Nice Shortcuts to Practice Against Bots

 I like practicing openings against the computer but you never know what the computer is going to do. Chess.com has a solution for this: you can specify which opening you want to practice.

This feature is under the "Learn - Practice - Openings" menu on chess.com. Don't confuse it for the "Learn - Openings" area, which is a different thing.

I created menu of bookmarks that go straight to the openings I want to practice.

Those are bookmarks to Chess.com's openings practice page - you pick which side you want to play and which strength of bot you want to play against.  

The other great features are

• You can wind the game back as far as you like and play a different move
• You can wind the game back and make THE COMPUTER play a different move!
• You can turn on/off assistance feature at any time, such as engine lines so you can see what the best moves are: turn them off for a challenge or turn them on to help learn.
• You can change the bot strength at any time during the game.

Use the small buttons on the bottom row: the second one lets you change the bot and the third one, the reversing circle arrow, resets the game back to the starting position. Use the "gear" icon to change the settings of the assistance features.

The last two links in my practice menu, playing against 1 e4 and 1 d4, I had to custom-make as those aren't considered "openings" by chess.com, but I think it's valuable to play against them when you don't know what opening is coming.

Practice vs 1. e4

Practice vs 1.d4

The only drawback with the customizing is that the game defaults to the 3200 bot, so be sure to change it before you start playing, unless you are looking to be crushed!