#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.
#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
Studies are saved in this browser. 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.