with something to do right now. |
| Held back | You saw it in the last 24 hours. It is excluded no matter what, unless you ask for it. |
The 24 hour rule
Once a position has been put in front of you, it will not come back for a day. Not in another session, not in a different focus, not when you drill a single variation, not even when there is nothing else left to show you.
Quietly repeating material you saw an hour ago would make a session feel padded and the numbers untrustworthy. So when there is nothing left, practice says so.
Nothing left to revise today. You have already been through Najdorf, English Attack today. I hold a position for a day after you see it, because recalling something an hour later teaches you almost nothing. 14 positions are waiting, and the first is ready tomorrow at 9:40 am.
Under that sits a button to practice them again anyway. Extra repetition is always allowed, it just has to be something you chose. It also does not disturb your schedule: a position that was not genuinely due does not get moved on, so an extra run costs you nothing.
What a session actually feels like
The unit is a line, not a position. Moves play themselves up to the point where it is your turn, you play your move, and the line carries on. One line usually settles three to six positions at once.
Case 1: practicing the whole repertoire
You press Practice in the openings tab. It reads Practice · 27 waiting.
That is 27 positions: some due for review, some never seen.
The sheet asks three things: which colour, what to focus on, and how long you want per position. Then it starts.
The board plays 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 and stops. Your move.
Any reply you prepared is accepted. Your main line earns full credit; a prepared alternative is accepted but climbs more slowly.
You answer, the opponent replies, and the line continues until it runs out or you have answered six positions.
A summary names what you got, what slipped, and what is banked. Next line.
When nothing is left that you have not seen today, the session ends and says so.
Case 2: drilling one variation
From My Progress, every opening is a row you can click. Choosing Philidor Defense, 33 waiting starts a session containing only that opening. Not started is an entry point of its own, and begins with material you have never seen. Practiced is a read-out rather than a door: those positions are holding and on the schedule, so the honest thing to do with them is wait until their timer comes round.
The 24 hour rule still applies inside a variation. Drill the Philidor now and come back an hour later, and it will tell you there is nothing left there today rather than showing you the same six positions again.
Case 3: you have run out
This is normal, and it is a good sign rather than a dead end. It means everything the schedule wanted from you today is done. You get the message above, the time the next material unlocks, and the option to keep going anyway.
What the third tab shows you
One headline number, the arithmetic that produces it, and then the same breakdown per opening so it is expressed in lines you recognise rather than an abstract count.
12 due for review, 15 never practiced
Below that, one row per opening, sorted by how much is waiting, each with its own split bar, its ECO code and its first moves. Clicking a row practices just that opening.
The rule the tab is built on: its numbers add up to the number on the Practice button. A headline that moves in ways you cannot explain is worse than no headline, so nothing on this tab is allowed to be computed a second way.
Try it on your own lines
Practice runs on the repertoire you have saved, so the first step is writing a few lines down. Everything above then applies to them automatically.