Learning to Play Chess: Weekly Analysis #1
One of the big concepts I have been encountering is the topic of match analysis and how it helps to improve your game. I thought it would be a good idea to post once a week 1-2 games I have analyzed, and then talk about what I learned from the games, etc. I will try to avoid using engines for awhile, as I want to spend a week or two just getting used to the process of analyzing my games, but after some time I will also incorporate a computer analysis of some games and see how it compares to my own.
Please comment if you have any feedback on my games, tactics, or this post in general.
I learned a couple of interesting things from this game.
- 1.Analyzing games is rather difficult.
- 2.Despite not really having experience vs. a particular opening, solid play and tactics can help make up for that (as ''Solid'' as my play can be anyways.)
- 3.Space is important. What seemed to be some of the most important moves and area of the board fought over most was my queen side between the 7th and 3rd rank (ish). This makes the move and timing of pushing my D file pawn more interesting to consider. Since it freed up a lot of that space.
- 4.It is still very easy to overlook basic tactics like a fork. Had I seen the 21...Nd7 fork, that would have been a different game.
- 5.Make sure a sequence of moves actually works before saccing your bishop....=/
- 6.Getting in time trouble is a much bigger deal than I initially realized.
- 7.Calculation is hard, made even harder with time pressures.
How I feel analyzing my games. =|
What I learned from this game
- 1.It is hard to maintain your game plan. I wanted to protect the queen side pawn structure this game, and by move 5 that was already threatened.
- 2. Developing my queen was a mistake. I can make mistakes that aren't game ending, but still have long term implications. I am still not sure on where the line between those two different types of mistakes is.
- 3. Tactics really are as important as people say.
- 4. It still is really, really easy to miss basic tactics like a pin.