What Lies Below the Surface?!
I was impressed by how instructive one of my student's recent games was. Here it is with no annotations:
As always, please feel free to comment your (respectful) opinions, suggestions, disagreements, etc. Let's go over how to annotate a game and what the main point/benefit of annotating a chess game is
-NM Craig C. the "BeerdedNM"
- Start with playing out all of the moves. Spend a few seconds on each move just to get a feel of the position. If you'd like, you can make small notes, on the moves, that you think are important. The main point is to see how the game went and to get a general feel of the game. By the way, if it was your game, you can skip this step because you already know how the game went!
- Now that you've got a general feel of the game, it's time to start critiquing the moves. A good annotator is like a detective. You've got all of these clues (moves) to help you solve the case (figure out how the game should've gone). Your tools are the marks* (see below)
- Follow through on your marks. Once you've given a move a ??, ?, or ?! it is your job, as an annotator, to give a move, or better yet, a variation where the offender could've played a better move. For the moves that you've marked !?, !, !! you can add variations where the player could've played other moves that are either worse or would've somehow taken the game in another direction.
- Evaluate your variations. At the end of each of your lines you let the reader know what you think the evaluation of the position is. (See evaluations below)
Marks
- ??=Blunder. This move changes the course of the game. If the rest of the game is played correctly, this move will have cost the offender at least 1/2 a point, possibly even a full point.
- ?=Bad move. This move may not lose the win or the game but it's definitely going down the wrong path and makes the game much more difficult for the offender.
- ?!=Dubious move. May not affect the evaluation much, but it is leading the offender down a faulty path.
- !?=Interesting move. This can be one of a few good moves, it usually is an aggressive move when there were other simpler moves available.
- !=Great Move. Almost always the best move in the position, one that increases the offender's advantage or gets them closer to a draw (if they had a tough position)
- !!=Brilliant Move. The best move in the position and maybe even an incredibly tough one to see; maybe it sacrifices material or is not thematic but it works in this case.
Evaluations*
| CP437 | Unicode | In brief | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| = | Equal | Even position: White and Black have more or less equal chances. | |
| +/= | ⩲ | Slight plus for White | Slight advantage: White has slightly better chances. |
| =/+ | ⩱ | Slight plus for Black | Slight advantage: Black has slightly better chances. |
| +/− | ± | Clear plus for White | Clear advantage: White has the upper hand. |
| −/+ | ∓ | Clear plus for Black | Clear advantage: Black has the upper hand. |
| + − | Decisive advantage for White | White has a winning advantage. | |
| − + | Decisive advantage for Black | Black has a winning advantage. | |
| ∞ | Unclear | Unclear position: It is unclear who (if anyone) has an advantage. Often used when a position is highly asymmetrical, e.g. Black has a ruined pawn structure but dangerous active piece-play. |
|
| =/∞ | ⯹ | Compensation |
With compensation: Whoever is down in material has compensation for it. |
*from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_annotation_symbols
The Main Point of Annotating A Game
Like I said before, I've noticed that a lot of chess players don't know the point of annotating a chess game. In my opinion the main point, and main benefit, to annotating a game is to spot the Critical Points in the chess game that you are annotating. A critical point, is where the evaluation of the game changed dramatically. A lot of times this means that a player blundered and now the opponent gets a chance to take advantage of the blunder. Identifying critical points in games is an incredibly valuable skill to obtain. If you know where the critical points are in each game then you know when to use more time to figure out the correct move. Let's say that you're playing a 10 minute game on chess.com, normally using 2 minutes on one move would be suicidal, as that's 1/5th of your time! But let's say that someone told you that if you find the right move, then you'll be able to easily win the game afterwards, then that 2-minute investment doesn't seem so bad anymore.
Annotating games is practicing the skill of Identifying Critical Points in games. Once you get better and better at this, you can use this skill in your own games by using your time at the appropriate times and start taking advantage of your opponent's mishaps.
Let's see how you did by comparing your annotations to mine (below)
My Annotated Game
