To annotate or not to annotate?
It makes a lot of sense to study Master Games but what about studying your own games? I do think self-annotated games can be a great way for the ambitious player to improve. The fact that I am a rather crappy player is not an obstacle. My gut feel is that even the “so-soish” player can learn a lot from trying to identify errors and other short comings in your own games. First of all I try to identify blunders or strange moves and then I try to classify the errors as for example:
- Lack of attention
- Lack of theoretical knowledge
- Lack of positional judgement
- Miscalculations
- Lack of imagination
- Logical Blunders
The key thing is to have a humble approach to annotating your own games. You do not have to come up with a perfect analysis. You just have to make a better analysis than your previous analysis and hopefully learn something in the process.
note: The suggested categories for classifying mistakes are suggested in a presentation of the book: ”Chess: Knowledge, Training, Mastery” by IM Zlotnik
