How to Analyze Your Own Chess Games

So I've been seeing this question a lot on the forums lately, or at least some variation of it.

"Can someone help me analyze this game? I don't seem to understand what went wrong?"

or

"How do I analyze my own chess games?"

Thus, I decided to make this blog post for those who want to know how I personally analyze my own chess games for free, with the use of an easy and free to use tool to improve your chess rating to its maximum potential.

We all know that improving in chess can be hard. Especially when you are first starting out and have no clue what you are doing and without guidance to help you out. Luckily for all of you, I, Sean Lei, am eager to help everyone reading this to achieve the rating they want.

Before I begin explaining how to analyze your own chess games, it is important to understand why it's so important in the first place. In my own personal opinion, if you could only do one thing to increase your rating, analyzing your own chess games after you played them would be the most important thing to do, more important than watching chess videos, getting lessons, or doing tactics trainer. In fact, it can be even more important than playing more games!

Too many beginner/intermediate players I know fall into the trap of playing a ton of chess games without ever taking a look back and wondering why they never improve. The reason is simple, you don't learn by playing, you learn by analyzing and learning from your mistakes. If there's one thing you get from this post, it's this...

"Playing will get you nowhere if all you do is reinforce your bad ideas. By analyzing and finding your strengths and weaknesses, that is the only sure way to gradually increase your rating over time."

With every analysis you are learning what to do, or what not to do in any given position. With every piece of knowledge you can see yourself getting better and with every pieces of knowledge your rating will definitely increase.

Now, onto the core part of this blog post, how to analyze your own games. Watch the following quick but informative video by skipping to the 2:03 mark for the full explanation with my own personal example of how I analyze my own chess games, and how you should too.

Also, if you enjoy these blog posts and chess videos, make sure to subscribe HERE, so I can continue to bring you all enjoyable and educational chess content!