Identify and correct your weaknesses in chess
Sometimes we win a tournament, sometimes we lose and we discuss what happened with other participants. Sometimes this helps alleviate the bitterness of losing, but we need to strive for more, not just improve the mood after the tournament. We always have to learn whether we are going to win, lose or draw.
Many chess players think that they can only learn something from their defeats, others only see and demonstrate their won games. The truth is that all parties are equally important. They don't have a perfect game and almost always could be improved upon at some point. The best way to learn is to learn from your mistakes, which is why analyzing your own games is so important. For this step to be really helpful, follow the guidelines below.
1. Be objective
Put your pride aside - even the strongest chess players make mistakes. Only those who are aware of their shortcomings and constantly work on themselves can successfully increase their level. In most cases, the feelings we experienced during the game prevent us from being objective in choosing moves.
For example, I thought my opponent was going to attack and I felt pressured / panicked, so that's how I played.
• You need to learn to keep your emotions off the board and think objectively - was the attack really that inevitable?
• Was the enemy attack justified?
• Couldn't you stop him or capitalize on the weaknesses after the attack?
These are the moments when a fresh look, for example from a trainer, can help a lot - you get an objective opinion.
Always try to judge the position based on what is happening on the board. Whenever your mind whispers, "My opponent is playing like this, I'll get worse, I'll attack, etc." Stop without further calculation and ask yourself if this is the case. Do math without unnecessary emotions, maybe you dream of ghosts.
2. Recall the train of your thoughts during the game
Nobody knows better than you how you felt and what you thought while playing. The trainer can guess based on your style of play, but it is important that you identify the times during the game when you had the most trouble finding a move.
Extended game zones such as chess.com record the time spent on each move in a PGN file. This makes it easy to find a location that was causing the most problems. The screenshot shows that Naroditsky spent a lot of time against Nakamura on move 17.
Most mistakes are related to not being able to find the right plan and not knowing what to do in an unknown position.
Look for similar positions with similar structures and find out how grandmasters work in them. This will help you learn some type of position, but to get rid of this mistake completely, solve random position exercises. You learn to think and to find plans in critical moments.
3. First watch the game without an engine
Comment on the lines you have calculated, mark the critical moments of the game and the ideas that you have been thinking about during the game, and only then start the chess engine. This step is important as it will help you understand whether your calculation is good or needs to be worked out, and most importantly, it will help you understand what exactly is wrong with your calculation.
The direction of work depends on where the problem is. If you find that you are missing a simple tactic, you probably need to focus on it for a while, and it is easy to do so when solving tactical problems. If you missed possible moves for yourself or your opponent while calculating the variations, you should probably improve your technique for selecting candidate moves.
If you are taking a detection on the machine instead of a strong intermediate motion, you need to work on eliminating impulsive motion.
The list of work areas can be continued - these are just a few suggestions. Analyzing your own games is the best way to understand what mistakes you are making and, most importantly, why you are making them. You should look at your games from both a chess and psychological point of view and try to improve them.