Do any of you guys have some good ways to memorize opening variations so they stay in your brain? I often will study a line out of a book, analyze it pretty thoroughly and play over it a few times, but most of the time, a few days or a week later I end up forgetting alot of the variations! I find that unless I am using the variation often in my own games it tends to leave me rather quickly. Fortunately I can remember the ideas and plans for both sides easily, but usually in the theory, after move 10 or 12 I start to forget, or I will remember the main continuation a long way but miss the important sidelines.

One method which helps me is to look up the opening after I finish a live chess game to see where I or my opponent differed from the theory. For correspondence, of course it is no problem because I can just look up the line during the game if need be. The problem is, I will study a critical line, say in the sicilian or mainline french, and it could be weeks before someone plays it against me. So what do you guys do to remember long opening variations? I know some people will tell me to play less theoretical stuff, but in the long run the main lines should serve me better than a bunch of tricky sidelines, plus they are fun.

Good advice, but the main point is you should never "memorize opening lines."  It doesn't work - on the off chance that an opponent plays into your prepared lines, which rarely happens, once you've reached the end of your memorization, you have no idea what is going on in the position or how to realize any advantage you may have.

Instead, learn your opening lines two ways:  1, play over master games in the lines you wish to learn.  Play over all of them, wins, losses, and draws for your opening choice, and see what succeeds and what fails.  See all the different ideas for both sides.  Then, 2, play your lines as much as you can - casual games, blitz, internet, club, club tournaments, weekend tournaments, every chance you get.  Apply what you learned from the master games.  The combination of the two methods will ensure you KNOW the line, and its ideas, good and bad for both sides, and don't need to memorize anything.

You'll remember the lines better if you know WHY those moves should be played. So no memorization for you anymore, good sir!

And where do I learn that? Most books or webpages basicly just say "bxc Bxh6 2...etc, and that´s hardly helpfull at all.

computers help alot with middle games at the end of openings but i woldn't compleatly trust it for learning opening thou i say repetive learning 10 moves then put position in fritz or so and obseve how the computer plays it

I think Plato said you remember best if you are beat with a stick, or something like that. Obviously an analogy.

More recently, the research says that emotional memories are more likely to last longer. In the context of chess study, I'm going to guess that this means you are more likely to remember an opening line if you can connect it with an emotional powerkick to the head. Maybe you can choose an opening line and play it against someone who will give you a hard fight, and you don't want to lose easily to. If you win or lose, the adrenaline will have you remembering those games. Look at Pandolfini's article in the Chesscafe.com of June 24 09.

Another way to remember is to repeat, repeat, repeat. Maybe with the help of an openings trainer program like Chessimo.

Playing over master games can be helpful as long as you don't just plow through the lines. Maybe you can play as the winning side and cover the moves. Again, if you get emotionally engaged, you might remember it more.

That'll be two cents, please.

Whenever you are playing a game or analyzing it afterwards, you should always try to relate each move to specific mid-term objectives, eg. 5 or 10 moves from now I would like to force through a pawn break on d5 in order to create a passed pawn, restrict black's pieces, open lines to his king, etc.  Try out different moves following each line down, and see how they contribute to your objectives.  Understanding how individual moves contribute to your plan will help you to remember them.  Books like Kotov's Play Like a Grandmaster or Jonathan Tisdall's Improve Your Chess Now explain a bit more about the relationship between planning and calculating moves.

Learn why the lines work -- not just how.

I like to watch videos for openings. They do a better job of telling why than books usually do.

Here is a good habit that is pretty low-effort with long-term return. I'm guessing a lot of players here will follow it to some degree. I've been using it the past 1-2 years and it has helped me quite a lot.

1. Play a SLOW game where you clearly give it your best. Look at it later with an opening book (either online or the hallowed MCO) and find out where you deviated from book line.
2. Learn the "move" you should have played. If there's a choice of variations, learn the one you like better. Convince yourself that it was better than the move in your game... if not, talk to a strong player and let him do the convincing for you.
3. You have now INCREMENTED your book knowledge by one move. That's fine ... now WALK AWAY!!! Call it a day ... do something else ... .your brain builds on things best when you let it simmer/marinate, not when you force something down to memorize. Think of this as adding a floor to a really tall high-rise building. Sure, it's not done and there's so much more to go, but hey, you are not going to forget this one move THAT EASILY!
   
4. Rinse and repeat steps 1-3.
   

Note that this will TAKE TIME and you will need to play LOTS of slow games. You cannot speed this up by playing blitz ... your brain doesn't get time to burn patterns into your head with blitz. Likewise, you will feel less burned about bad opening moves in blitz than you would in a slow game where the longer time control will enforce more discipline.

Hope this helps!

But there are some lines where the "why" just consists of a long line that should be memorized.

I mean, you can analyze master games, find all the ideas and hidden tactics, come to your own conclusions, decide what to play, et cetera. But in order to still remember the necessary details behind the board, they'll have to be memorized. Not in the openings where ideas and plans are what matters, but every opening has its fine points where the whole "why" consists of a tactical justification -- a concrete line that needs to be remembered.

There is software (e.g., Bookup) in which you can setup an analysis tree, and you can go into "Training Mode" where the computer takes one side playing moves randomly from the tree, and you have to make the correct moves for the other side.

 Where can I get Bookup? I think it is what I need, or something like it.

What I was trying to get at in my original post was that I already know the ideas and plans for both sides, typical pawn structures, peice placement, tabiyas, pawn breaks etc. And it is true most of the time that is enough, but there are some sharp lines I play (open sicilians, 3.Nc3 vs french, austrian attack etc) where concrete knowledge is essential in some lines, mostly for tactical reasons.

So for you guys who said just learn the ideas, well I have done that in most of my preparation, but as I get stronger so do my opponents and sometimes the complications in some openings are confusing enough for even grandmasters to get lost without the theory. I really like the idea of annoting master games myself though and trying to figure out all the ideas without a heavily annotated opening book infront of me. I think I will dig up some games in my database and give that a try.

Bookup is now called Chess Openings Wizard.  The web sites are:

http://www.bookup.com/

http://www.chessopeningssoftware.com/

Botvinnik used to recommend analyzing your own games, both wins and losses looking for ways to improve your own play.

 Thanks for the link! I do indeed analyze many of my own games, not all of them though.

Good Question big Ty. But let me address this to any/all who have the Question.

When you play a corr chess game, simply play thru the whole game every time you move till you get to the current position. Then the understanding is already there to associate to the moves, and you get repetition. That is what I used to do to remember 45 corr games at once, and everything was paper and real sets then, not online diagrams.

Actually, I've found Most players will be too lazy to do it. Or there are other ways preferred. Of course, "Most" players will never make Expert+ either.  Or maybe it is too Boring to do because it does take so little thought. (But that is another Chess Secret ... if you find yourself starting to get Bored with some positions ... you may be starting to know something about them! )

[just for the record, when you Do know some positions cold, you start from them and study. What are considered "key choice" moves and Key positions. As Masters do. And then you can start playing vs your computer from those positions... till you get really, really Bored+Good with them! Then you simply have to go play and crush someone human with it . It must be done!]

Chess is like anything else, if you want to be good, its how bad you want it. And there is always someone who will want it a little more; put a little more into it. Just having fun is okay too.  Regards

PS// Oh, forgot to mention ... I think that STICK METHOD is an alternative that really works too. But that's from Plato's day ... now we have Electro-Shock, yeah? Leaves no marks so people won't be asking who is Beating Chess into You

Lots of good advice here, and I agree with everything that has been said. just a couple of things to add:

1) It's a never-ending process. Even Grandmasters sometimes forget the detail of opening lines, or discover something new. So don't give up!

2) There's a difference between openings where move order is critical (typically king's pawn openings) and those where understanding the strategy and positioning the pieces correctly can matter more than the order of moves (e.g. some queen's pawn games and lines of the Reti and English openings). It's important to appreciate the difference and incorporate what suits you best into your opening repertoire.