Analysis 101: For All Players

Hi guys,

This is a simple three step guide to help you analyse any position, no matter what your strength might be. Hope you find it useful!

Step One: Assess the position.

This can be considered by a series of questions.

#1: Do me or my opponent have hanging or undefended pieces? Can they be taken advantage of? 

#2: Are there any positional weaknesses? (To the best of your understanding; these can be tricky to assess for any player.)

#3: What is my plan? Assuming neither you or your opponent has blundered some kind of tactic, you can now turn to developing a plan. In the opening, most of these plans follow the guidelines of development, central control, et cetera. In the middlegame, they can be very diverse, and this is why it helps to know some of the patterns that can result from various openings. (I suggest studying entire master games from start to finish to help in this regard. Choosing a plan could be a separate post, and might not be best written by me.)

#4: What is my opponent's plan? You don't need to obsess over preventing every little thing he does, but it is important to keep an eye on his ideas and understand what he's doing. (Or try to at least; some players make odd looking moves, and all you can do is try your best to understand the rationale, see if you can punish it, and make your best move.)

Step Two: Establish candidate moves

Based on your assessment of the position, you can now start to consider candidate moves. (Targeting weaknesses, or progressing with your plan.)

My recommendation is that you pick at least 2 candidate moves, even in the most obvious looking circumstances, as long as the move isn't the only one you can make. The idea is to help you look at the whole board, and not tunnel-vision by only focusing on one thing. (Tunnel-visioning is one of my pitfalls as a chess player; I want to spare you the pain and suffering!)

Step Three: Calculate your lines!

This is the last and arguably most neglected part of the analysis process. I neglect it sometimes, and unless you've made a momentous effort to discipline yourself, I bet you do too. 

It's quite a simple process, but it takes consistency to do properly.

Start with your candidate move, and look for your opponent's best response.

#1: If there's a response that worries you, you MUST come to a resolution that this response either does or does not refute your move by calculating until there are no more forcing moves.

If it does refute your move, tick it in your head as refuted, turn to another candidate, and repeat the process. 

If the considered response does not refute your move, you should still examine your other candidates, and make sure they won't yield better results.

Example from one of my own OTB (Over the Board) games, where I failed to calculate properly:

I had to calculate 4 moves, albeit not the hardest ones to see, in order to see that 6... e6 didn't work. This usually takes a lot of practice to be able to do thoroughly, and may not be easy for you if you're just starting. I might suggest counting, out-loud or in your head, to help you get the moves in the right order. Or "if bang, bang, bang... Bang... then bang?" often helps me when I'm trying to calculate. (Only online of course. Verbalising in such a way otb would be incredibly distracting to your opponent.  )

[For the record, the move was evidently 6... a6. Perhaps meant to prevent 10. Bb5+ in the line with 7... Bg6? I have honestly no clue.]

The most important thing to do is: trust yourself! After you have come to a conclusion, double check it, then trust that it is true and move on. Mistakes happen. (As you can see from the above.) But learning from them is where improvement comes in. 

That wraps it up, if you found something less than useful, or at least improvable upon, please let me know. (I wouldn't object if you told me it was wonderful and couldn't be improved on in any way. But that would probably not be truthful  )

Cheers,

~ William

This is amazing, thanks William! I need to look at this before every move I make! I should bookmark it on my computer or something, haha! I have studied tactics, openings, and a little bit of endgames but haven't studied any master games yet. I very frequently find myself "stuck" in a middlegame position thinking "what now" when I am done developing. I end up aimlessly pushing pawns and shuffling pieces around, unable to make a good plan. Do you have any tips for this, or ideas for which master games to study?

Thank you for making this guide, this is great and will definitely help me (and many other players) a lot!

Thanks for your enthusiastic feedback, I appreciate it! Glad it helped. And yes, bookmark it if you like.  

Ah yes, the eternal "what now" disease. I suffer from it periodically as well. 

I consider the study of master games in the openings you play to be an important part of opening study, perhaps because it has worked so well for me! 

In most openings there are quite a few standard "plans" you can pursue after finishing the development process. I'm currently working on my understanding of the patterns in the Giuoco Pianissimo by studying master games in that opening.

First I go through the game in about 3-5 mins, skimming over the game and getting a general feel for it.

Then I go back to the last opening move that I know and understand, and look for the plan behind the next move. Sometimes it takes 2-3-4 moves to understand why the GM made that move, but you figure out that they eventually did have a good reason. (If you're having trouble figuring out what the point is, another way to think of it is to think: what is it preventing?)

I would suggest making things easy on yourself, and just picking one or two lines for this kind of in depth study, as diving into a deep pool of knowledge all at once puts you at risk of drowning. I know it overwhelms me if I try to take it all at once. You'll be surprised how well your understanding of other positions will translate to some lines you haven't seen before.

Anyway, that's what works for me. Also, I would suggest the study of Capablanca, Smyslov, and maybe Botvinnik, as they always seem to have an intuitive and crystal clear logic behind their play. 

Hopefully this helps you.

Wow, thanks a lot William! Written like a true Grandmaster!

This all sounds great, thanks! I will definitely study that, I can see how that would help. This is so helpful, and I can't wait to dive in to some master games! Thank you so much for this information, I think that is a great way to go through studying master games-taking it one move at a time and figuring out the reasons behind each move. Thanks so much!

 Thanks. Glad you enjoyed it. Now it only I could consistently implement it...!

It can be heavy going, and sometimes you won't be able to figure some moves out. You can either move on, or post the game here and ask for feedback.  

Sounds good! I know that I'm not that strong yet, but I will try my best. If I get stuck, you'll be the first one I ask; I really love to read your tips/guides/blogs on improvement, you have already taught me so much! I'll let you know if I ever get stuck in my studies of master games.

That's great to hear!  We're all here to help. 

It all sounds so logical written out, if only it were that simple.

True that, the implementation of the principles can be difficult. Anything you're specifically having trouble with? 

You mean besides playing well? 😂

Well, yeah, that comes with time.

Patience with yourself is one of the most important parts; playing in fear of screwing up most often leads to big screwups. So, who cares if you make mistakes, there's always next game. Just play chess as best as you can and accept the results! 

Of course, easier said than done, but this is the mindset we should aim for.  

😊. See, being a chess player is hard!

Thanks Will

 No worries, hope it helps.

In all seriousness I'm not sure what the main thing I struggle with is. I think part of it is just trying to remember things as well as thinking correctly and actually understanding the position. I don't know if you've been following my game with Vofdy but I'm realising just how much thought and preparation is required. Hopefully Deirdre agrees. The game is pretty equal but the position is complex for me.

Still though, your thoughts are invaluable. Even simple things like weak squares or trapped pieces, or dynamic plans have helped.