#What Study is for
Study is a tree of positions rather than a game. You set up a position, play a move or a roll from it, and the result hangs below it as a branch you can come back to. It is how you work through an opening, a plan, or the one tactical position you keep getting wrong.
Open it with the Position Study button, the book icon in the sidebar. It starts from the position on the board, and you can edit that starting position before you go anywhere.
#Starting positions
One study can hold several starting positions. Each is listed by name at the top of its own tree, and everything indented below it was played out from there.
- New position adds another.
- Hovering a name on a desktop shows that position on a small board.
- Double-clicking a name, or the pencil, renames it from "Position 1" to something you will recognise next month.
- The bin beside a name deletes that position and everything explored from it. To remove a single move instead, select it and press Delete.
Editing a starting position that has no variations yet changes that position. Editing anywhere else adds a new starting position, so a tree you have already built is never rewritten under you.
#A study from a match
An analysed match can become a study of its own mistakes. Press Create Study on the match's summary card, the book icon in the row of buttons above the move list, or Create a study from this match in the menu on a phone. They appear once the match has an analysis.
The dialog lists every mistake the analysis found, checker plays and cube decisions both, and you choose which of them go in:
- Which mistakes is a slider of how much a play must have lost, from 0 EMG, which keeps every mistake, upwards. The inaccuracy, error, blunder and whopper thresholds are marked on it, and clicking a mark's name sets the slider there, so a mark is that kind of mistake and worse. It starts at errors.
- The list starts with only your own decisions. You can switch it to both players, or to your opponent's alone.
- Each mistake has its own checkbox. One you untick stays unticked while you change the filters.
The study is named after the players, the match length and the date, and you can change that, add tags and write a description before you create it. Each mistake becomes a starting position named after where it happened, such as "Game 2, move 14: Blunder", with two moves below it: the play made in the match, marked played, and the play the analysis preferred, marked best. A line above each position's note says what the mistake cost. It is the app's text, not a note of yours: it carries no note mark and is not a stop for N. For a cube decision the two branches are the cube actions, take and pass, or the roll played and a double. When the mistake was a double that should not have been given, only the double can be drawn, so that line names the right action instead.
When the match has notes you can see, Include notes (on unless you untick it) carries them into the study: a note on a move or a cube decision goes on the position it was made from, a note on one play goes on the played or best branch when it is that play, and otherwise on the position, starting with the play it was about. A note by someone else starts with their name.
Every position keeps the score and Crawford state it had in the match, so the cube is priced as it was in that game. The study analyses each position with its own engine, like any other study, rather than copying the match's numbers.
The study links back to its match: Open the match this study was made from lands on that decision. The dialog also lists any studies already made from the same match.
#Notes and drawings
Every position in a study, a starting position or one reached by a move or a cube action, can carry a note. Select it and write in the note box under the board. A note saves with the study as you type, so it goes wherever the study goes: into its JSON export, its copy on the server and every copy made of it. Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Enter on a Mac) finishes the note, and Escape leaves the text box. Writing notes is open to every account, a study kept only in this browser included.
A note takes the same little formatting as a note on a match: **bold**,
*italic*, ~~struck~~, `code` , lines starting with - or 1. for a
list, > for a quote, and [text](https://...) for a link. A move written in
the usual notation, like 13/7 8/7, and a point named like your 5-point,
are underlined with dots; point at one, or tab to it, and the board shows the
move as arrows or the point highlighted. A move and a point are read from the
side the note is about: the side that played the move, the side that doubled,
took or passed, or on a starting position the side on roll.
Draw on the board saves the board's Shift strokes on the study, in the five colours of a match's drawings: Shift-drag for an arrow, Shift-click a point to highlight it, or on a phone tap a point and then where the arrow goes. Undo takes back a stroke and Clear removes the position's drawings. A drawing belongs to the position it is drawn on. On the after board that is the move's own position; on the before and arrows boards it is the position the move was played from, and the Draw row says so before you draw.
A position's note and drawings are deleted with it, and deleting a move says how many notes go with the moves below it. A note has a length limit, a position a limit on how many drawings it holds, and a whole study a limit on its notes, so that a study and its notes always fit in a match file. The note box and the Draw row say when you reach one.
#Reading notes in a study
In the tree, a position with a note, or with drawings, carries a blue speech bubble, in every tree style. The two game-score styles also print the first paragraph of each note under its move, cut to two lines: click it for the whole note. A starting position's note is printed under its name.
Above the tree, once the study has a note or a drawing:
- Notes keeps only the positions with a note and the moves leading to them, in every tree style. Click it again for the whole tree.
- Notes in tree turns the printed notes off and leaves the speech bubbles. It is remembered on this device, and is also in Settings.
- Show drawings takes the drawings off the board. Pointing at a note brings its drawings to the front and dims the others.
N and Shift+N go to the next and the previous position with a note, in the order the study reads: each starting position in turn, the main line of each before its variations. They do nothing while you are typing.
A study you share with its link shares its notes and drawings: everyone with the link sees them, so the Share dialog says so. Someone reading your study sees no note box and cannot draw on it. To add notes of their own they save a copy, which keeps your notes and is theirs to change. Their Shift sketches on the board still work and are never kept.
#Asking the engine
Enter analyses the position you are on. D rolls dice and analyses what follows. L and U play out the luckiest and unluckiest lines, three moves deep, which is the fastest way to see how much a position depends on the dice.
The full set of keys is in Keyboard and controls.
#Sharing a position
Share offers the position several ways. The share link opens it in the other person's own Study, with the score, the cube, the dice and the side to move. The page with the engine's analysis shows the board and works out the best plays, or the cube decision, on the reader's device, with no account. The forum post is a picture of the board that links to that page: paste it into a forum that takes BBCode, and anyone who clicks it gets the analysis. The OGID and XGID are for pasting into another program.
The analysis page itself has the same picture as HTML and Markdown, for a blog, a lesson or Reddit, a GNU Backgammon ID beside the OGID and XGID, and a box to open any other position there.
A position copied from another program opens in Study if you paste it anywhere in the app outside a text box: an XGID, an OGID, or a GNU Backgammon Position ID with its Match ID. The position ID converter turns any of the three into the other two and draws the board, so you can check a position came across the right way round.
#Where studies live
A study is saved once you give it a name, and from then on a few seconds after your last change, so there is nothing to remember to save. Until it has a name it is scratch work: this tab keeps it until you start or open another study, and the icon beside the name says which it is. Studies are saved in this browser. A study can carry a description, added from the study sidebar or the menu on a phone. You can export one as a JSON file to keep it elsewhere or hand it to someone, and Standard and Pro accounts can keep them on the server so they survive the browser. Standard
#Help while you are studying
The ? button at the top of the study sidebar, or "How to use Study" in the menu on a phone, opens a short walkthrough of positions, variations, naming and the keys.