So you've been watching someone on YouTube DESTROYING their opposition (note that my use of capitalization and over the top language is ironic here. All this post needed was me making an O face in a picture with a fire background) and you tried to do it, but you just fail miserably. You watch the videos again and again, vaguely remember some lines and it doesn't matter anyway because your opponents play something else than you had prepared for. What to do?

  Well, it's easy with the LiChess Tools browser extension, in 10 easy steps! (again, irony)

Step 0: install the LiChess Tools extension on your Chrome/Brave/Edge browser.

Step 1: go to lichess.org and export the games of your idol

• make sure you check the box for Opening, you will need it later

Step 2: remove all the moves after a certain depth, since you want to learn theory

• this can be done using regular expression search and replace in a decent text editor like Notepad++ (here is a pattern to select all moves after depth 20: 21\.\s+.*?$ which you can replace with nothing)

Step 3: select all the games with required opening

• again this can be done using regular expressions. (here is a pattern for "Elephant Gambit" games : (\[\w+\s+"[^"]*"\][\s]*)+(\[\w+\s+"Elephant Gambit*"\][\s]*)+(\[\w+\s+"[^"]*"\][\s]*)*\s*1\.\s+.*?$ )
• Notepad++ has a nice feature of marking all matches and then copying them wholesale (note that they will be separated by four dashes ---- which you need to remove if you use this solution)

Step 4: go to lichess.org Analysis and copy paste the games there and import them

• the enhanced import functionality that will merge multiple games will only work if you install LiChess Tools
• there might be an error that there are too many PGN moves. In that case, try to import less games (less than 100 usually). This will generate a merged PGN which you then can merge with the other merged PGNs. Anyway, there will always be a maximum move limit imposed by the limitation of lichess
  • the limitation for number of PGNs has been removed in v1.7.4, although I just tried it with about 1000 PGNs (25000 moves!) and the site moves kind of slow. I suggest moderation :)

Step 5: transform the analysis with all the moves into a study

Step 6: examine moves and delete everything after obvious blunders (like hanging pieces)

Step 7: examine moves and remove transpositions, if any

• transpositions can only be detected after installing LiChess Tools: they will appear highlighted when one of them is the currently selected move

Step 8: examine moves and add glyphs to them (good move, mistake, blunder, etc)

Step 9: edit the chapter and set it to Interactive Lesson

And you're done! All you have to do now is hit the Preview button and play as your favorite chess player. Note that the functionality to play all variations of a PGN is only available, you guessed it, if you install the LiChess Tools browser extensions. The glyphs now come in handy, because you see when you are making a mistake or not or when the opponent does it.

Play to the end of a variation, trying to guess what they would play in that position, then exit Preview, mark the ending move with a comment, perhaps an evaluation. Go back in the tree of moves until you get to the first branching and cite the game that was imported from the game explorer window. You do that by clicking the game and choosing the Cite option. Then play again. And again.

Soon you will start to anticipate the style of your preferred chess master and play the same moves. When that happens, go back to the battle field and kick ass!

As an example, you can check out my own study which imports all Jonathan Schrantz (zolpi) Elephant Gambit games: Zolpi's Elephant Gambit , a PGN with 3292 moves from 114 games. I've also added a chapter with only the wins, so you can learn the good moves only :)

That's all! Let me know if you found this use case... well... useful.

  This extension turbocharges your lichess web site. It has so many useful and powerful features! I am very proud of it. The extension is always going to be free, ad-free, donation links free, etc. Yet the only way for it to do what YOU want is feedback. Any feedback! Praise, curses, bug reports, feature requests, use stories, anything. The more you tell me, the more I can improve on this!

  LiChess Tools (ver. 1.7.4) adds the following features to lichess:

• play ALL variations in Interactive lesson study chapters!
  • computer is going to play a random move (configurable probability), so you don't need to create a chapter for every small variation
• merge multiple PGNs in analysis import
  • I merged 1000 PGNs with 25000 moves and it worked!
• automatically open/hide/convert to menu the Friends box at page load
  • having the friends box as a menu item is really neat
• sound alert when one of your friends starts playing a game
  • also reading the type of game, so you know if you even want to look at it
• ability to randomly play one of the next moves (with configurable probability in comments i.e. prc:66) with Ctrl-RightArrow
  • also go back with Ctrl-Left for convenience
• highlights for the last move of variations (special case for the ones that have no comment and do not end in checkmate) in the analysis/study board
  • you immediately see not only where a variation starts, but also where it ends
• highlights for the transpositions to the current move in the analysis/study board
  • you won't ever have to worry that you are analyzing the exact same variation but in a different order
• changing the shortcut for playing the next best computer move from Space to Shift-Space
  • always annoyed me when I accidentally pressed the key
• a minimum chess engine level
  • if it is idle in a lower state, it runs until it gets to that level
• sticky Interactive lesson Preview mode
  • you can now play chapter after chapter without hassle
• use keyboard shortcuts (i, m, b, Alt-i, Alt-m, Alt-b) for inaccuracies, mistakes and blunders
• show player country flags next to their names
  • if they have their country specified in the profile
• say verdicts aloud in practice mode
  • this is more of a gimmick, that's why it's disabled by default
• show the order of circles and arrows in a study/analysis.
  
  • this is great when you want to understand the order of moves/hints
• push TV game URLs in browser history and/or a new menu item to open the last viewed TV game
• show opening name in TV and mini games
• show history section in user TV (just like for category TV)
• quick button to switch to your user and back in personal opening explorer
• ability to remove players from the list in personal opening explorer
  • this was requested on the lichess forum and was implemented in the same day
• copy to clipboard branch and continuations from a certain position in analysis/study
  • you can now just pick a variation, copy it in its own chapter, with just a few clicks
• available languages: English and Romanian
  • ask for more! I will provide you with the English sentences and the context and you can tell me how it is in your language
• now the options for the extension are in the lichess Preferences section
  • complete integration. The extension popup has no functional role anymore
  • this also means that I will be able to port this to other browsers with minimal effort. Ask if you want this!
• move options from transpositions to the current position
  • soon the Extended Interactive Lessons will also be able to choose moves following from the same position, but in a different branch

  I couldn't wait to share it with you guys. I will be happy for any feedback, suggestions or help.

  I've started a series of use case blog posts, they might show you how to use the extension in real life:

• Play the Elephant Gambit like Jonathan Schrantz
• My lichess blog

Here are some screenshots, but they don't really tell you the story. You just have to try it.

Examples

I wrote a detailed post on how to build and use Interactive lessons, but there were always some annoying issues with the analysis board that I am striving to fix.

First, you had to add a chapter for each line. If you have a complex PGN with multiple lines you would have to split it into many small chapters. Not anymore! You can just play every variation in the chapter. For the possible moves that you have, all will be considered valid. For the possible moves of the opponent, one will be chosen at random. You can specify probabilities with the prc: notation that also works with the Ctrl-Right feature.

All the moves available in the PGN will be considered good, all others bad. For the moment I just assume that if you see a blunder on your move, you should not continue on that path, unless you want to see what's wrong with it.

You can also use Ctrl-Right in any analysis mode to move to one of the following moves. An extra option is to specify the probability that a move will get played. Let's say you created a PGN of the games of your nemesis, and they play 10% e4 and 90% d4. In your PGN add prc:10 and prc:90, respectively, to the comments on moves e4 and d4. It's that easy! And it works for any other analysis mode.

A good complement for the features above is the ability to import multiple PGNs and merge them into one. Now you can do that by simply pasting the entire text and importing it in the analysis PGN text area. I've improved the performance and fixed a few bugs in v1.7.4 which makes it possible to work with HUGE study chapters.

Another annoyance was that you opened one chapter to train, clicked on Preview and after that chapter, when selecting a next chapter, you would have to press Preview again. And again. And again. Now you have the option of "sticky Preview". The setting will stay put until you change it. Soon I will do the same with the threat mode.

Finally, you are working on a repertoire that is very complex. Your PGN has reached impressive sizes. Only now it is harder and harder to use it because you can't determine where the lines end. If you are like me, you like to continue a variation until mate or until there is a decisive advantage, which you will add as a comment. Now the last move of every variation will be slightly brighter and ending in a superscript ^L and, if not commented or ending in a mate, it will also be underlined with red.

You are looking at one of your games and you want to quickly cycle between inaccuracies, mistakes and blunders. Now you can do it with the keyboard. There is a separate extension for this, made by another guy, but I think mine is implemented better.

Finally, you want to relax, watch chess TV and you think you saw a great move somewhere. But suddenly one player resigns and before you realize it and click on the Analysis board button, the game switches to another. Now you can specify how long to wait before it switches and if you want the same for when watching a particular user TV. (The time feature has been removed, because it was hacky)

So what you do is any one of these options:

• open the Watch menu and click on Last Viewed Game
  • this will take you to the last game you saw end
  • if you are already on the last game and you click on the menu item again, it takes you to the previous one
• use one of the two games in the history area under the board
  • public TV already has this, but the extension adds the same thing to user TV
• go back with the browser back button
  • note that there is a bug in Brave and perhaps other browsers where if you click on the Back button it takes you to the previous visited link, not a game, but if you long press you see the entire list of games and can choose one

Good luck using my extension. I am sure I am going to be tinkering with it a bit. Let me know of any problems you have with it.

Other ideas

Here is a list of ideas that I am not sure I want to implement or are just too new. The green ones are already implemented! The struck out ones will not be unless someone insists. If you feel you want them, give me a shout.

• Studies/Analysis
  • key/button for random chapter (also after finishing an interactive lesson) 
  • use Game Explorer to determine the probability of a move in a study chapter PGN and insert/update prc: comments.
  • use Game Explorer to determine the probability of moves that don't have a prc: comment attached.
  • show score (good/total moves) at the end of interactive lesson (v1.5.3)
  • sticky Thread mode (x)
  • sticky analysis moves on reload
•  Transpositions
  • a button to show all transpositions in a PGN (moves that reach the same moves as others in the PGN) not only those for the currently selected move
  • a way to determine transpositions to moves in other chapters of the study
  • changing the arrow keys functionality to continue from a last move in a variation to transposition which has following moves
  • showing following moves from transpositions to the current position (v1.7.3)
  • make Interactive Lesson be able to choose from transposition moves as well
• Shapes
  • show numbers on arrows and/or circles to show their order (useful when you want to express a plan and the order of moves is relevant) (v1.5.4)
  • additional shapes?
• Friend playing alert
  • make only one sound alert regardless of how many lichess windows are open (v1.6.1)
  • disable alert for some types of games (like bullet or chess960)
  • also say the type of game they play (like "wgraif playing blitz") (v1.6.3)
  • select beep/voice for alerts
  • use the time controls vs the Event tag to determine type of game (also allowing for translation)
  • use notifications that work even when the LiChess page is not open and add a lot of extra functionality to the friend alert feature
    • There is a very nice extension for this called LiNotify. It does a lot for friend alerts and I doubt I would replicate their good work. Try to use that for extra alert features.
• Fix LiChess bugs
  • "next chapter" button in a study doesn't always follow the chapter order if you manually reorder chapters in the study
    • it happened once and then I couldn't reproduce it anymore. Maybe it's not real.
  • chess engine still on when entering Preview mode in Interactive Lessons, even if not visible (v1.5.3) 
  • if you premove in Practice mode or move too fast, you start to get verdicts for the computer move
    • I really tried to fix this, but the functions called (makeComment, comment) are private and I could not replace them. Anyway, practice mode is a mess! 
  • the output of the game explorer API contains duplicate JSON output (try changing the current move in the FEN parameter and see the difference)
    • that's purely a server bug, cannot be solved by LiChess Tools.
  • when you finish an Interactive Lesson and you press the Analysis Board button, the wrong moves you tried to make are in the PGN, but if you try to do anything with them, the PGN resets and they disappear
    • fixed by LiChess Tools v1.5.3. If LiChess developers want to know how to fix it, it's that setGamebookOverride() functions differently from setGamebookOverride('analyse').
• Move speed alert
  • alerts when you take too long for a move
    • there is at least another extension for this, but for Chess.com, where Levy Rozman and Hikaru Nakamura soundbites are thrown at you if you are too slow :)
    • I don't really think people would use sound options too much, so how about a configurable system that would make your clock puff up or something when you take too long?
• Auto analysis
  • go to game analysis after your games (or maybe the one you are watching) end (useful to force you to analyse your games instead of stubbornly hunting for a win)
    • I find this a bit too forcing, but then again, you could disable it
    • Also there is another extension that does this
• Search games
  • download all of a user's games from a certain position, search games based on specific moves, certain positions, certain fragments of positions
    • This requires a lot of hacking, since the LiChess APIs do not expose this functionality. I am afraid that would be tantamount to abusing those APIs.
• Game explorer
  • Use game explorer to make all first N moves for M levels from the current position (perhaps also automatically add prc: comments)
• Import games
  • since analysis PGNs have a maximum number of moves before they don't accept more, import just "first N" moves when import/merging PGNs in enhanced import.
    • limit for PGN import removed in v1.7.4
  • when merging games, find a way to calculate the percentage of that move and automatically add prc: comments
• TV
  • specify the time between switching to a new game in TV mode
    •  v1.6 removes this functionality on account of it being hacky and unstable
  • instead of delaying switching from a game to another, how about a history back/forward mechanism?
    • the game URL in put browser history, accessible by the back button (v1.5.5)
      • note that the Brave browser has a bug that requires you to long press the Back button to see the list of games
    • a menu item in the Watch section goes to the last viewed game (v1.5.7)
    • also I noticed that public TV actually has a history section under it, you just have to scroll and see the last two games in the category
  • user TV should have a history section like the category one (last two games by the user as mini games) (v1.6.1)
  • how about an extended TV feature, where you can filter and sort which games to watch, or watch only your friends' games, you can switch if you don't like the current one, etc?
    • really, I am thinking of leaving TV as it is unless someone comes with a good reason to tinker with it more
  • add Game Explorer interface to TV games
    • I think this might overload the system. Thinking about solutions.
  • show opening name in TV game (v1.5.7) and in mini game popups (v1.5.8)
  • double click on squares to add their coordinates to chat
    • can use the shapes to translate them into text when created
  • option to bookmark game and see the game link (v1.6.6)
• Fun (maybe for another extension, since they would be pretty content heavy and not really useful)
  • make battle/murder sounds when a piece is captured and show blood spatter on the square in question
  • make sounds/commentaries on your game as you are playing it or when watching TV
• General
  • global on/off extension button that doesn't involve disabling it 
  • a low API call mode in which calls are throttled or not made (maybe set it automatically when receiving 429)
  • add all texts and voice messages injected into LiChess website to a siteI18n object that can be used to translate them according to language and use the current language for voice prompts (v1.6)
    
    • I will not do the translating myself, I expect users that care about this to come with their own texts (see the JavaScript object lichessTools.siteI18n) 
  • an event log that you can open with a click
    • sometimes people don't want distractions like alerts and other stuff, but want to see what happened while they were away
  • a focus mode button (do not disturb with alerts while this is on)
    • maybe set it to on automatically when playing
  • move options to the lichess site Preferences (v1.7)
  • add more languages (Romanian v1.7)
• LiChess forum requests
  • challenge log - a log of who all I challenged and who challenged me for a game will be a nice touch
  • hide/show/move friends box - a menu item that allows that? Drag the box around?
    • now you can also choose to hide the friends box (v1.5.8)
    • idea to move the friends box as a menu item (v1.6.4)
  • a game source tab for yourself in game explorer (v1.5.8)
  • remove some player names from the list in personal Opening Explorer (v1.5.8)
  • right click on a variation to copy it to another chapter (or as a PGN) (v1.6.1)
  • option to rename/reorder study tags
    • there are no APIs to change topics for studies you don't have open. I don't think I can do anything.
  • add Stockfish analysis to live TV games (could enable cheating)
  • option to disable rematch requests from other players
    
    • something similar: don't receive rematch requests a configurable amount of time after playing them
  • show possible game continuations from the correct move in Learn From Your Mistakes
  • bug fix: import a game as a study chapter, rename the chapter, then save the study PGN. The Event pgn tag does not change
    • this may actually be construed as a feature not a bug. The imported chapter will have the original Site PGN tag, which can be edited in the Tags section. New chapters have no such tag and create it from the chapter title.
  • import PGNs in studies with the content of the Event tag as the chapter name, if present
    • tried it and it works for one PGN, but if you paste more, all other chapters are going to be generated with default names. Tried various things, but tags are not easily accessible. In the end, it's easier to just select the chapter, copy the event tag name and edit it into the chapter name.
  • chat improvements:
    • automatic replies to standard texts (that are already configurable from the settings to be sent automatically)
  • bookmark puzzles and forum posts (similar to how you can do it for your own chess games)
    • TV games can be bookmarked now (v1.6.6). Unfortunately you can only bookmark a valid game. I could create a local mechanism (browser local storage) to bookmark everything else, or a dedicated server for this, but both seem overkill and yet not enough.
  • allow your friends to watch what you are watching or to set up a viewing for multiple people of the same game
  • a resize handle for the analysis move list in order to better visualize branches (would work great on very large screens)
  • allow study creators to decide if the order of the chapters is random and how (a new Next Random Chapter button would be added to the existing one or replace it altogether)
• Bugs to fix
  • copying the PGN from a move when the game started from a specific FEN position gives you an unusable PGN. It should retrieve not only the moves, but also the initial FEN position as a PGN tag. (v1.6.6)
  • sometimes the voice for the friend playing announcement is not heard, only the beep.

Q&A

Q: Can you publish your extension code on GitHub?
A: Yes, I could. Probably I will be starting with version 2, which will be a rewrite of a version 1 that has been in use for a while and that people have given me feedback for. As much as I like sharing my code, I really don't want to have to deal with all the GitHub complications right now.

Q: If your code is not on GitHub, it doesn't exist! Also, I looked at your code and it sucks balls!
A: That's not a question. And I agree. But right now I am focusing on features, not quality control. Wait for V2.

Q: How do we contact you with new ideas, bug reports and general roasting of your coding skills?
A: Use this post. This is my personal blog and my preferred method of communication. On top-right you can see a lot of links to various methods of direct communication with me, although I would prefer thoughtful feedback to remain documented here, as comments.

Q: I am addicted to LiChess Tools and I am afraid later on you will fill it with ads, premium features and EULAs that allow you to remove my kidneys. Can you address my fear?
A: Like everything on this blog, it will always remain free. And not free as in "until someone else buys it" or free as in "watch videos and it's free" or free as in "I will fill your screen with junk", but completely utterly free. Like LiChess, I guess. Also, it doesn't connect to any external services or capture any user data. For now! Muhahahaha! Later on it might need some external services for extra features that you ask for, but I hope it doesn't.

Q: How long did it take you to write this?
A: Mostly a week. Following the 80/20 rule, now I have to work at least one more month to make it good.

Q: You should write a tutorial on how to use it. Could you make a video of it?
A: I am not a video person. I hope that this post can convey the basic ways in which to use the extension and that the extension itself can be used without the need of a tutorial. Let's work together to make this clear and easy to use for everyone instead.

Q: Your Extended Interactive Lesson feature is all I had ever wanted from life! But when I am editing the study, I get the same interface as normal studies. Can you fix it?
A: Some parts of LiChess are easy to change, some not so much. Anything related to rendering is a mess to hook to. Additionally, I wouldn't want to have studies that can only be edited and used with my extension.

Q: So how do I mark the good branches from the bad variations?
A: Any branch that is not in the study will be bad. Same as a normal Interactive Lesson. As for the ones that you want to explore specifically, use the annotations (Mistake, Blunder, Brilliant Move, etc) and comments. You can even explore the bad branches in Preview mode this way and learn why they would be bad.

Q: Can you add features to show me what moves to make while playing?
A: LiChess Tools is not a cheating tool.

Q: But can you add some features that don't involve cheating for the games that I am playing/watching?
A: Most of the features of LiChess Tools are analysis oriented because analysis is much better exposed than the game code. Because there are a lot of private variables that are not made accessible, it's difficult to selectively change parts of the game interface and any features would have to brutally copy paste and replace some legitimate code bits. I am afraid that until that changes on LiChess, I will not touch that part, mostly because that means I would have to keep score on what they change on the web site and update my extension accordingly.

Q: How about changing the way LiChess looks?
A: I am not a good visual designer, nor do I do a lot of work on web frontend. There are some extensions that are doing that and perhaps you should ask those people for help instead. Also, I am avoiding as much as possible changes to the visual elements of the website specifically because it might interfere with some such extension or custom CSS tool. BTW, if you are working on something like that and find LiChess Tools is interfering with your stuff, let me know. We can figure things out. 

Q: OK, you're my new hero. How can I help?
A: Contact me and let's talk. I despise doing anything UI design related, as evidenced by this blog and the extension popup, so maybe you can help there. Also, not a specialist in browser extensions, so any improvements and/or help with other browsers would be welcome.

Q: Yeah, but I can't code. How can I help?
A: Help me by making this extension well known. I don't want "marketing". Just let people know and if they like it, they will use it. Can't use it if they don't know about it, though, and I am always afraid people think I am spamming them when I try to advertise my work.

Q: I use LiChess in my own language and the new features are jarring in English
A: I've implemented the translation mechanism, but I need the texts for the various languages. If you provide them, I will make them available. See the JavaScript object lichessTools.siteI18n for the texts requiring translation.

Q: Chrome sucks! Microsoft sold out! Can you make this work for my favorite browser?
A: Short answer: no. Long answer: if I had assistance with extension code and testing, perhaps. I want to help people, so the more the merrier, but I also don't have a lot of resources to maintain code on a browser I don't use.

A: That's not my bug, it comes from LiChess. They have bugs, too.
Q: How could you possibly have answered before I asked the question?

Q: Did you actually think people were going to read this far down?
A: No.

Q: I told about this to all my friends, I came with feedback and constructive criticism and it feels like you ignored me. What gives?
A: For sure I want to take everything into consideration and act on requests as fast as possible, but it might be that I am caught up with something else. I thoroughly intend to give the extension as much attention as possible, so maybe make sure I got your message, first.

Hope it helps!

Quick update

  I have solved a lot of the issues I have with LiChess with my own Chrome/Edge extension: LiChess Tools. I am very proud of it and I invite you to use it. It even enhances the Interactive lesson mode I describe below to explore ALL variations in the chapter!

  Now back to the original post:

Intro

  It's impossible to play chess and to not have heard of Lichess. It's a website that has started with the lofty goal of providing a completely free and without ads place where people can play chess. One of the features there is called a Study, similar to the chess Analysis board, but allowing for multiple chapters, persistent comments and annotations, a unique URL as well as the possibility of embedding it into a web page.

  There are multiple analysis modes for a chapter: Normal analysis, Practice with computer, Hide next moves and Interactive mode. I think Hide next moves is mainly used for embedding chess puzzles into websites, while Practice with computer is a mode that I have not played with yet. Normal analysis presents the classic board with various tools showing you the moves people of various levels play in a position, a chess analysis engine in the browser as well as a server side analysis that you can run on the main line of a PGN.

  However, I am here to show you how to use Interactive lesson mode, simply and without confusion, to quickly improve your game and perfect your play.

  If want the example study and only then read through the documentation about how it was done, go directly to the Demo.

It's not that

  When I first heard of this option I was elated. I expected to take my very complicated PGN explorations, paste them into the study, then have the computer play the other guy based on the moves in the PGN. And while I still hope the developers of Lichess will create a study mode for a complete PGN, this does not work in Interactive lesson mode yet. I hear that Tarrasch UI does have an option like that, but I haven't used it yet, so maybe I will update this post after I try it. I use Arena Chess GUI as the tool of choice for game analysis on my computer.

  Edit: I've installed Tarrasch and it kinds of works, even if the option is rather primitive. What you do is you take a PGN (like for example the Lichess PGN of all of your games or of another player) and set it up as the opening book. Then you have another option that sets up how many moves to take from the book and then, what percentage of moves to take from the book. So setting the first as a very large number or the percentage at 100 makes the UI play exactly like the other player. However, the problem is that it doesn't save the probability for a user to make a move. It just combines all games PGNs into one big one and plays from it. If I player e4 once and d4 1000 times, the computer will play either 50% of the time. Bummer!

  OK, so maybe it follows the main line, but what if I go into a branch line? Surely it will allow me to continue, because I have marked the good moves as good and the bad moves as bad. Nope! The main line is the only line the Interactive lesson will follow, but you can add other moves which will be automatically considered bad and their comments shown to the user as they try to make them.

  It is called interactive, so maybe it has all kinds of whistles and bells that I can add so that it is more like a fun game! Again, no. Interactive means only that you can learn a specific line by following it ad nauseum, with some helpful graphical hints, comments and annotations baked in. For each line that you want to explore, you have to build a different chapter. And there are a maximum 32 chapters per study. There is no way in which you are making a different move and you get any feedback more meaningful than a prerecorded comment telling you you didn't play the correct move. That being said, when creating a new chapter one can import a PGN containing multiple games. This will create a chapter for each of the games (again, maximum of 32).

  One other glaring limitation of studies in general is that they barely work on the mobile app and Interactive lessons are not even supported there.

But it's that

  But once I found the proper way of using it, I realized that it can actually help me a lot to improve my game. Why? Because it helps with repetition and memory, which is something that I don't really excel in. So here are my recommendations on how to use the tool.

Create a PGN with all the lines that you want to explore

  Yes, I know I said Interactive mode doesn't handle multiple lines, but this is the starting point of your efforts. You need one anyway to first determine what you want to study. Let's say you have learned of the newest tricky gambit line and you want to beat all your friends with it, but you can't practice it without letting them in on it.

  There are multiple ways of generating this source PGN. You can watch your favorite YouTuber going through the variations, create a study and follow their moves in the first chapter. You can start from the Analysis Board and transform it into a Study when you need to add comments and stuff. Don't worry about chapters at this stage. Just build your PGN. You can take your own games in that particular opening or variation and add them to the PGN. You can check out the games of other people or use the Opening Explorer and Tablebase to find the most common moves people play from a position.

  Do add comments and graphical hints as you go along (right click and drag the mouse for arrows, right click on squares for circles, press combinations of Ctrl and Alt for various colors). It will be important later.

Split your PGN into individual lines

  This might feel painful at the beginning, but in order to examine lines from your PGN interactively you need to remove all other moves. You already have your PGN, just add new chapters for each line and use the option to copy from the first chapter. You do this by selecting the chapter you want to copy from, then use the new chapter option. Don't forget to choose Interactive lesson as the Analysis mode (you can copy from the latest added chapter, since it's identical to the first, only it has the Interactive lesson mode already selected). Let's say that you started with a small PGN with a main line and an alternate branch that then splits again later on. That means 3 variations. Copy the PGN into 3 new chapters, then for each one delete all the moves from alternate branches. Keep the first chapter with the compete PGN and the type Normal analysis.

Play chapters repeatedly

  In order to play the chapters yourself, you need to press the Preview button. Alternately, open your study in a browser where you are not logged in on the Lichess site, but that also implies that your study is set to public and updating it as you play will be cumbersome.

  So start playing the chapters, in order or randomly, again and again. You will start to reap the benefits of spaced repetition, without the stress of playing against another person and without getting distracted by other stages of the game.

  Eventually, you will notice some moves that are hard to remember. Exit preview mode by pressing the Preview button again, then add hints, comments, graphical hints, etc. This will help you when you get to the same spot a few weeks later.

Helping yourself and others

  There are several ways to nudge people going through the lesson. Most are helpful, but they can also be detrimental or too revealing.

  You can add a Hint, which will appear if the user gives up and clicks on Hint. They also have the option of seeing the next move, if they really give up. I guess this can be helpful if the hint is vague enough. Something like "move to e4" is the same as the option of seeing the solution, so pointless. Something like "move the queen!" is not much better. However, something that talks about the principles of the position rather than the specifics not only helps cement the theory in the mind of the student, but also helps you, the author, clarify those principles as you search for the correct hint!

  You can make a move for your side then add a special type of comment that will pop up to the user if they play any other move. You can also play different moves in the PGN other than the main move, then add a comment for why that move is not the right one, which will supersede the generic one. For example you could use "Not that move, dummy!" which is not very helpful, but works for a generic message, then play the next best move (or perhaps even a better one, depending on who you're asking) and commenting on it "That's an even better move, but not in the spirit of this opening" or something like that.

  Note that you can add comments for the moves of your side, but that forces the student to press Space to go to the next move, which might get annoying. Alternately, if you write comments on the opponent moves, the annoying pause does not happen, since it's your time to move and you can read it at your leisure.

  Same ideas apply to arrows and squares. You might use them to convey general plans or the very specific plans that follow the very last move in the chapter, perhaps. Show too much and you guide your user towards the move, preventing them from learning. Be consistent with your colors. I personally use the default green for future moves, blue for intentions or plans, red for what the pieces are attacking and yellow as the best move that the opponent should have played, but they did not.

  Annotations are also very helpful, showing the student that the move is good or interesting or brilliant. They come with no extra information and do not pause the lesson.

Extra tools

  There are several things that I found irritatingly missing from the Study feature. However, I've built my own solutions using CJS and Stylish Chrome extensions that allow me to run custom JavaScript and add CSS styles on specific sites. I would still prefer to have those implemented by the Lichess developers, though. I plan a future blog post about those tools, let me know if you're interested.

  One of the tools is knowing what the last moves of variations are. On a large PGN it is hard to see which is which. One needs to know where variations end, whether to further them along or to at least end with a comment. My script adds a CSS class to the last item in a variation and another class if it has no comment attached to it. I see them as brighter and underlined if not commented.

  Another one is handling transpositions. Chess masters of course look at the board and immediately recognize the position they had in a game three years ago when they were playing Magnus Carlsen, but regular people who are trying to cover all the branches of a PGN do not know whether they have reached a position they had before. My script adds a CSS class to all moves that show the same position as the currently active move, but it's not perfect, it only shows the same position that was reached through a different order of moves, not different moves.

  Extracting a line from a PGN would have come handy as well. There is the option to make a variation the main line, but there is no option of removing all branches from it. That will make your initial study creation a bit cumbersome, especially since you are like me, accumulating lines in the PGN and then realizing there is no support for 523 chapters in a study.

  Merging PGNs is also a very good option that as far as I know Lichess is missing. There is the option of adding any game from the Opening explorer and tablebase, but none for your own games or any other random ones. That would also help a lot with studies.

Demo

Below I will share one of my own interactive studies, public and shareable, hoping I will help you guys use this wonderful tool towards great effect. I will use for inspiration one of GM Igor Smirnov's YouTube videos. He is great, but I also used this because he usually shares his lichess studies :)

So these are the steps I followed to create the study:

1. I took the two games in the study shared by Igor and manually merged them in a single PGN
2. I created a new study, then pasted the PGN as the first chapter
3. Doctored the PGN so that I eliminate the transposition at move 4
4. I watched the video and added new moves from it
5. I looked for interesting positions in the two games and explored some branches, adding comments related to everything from my own opinions to the evaluation Stockfish gives
6. Created a new Interactive lesson chapter for each important variation
7. Went to each chapter and upgraded the specific variation as main line
8. Removed all side lines in each chapter (perhaps leaving the starting move only, so I can mark it with a special reference to its specific chapter)
9. Played each chapter again and again, trying to identify the hard to find moves and the general plans of the opening
10. Shared the study with all of you!

Here is the result:

What to do next

At the beginning, going trough the study, you will first learn the moves, maybe find some places requiring hints or nudging in the right direction. But then you will start to play actual games, using what you've learned, and you are going to get opponents that move completely differently from the main moves. Obviously they are doing something wrong, but you don't know how to punish them.

So here is what you do: you update the original PGN if you want, but then you create a chapter for each of these troublesome lines. You follow them through, using chess engines or some other way of understanding the position: maybe a teacher, or looking at master games or checking the moves statistically played most in that position. Then go back to going through the chapters.

It's that easy. This replaces your passive examination of your games with the active searching for a solution and an even more active playing through it again and again. 

Conclusion

One can use the Interactive lesson mode to do spaced repetition learning, get a feel for new openings or rehearse the positions that give them the most problems. While the current implementation of the feature is very useful as it is, some simple additions would make it much more user friendly. I am still searching for additional tools that would complement this and will update the post as I go along.

Hope it helps! 

  Man of Two Worlds may be the worst book signed by Frank Herbert that I've ever read. It features that nasty '50s newsroom trope, where single minded egotistical people (sometimes to the point of cruelty) get a pass because they are brilliant and they talk fast (and they own the newspaper). The characters are unsympathetic and rather not interesting, while the ideas in the book are dull and going nowhere. The plot itself is often inconsistent. I do suspect that this is more of a Brian than a Frank book, because none of the themes found in previous Frank Herbert books are found here (if one discounts the awkward depiction of women). Also the tiny Wikipedia page dedicated to the book lists Brian as the main author.

  In short, the story is about a human and an alien merging accidentally and having to work together to get things done. Kind of like the authors were trying to do, huh? The setting is classic '50s sci-fi, with people living on Mars and Venus and going from planet to planet using vehicles that function like normal airlines, only in space. Meanwhile, the aliens are trying to destroy Earth because they fear humans - not sure how that would work since they already live on other planets, and the humans have their own familial issues to resolve - including an uncle with god-like powers but no apparent care about the outcome of anything he does.

  There are many issues with the book that I am not going to go into. I almost did not finish it. However, someone else might enjoy it, so no need to rant in this review. Suffice to say that the book feels insulting when it is not boring, which is most of the time. I don't recommend it.

  Imagine reading a novel about a global pandemic with the background of Irish violence right about when Covid struck and people didn't know how Brexit was going to turn out and what it would do to Irish tensions. That was the best moment to read it. A bit anachronistic, with some pacing issues, The White Plague is still one of Frank Herbert's best.

  After reading the book synopsis, one expects to get a book about a violent global pandemic, but in fact that's just the first quarter of the book. The rest is psychological explorations of people motivations and characters, the ubiquitous Herbert attempts to find a solution to the toxic human organizational structures, analysis of history, violence, religion and philosophy. I mean, it's Herbert!

  A violent "Provo" bombing kills the wife and daughters of a molecular biologist that was in Ireland on vacation. He goes mad and creates a plague to destroy the people who wronged him by killing their women. I can't but smile at the implications, that if a smart educated scientist gets pissed off they could easily cause more damage than the toys and sticks of military people. The theme reminds me of his short story Public Hearing, which explores what happens when immense destructive power can be achieved with little effort by individuals, and how that makes governments - the keepers of peace - obsolete.

  But then there is the larger part of the book that is just the guy walking in the Irish countryside with a priest, a mute child and an IRA member that was actually the one who ordered the bomb that killed his wife. And to tell you the truth, the scientist is not very sympathetic, the IRA soldier is annoying and the priest and the child are unbearable. The ideas that the author is analyzing are interesting, but the pacing is slow, methodical, and perhaps the reason why more people haven't heard of this book.

  And there is the usual strangeness of Herbert's approach to female characters. There is just one, really, in this book, and she comes across as stupid, vain but also calculatingly self serving, while still having men fawning over her. That in a story which covers the death of most women on Earth. The guy didn't like women much.

  Anyway, if you take anything from this review, is that together with Hellstrom's Hive and of course the Dune series, this is one of the books that impacted me most. 

  I was studying some game openings and I found myself in a position that was reached on LiChess 7 times after 11 moves, starting from the Vienna Gambit. That's the gambit that looks like an improved King's Gambit, with f4 after playing Nc3 first. In fact, one of the 7 games started off as a King's Gambit.

  This position is fascinating. Go on, try to analyze it! Guess the evaluation, try to see the continuations. White to move, obviously, since the king is completely exposed and also in check. Black has 3 extra pawns and a passed pawn one rank from promoting. Can White survive this?

  What if I were to tell you that the computer evaluation for this position is +5 for White? And I am talking 40 ply, not the in page LiChess engine which actually evaluates this at more than +8! The server analysis goes as low as +4.

  I am going to share the study, it has several chapters, one with how to get to this position and another with computer variations (absolutely FILTHY variations - imagine Levy Rozman saying that) and then the games on LiChess at the moment. The computer variations (so best play from Stockfish) all end badly; Black is completely lost. It goes to show the importance of space, development and tempo in chess, much more than the material or even the classical principles we are all used to. Not that they are bad, it's just that they don't always apply.

  Enjoy this amazing position!

  McKie again saves the world, while at the same time getting some intense nookie. He is Frank Herbert's James Bond, the guy who can outthink everybody, adapt to any situation and still look cool and positive while doing it. To be fair, I enjoyed The Dosadi Experiment quite a lot, perhaps because and not despite the air of interplanetary secret agent idea. I liked it more than Whipping Star, the first book in this universe, which had the handicap of having to establish it first. Also, because most of that was a human trying to understand a Caleban, which was not terribly exciting. This book explores a planet used as a (unlawful) social experiment and what the result of that experiment was.

  There is something I both like and despise in Herbert's writing. He weaves different captivating stories and worlds from the same pieces. So you get the stagnating civilization, malignant government and various explorations of solutions to solve the problem, you get the very rational yet emotionally immature male heroes and the amazing and terrifying women that they stumble upon, the idea of terrible pressure shaping civilizations and individuals alike into extraordinary form, the people reaching higher levels of awareness and saying or understanding the precise best things that could have been said or understood. There is even a Gom Jabbar in this.

  In fact, some of his books remind me of chess games. And one might enjoy chess games immensely, but after a certain level you just don't get if they are brilliant or complete shit. It's the same with The Dosadi Experiment, where everybody begins seeing the world in the Dosadi way, speak in the Dosadi way, think in the Dosadi way, but you never understand what that is, other than a form of psychopathic focus on power games.

  I believe that, given more time, Herbert could have shaped the ConSentiency Universe into something really unique, not as dry (pardon the pun) as Dune, not as depressing as Pandora, something that would combine the mind games and social analysis that he loved with good fun and great creative ideas. Alas, other than a couple of short stories, that's all we get for this intriguing world building.

  Bottom line: a little more lighthearted than most Herbert books, featuring more action, but still having the distinctive attributes one would expect from the author. I liked it, but it wasn't as memorable as the books I really like from him.

  One of my favorite Frank Herbert books and one that is not part of a series, Hellstrom's Hive is horrifying and inspiring in equal measure. I don't know why so few people mention reading it, probably because the ending is a bit weak, or maybe because of the touchy subject, but I loved it.

  The idea is quite simple, although as usual with Herbert, the underlying motifs are subtle and powerful. An unnamed and probably illegal secret organization, possibly an arm of the corporate world rather than government, discovers by accident something suspicious about a farm, owned by a guy named Hellstrom. There, they discover an unnamed and probably illegal secret organization, a group of people who hide from the world their own brand of civilization, inspired by insects.

  You can immediately see that the two organizations are juxtaposed for effect. Which one, if any, is the good one and which one is not? Are the relatively moral agents of the first group better than the mindless drones of the second? What about if they execute their orders without thought of consequences? Are the ecosystem aware, science and reason oriented, efficiency focused godless denizens of the hive abominations or are they the way of the future, the solution to humanity's rapaciousness? Could people accept such a radically different way to live, even if it doesn't affect them?

  As many of Herbert's creations, the book touches some recurring themes: the inevitable evil of government, the importance of focusing with mind and soul towards the betterment of individuals and the human species in general, the chemical, sexual and instinctual drives at the root of behavior, the power of ritualistic fanaticism, the danger in wanting too much or getting complacent and so on. In a way, this is a revisiting of the ideas from The Santaroga Barrier, only better.

  I was dreading reading this book, I have to admit, because I was remembering the big impact it had on me when I read it in my childhood and I was afraid that it would be anachronistic, that it would feel stupid and unrealistic. I am happy to report that it did not. I mean, yeah, it does portray a story happening in the 70's, but it is realistic for those times and it could be adapted to the present with minimal changes. I don't know why no one attempted to put it on a screen. It's a captivating story.

  Only after downloading 11 GB of game, playing for a few minutes and uninstalling it in frustration, then searching the web, did I understand Chess Ultra is a Switch game designed to work in VR. For a PC game, though, where I was playing it, it was a slow bloatware that lead to a 404 page when you wanted to switch the chess board style.

  Imagine coming from Lichess and trying to make sense of something that requires so much space to function, has only 3D pieces and uses all of your video card to display a chessboard and some coffee on a table. It was unbearable. Perhaps it would work on a Switch console, with VR glasses, if you want to enter the mood of playing over the board in a smoky chess room, but I have no idea who would want that.

  And then I looked on the Internet to see what other people were saying and everything was great! Oh, the multiple options, the varied puzzles, the recreations of classical games. Jesus, that's basic chess web site functionality! And "critic ratings" are 85% while the normal people rate it at about 60%. Really? Am I crazy for thinking it's a badly constructed game? I hated it.

  

  Submerged: Hidden Depths is one of those relaxing games that require no effort and no skill. You control a couple of unreasonably athletic teens in a future time in which the world is covered in water and strangled by a huge vine-like plant. The two youngsters travel on a boat, retrieving and returning the plant's seeds so that it won't be angry and discovering on the way relics of Earth's past and journals that explain what went on. Each stage is almost linear, easy to go through, devoid of danger and marked in multiple ways so that you don't have to think your way out of anything. In other world, it's a visual feast of a fantasy world in which you just discover stuff.

  At first attracted by the concept, since I usually enjoy the story, exploration and discovery part of RPGs much more than the fights, I got bored rather quickly. It's the same thing again and again, even if "the world" is practically a small sandbox. I liked the design, although the graphics are really simplistic. The occasional proto language words they use are fun and the soundscape puts you in the mood.

  What turned me off a bit is that occasionally the video card would throw an error and I would have to forcefully close the game and start it again. Also, there are ways to skip the animations, which is good, but it skips the good parts as well.  There is one of the most satisfying activities around: finding relics, where the repetitive animation of the boy throwing an anchor and pulling it back gets rather old, but the "strange things" they recover, like typewriters and sextants and so on, it's new every time. And of course when you skip the animation you skip the entire thing, not just the repetitive part. Such a small thing to think about and fix and they wouldn't do it.

  Every time you save a seed there is a storyline that gets advanced and at one time I saw a large black vine hand coming out of the water. I said "We're gonna need a bigger boat!" so I collected all boat upgrades first and stopped saving seeds until I understand the journals, but the upgrades just add extra boost to the boat and the journals are mostly in the seed parts, so not something particularly satisfying. I am going to continue to play it to the end, because sometimes I just feel to turn my brain off, but other than that it feels more like a demo than a full game.

  Playing hint: if you don't like the weather (fog, rain, whatever) you can just save and return to the menu then continue the game and it starts from a sunny mode again. Same if you get stuck in the map and can't move.

  In the end I've completed the game. The ending was quite underwhelming.

  In the Vienna game: Copycat variation there is a particular position where Black pins White's queen, but White ignores that anyway to attack the king. Queen sac's are always interesting, but what is more interesting for me is that Stockfish shows that's the only way to win, it continues into a position where it claims +2.2 for White, but then it can't think of a way out!

  So, can you help Stockfish out from this position?

  Here is the position:

  The first idea is Nxd6, winning a pawn with discovered check, but after the king moves to h8, the only move that doesn't lead to equality or worse is back with Nf7+. One can give a double check with Nh6, but after Kg8 the best move by far is back with Nf7+. What if we take the rook at f8? We can't do that, because then Black brings the other rook and White loses. Nf7+ is forced. What else?

  If you leave Stockfish running with multiple eval lines, it will cycle between them, with the winning move always moving the knight back and forth on f7. But this is chess, not Stratagema. What could we possibly do? What is the way out? How can one have +2.2 evaluation, yet not be able to escape this position? Is this the end of computer chess?!

  The Godmakers is one of Frank Herbert's weaker books. It was cobbled together from four previous short stories and it shows, as the various parts of the book go into wildly different directions. The first part was interesting, the idea of an organization dedicated to uncovering (and totally destroying) any tendency of a civilization to go to war; it feels like a police procedural of sorts. But then the book loses focus, goes into an incoherent and incomplete "god making" plot, then veers into Herbert's latent fear of women and some weird conspiracies that make little sense.

  The book is short, so one can get through it really fast, but I won't recommend it. It does have bits of Herbert brilliant insights, but they are more like a few diamonds in a lot of rough.

  Frank Herbert's single non science fiction book tells the story of a heartbroken native American who embarks on a journey to create a spiritually significant event against the White people who wronged him and his kind. But since nothing is simple with Herbert, the plot is about the relationship between our antihero and his victim. If nothing else, it's a great exploration of Stockholm Syndrome, but also things the author was fascinated with: the power of stories to change reality, the impact of cultural absorption and the power of tribal ritual to fight against it.

  While reading the book I got a feeling that made me remember Tom Sawyer trying to escape Injun Joe. It has the same kind of remoteness, the innocent White boy and the native American antagonist dynamic, but while that book was simple and focused on the mentality of regular American people (even the "injun"), Soul Catcher explores how kidnapper and victim create a rapport, how the beliefs of one person can infect others if presented with sufficient confidence, the way two cultures cannot understand each other sans a common language.

  You see, Charles Hobuhet is not a wild rebel, dressed in animal skin and shooting arrows from horses, he is an educated American of native origins whose job is to train young boys in the ways of nature in a natural reserve. A traumatic event (reminiscent of the one starting things in White Plague) makes him "snap". But what does that mean? Is his quest the fevered revenge dream of a mad man or is it him waking up to the reality of his people's captivity at the hands of the White man? Mirroring this ambiguity in the relationship he has with 13 years old David is the genius of this book. Is it a stupid act to connect with your captor and not work relentlessly to escape? Then are all occupied people like the native Americans stupid? Isn't the first responsibility of a prisoner to escape? Then, to what degree and for how long? Can there ever be peace?

  Recently the book rights have been bought in view of making a film out of it, but I doubt it will work. People need to understand the underlying currents in the book and faithfully portray them on screen, regardless of how controversial. The whole point of the story is to make one think and feel themselves in all of the situations. I am afraid Hollywood is unable to go down that path anymore. However, this could just as well be adapted as a theatre play, having just a few characters and focusing heavily on each person's thoughts and motivations, rather than on specific settings.

  A very interesting book, with many layers that probably require rereads. Highly recommended.

  Whipping Star is a book of a lighter mood than what Frank Herbert usually writes, even comedic at times, although it is as creative as he can write. A universe of sentients of very different cultures and shapes and mentality, working and living together, is at risk. Only the lead agent of the Bureau of Sabotage, an organization created to slow down the efficiency of government, can save everything.

  It is funny that in a book about a huge universe in peril the thing that stayed with me the most is the very idea of the Bureau. Apparently, a lack of foresight caused a particular species of sentient to take over the bureaucracy in the entire universe, bringing it to total efficiency. Hard to imagine efficient governments, but once you do you realize you may not really want them! The solution was to create a special branch that has the role to fix that original error. I found that hilarious, especially guessing the view the author had about governments.

  However, the book is not about that. It's about a very rational exploration of the interaction between very weird species, trying to communicate a solution before it is too late. It reads like a detective story, really, where the main character is trying to solve the case, but filled with some very interesting and mind broadening ideas. So Herbert! It is short and fast paced.

  Only after I've read the book I realized it is part of a series. I don't really care, since I am on the journey of reading the complete list of novels by the author, but even so, this is a stand alone story. I recommend it because it is both intriguing and fun. As far as I am concerned this is not Frank Herbert's best book, but still deserves top marks. 

  Another short standalone book from Frank Herbert, The Santaroga Barrier feels a lot like a longwinded Wicker Man. An outsider comes to investigate a strange little town where people keep to themselves, refuse to sell land to outsiders and show weird social statistics, like no mental illness, no drugs, no TVs and show a weird directness in everything they do or say. The book shares a lot of its DNA with the later Hellstrom's Hive, which I remember I liked a lot as a child and can't wait to get to read it, in the sense that it also examines a society which splintered from main culture in disgust and now is fighting with the entire world to maintain its identity. It also features a substance that frees consciousness and prolongs life, a concept that sounds familiar somehow...

  Around the middle of the book I expected it to end, but instead it lasted for much longer, even after "the catch" was revealed, because Herbert was probably interested in examining such a weird society rather than be content with a pedestrian focus on a cardboard main character. The author likens the way we live our lives in the Western society with a constant battle against marketers, advertisers, government people and so on who wage war on our psyche in order to pacify and control us. He decries the people who never live a life, instead they watch TV, they turn it off then they go to sleep and turn themselves off.

  I liked the book quite a lot. There are issues with it, though. I mentioned the slow pacing, but there is also a romantic connection to a woman which feels completely fake the entire book. Say whatever you wish about Herbert, but a good writer of female characters he was not. I can see this story as a Twilight Zone episode, it feels the same: a bit spooky, but not too much, with some really deep ideas in parts, but mostly people talking and moving through small towns.