How much theory can you remember at a maximum

why remember moves when you can make by your own  

10 move in italain game 

caro kann main line

I can also remember that

busy with actual chess

I can remember some 30+ moves deep lines but I understand the logic behind every move so it's not a concern for me

20+ lines, Semi-Slav Botvinnik

about 5 moves

This is the longest i have memorised(i know this is the main line of the breyer and there is more to it than this but i only know this much as of now )

A lot of people seem to be answering in terms of a single line... the maximum you can remember is 20 moves? That's so few moves. I could memorize a whole game without much effort, that'd be something like 30-60 moves right?

The more interesting answer would be something like "I know 100 lines each about 10 moves deep."

When I made an actual repertoire for tournament play, I had to drill my openings otherwise I'd forget bits and pieces of them (you see too much junk in blitz/bullet for it to be opening practice).

If you consider games as theory, I can remember many random games and show them off on a board.

I can go up the first 16 moves in the Botvinnik Semi-Slav at least right where you go into either 16.Na4 or 16. Rb1. I have the theory here but I don't refer to it much because of the following

1. People don't play d4 very often
2. A lot of d4 players play boring London
3. If they do play Queen's Gambit, the play the Exchange Variation (I don't hate it but I like Semi-Slav)
4. The play a Catalan
5. They don't play Bg5 and go for e3 (the Meran Variation not a Botvinnik)
6. Even if they do play into a Botvinnik, they will transpose from the mainline (usually a mistake but even then it gets annoying when they make a mistake but I somehow lose to them)
7. I've only reached up to 16.Na4 once and that was when I played as White against a very respectable player 

@B1ZMARK

I remember long games I play for up to a week or two, but after that I only remember basic stuff like a key position, who won, that sort of thing.

I'm just saying, remembering moves isn't hard. If the MAXIMUM amount of theory you can remember is 20 moves that's pretty pathetic

Personally I don't know any opening lines that deep... but he didn't ask "what's the deepest line you know" he asked how much theory is the MAXIMUM "you can remember."

It'd definitely be a few thousand moves. GMs probably know hundreds of thousands (Ivanchuk said he knew 10,000 games from memory, so that's hundreds of thousands of moves).

Lol yeah llama, same here. Just slowly forget the games because it’s been so long since you had to recall it. Interesting take on the title

i studied it from black s perspective but i wasnt able to play it still since no body knew theory after move 13 or 14..

this and the breyer are the only long ones i know 

others are generally idea based openings that i figure out on the board or i only  know 8 to 12  moves

(BTW i want to know  why u want to know how much we know XD??)

Ry is secretly gathering intel on u

I wonder what Ry's answer to the title is, hmm.jpg

wut

And you see people like Svidler playing banter blitz, saying "Oh, I haven't played this line since my youth, I don't remember anything"

Then you check against a database, and they played 15 moves of theory, and in the video Svidler makes a comment on move 17 that the standard ideas are X, Y, and Z, and that his opponent (who is a GM) played it incorrectly, so now he'll win (and Svidler wins an easy 25 moves game).

I know super GMs are much higher than regular GMs, it's just sort of amazing to compare... in positions where they "don't remember anything" they know more than an amateur's most studied opening... which I guess isn't a surprise (professionals vs amateurs in any field probably have similar comparisons) it's just sort of... amazing.

Not much...