How do you study games?

When looking through games i just usually scroll through the moves from start to finish really quickly (well maybe 10-15secs per move)

I just skim through the game and i know its wrong but how do i truly study master games and how do i really concentrate on them? How long per move/variation or game?

Yeah i know i am asking for really specific details

I hope i get advice from high level players who study games using a database and study various games from it with a certain theme in the games

Ex. Games by a certain chess player,Games by a certain opening,Games that are annotated by a certain chess player etc

Every person is different. Master players spend HOURS practising on board EACH day. By study I guess you need to copy...examine..think of where YOU would put a piece on board...In  any case even if you ROTE LEARN a master game and try it out on another player it may not work if your opponent makes different moves,  Study the end games and begging moves.GUESS you dont like studying .

I dont mind studying but i am asking about studying games and studying all games in a database with a certain filter

I do train tactics and sometimes endgames but i am asking how to study a full master game and a database of master games with the same opening to learn that opening better and apply them in my chess games

I prefer books written by GMs on their own games. I like to see more od what they were thinking, how they felt, what was on their mind rather than just drubbibg out variations. One Hundred Selected Games (Botvinnik) and My 60 Memorable Games (Fischer) come to mind. These books are older, but at least they don't just database dump to fill out the pages. 

Hi Dave,

Years ago, as a teenager, I used to look forward to the saturday newspaper to check the chess column, written by IM ligterink.

It would have annotated chess games or parts of chess games.

Following that column I learned about Gufeld's Mona Lisa :

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1023029

and about Fischer - Reshevsky :

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1008376

and the earlier Bastrikov - Shamkovich :

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1520448

Going through that chess column would take me 20 till 30 minutes.

Now with the internet available it is much easier to go through annotated chess games.

I prefer to look at daily chess news with annotated chess games.

I also "track" players with interesting articles with annotated chess games, for example :

http://www.chess.com/blog/aspired/the-highly-creative-jobava---part-2

http://www.chess.com/article/view/the-art-of-doing-nothing-part-four

and I also like to look at articles with annotated games with background info and anecdotes :

http://www.chess.com/blog/Spektrowski/aron-nimzowitsch-quothow-i-became-a-grandmasterquot-part-4

That takes me perhaps 20 till 30 minutes per day.

I'd like to suggest to find a good balance between studying and playing.

Too much playing and too little studying can produce, superficial, "dogmatic", "auto pilot" chess.

Too much studying and too little playing can create a gap between those two. It is good to test new ideas in lots of blitz games against different opponents, and when you are happy with it, then you can apply it in the more serious chess games.

yes it's difficult to get the balance right