The Blank Slate Drill: Italian Game

The blank slate drill is a exercise that is designed to give you a basic opening file and a understanding of how much you truly remember about your opening lines. First, set a timer, for 5, 10, 30 minutes at most. Next, open up a Analysis board, and start, playing through as many moves that you can remember, and note where your memory fails you. I first heard of this recommended by FM Nate Solon, in his blog post How to Remember Your Openings.

I performed this drill for the Italian two knights and Evans Gambit. I recorded myself struggling to remember two knights sidelines and Evans Gambit mainlines, and there are many mistakes and hesitations, but that is what you are supposed to run into. It is okay to not remember, and its better to find out now that you truly don't remember the forced 15 move sequence that you thought you know. I did a full 30 minutes to focus on this mainline, but most improvers will not need to go this far. I'll share the raw file I had in the end of the exercise, and the video, below. I will polish up the file soon and maybe I'll create another post on a Italian game explained. I fully recommend improvers to do some variation of this blank slate drill to be honest with how much they truly know, and to know where to focus on in the future, when it comes to openings.