Play the Elephant Gambit like Jonathan Schrantz! A LiChess Tools use case.

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) and you tried to do it, but you just fail miserably. You watch the videos 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

Export player games
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
• the limit to number of PGNs and/or moves has been removed in v1.7.4, but I just imported 1000 PGNs (25000 moves) and the site is pretty sluggish. I suggest moderation :D

Step 5: transform the analysis with all the moves into a study
Studies have multiple chapters with more functionality
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
Interactive Lesson lets you play variations with the computer moving for the opponent

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.

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.

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