1. Review your games with Fritz or similar chess programs.I like to use the “Full analysis” feature which will annotate the games with marks such as “?” and “!!”. You want to first figure out how many mistakes that you are making in a game. If your typical game contains two or more “??” moves, try to get to the point where you are only averaging one “??” per game. Once there try to get down to only having “?” moves in your game, etc, until you are at the point that you are not making blunders.
2. The “Blunder Check” feature is also useful.This will print the material evaluation after each move. A plus score means that white is ahead, a negative score means that black is ahead. For example +2.01 means that white is ahead about 2 pawns. -0.5 means that black is winning by about half a pawn. You can run both types of analysis on a game, but not at the same time. If you want to run both, make sure that you do not check “Erase old annotations”.
3. You can run analysis of more than one game by first selecting them in a database list, and then hitting the analysis button.Once Fritz is done with analysis of the first game, it will move to the second game, and so on. This can be great for doing analysis of a large number of games, such as a collection of blitz games.
4. When solving chess problems make sure you turn off anything that will help suggest moves.Some programs such as Fritz or Chessbase will show an arrow to indicate which move it thinks is best. In my version of Fritz these are called “Dynamic Hints” and “Spy” features.
5. If you do plan on entering your game into a computer program manually, do it as soon as you can after the game is over.Being a former editor of a chess magazine, I know that most score sheets (even from high rated players) are often riddled with errors. If you enter the game soon after it is completed, you will have a much better chance of filling in the missing pieces.
Computers and Tactics
1. Review your games with Fritz or similar chess programs. I like to use the “Full analysis” feature which will annotate the games with marks such as “?” and “!!”. You want to first figure out how many mistakes that you are making in a game. If your typical game contains two or more “??” moves, try to get to the point where you are only averaging one “??” per game. Once there try to get down to only having “?” moves in your game, etc, until you are at the point that you are not making blunders.
2. The “Blunder Check” feature is also useful. This will print the material evaluation after each move. A plus score means that white is ahead, a negative score means that black is ahead. For example +2.01 means that white is ahead about 2 pawns. -0.5 means that black is winning by about half a pawn. You can run both types of analysis on a game, but not at the same time. If you want to run both, make sure that you do not check “Erase old annotations”.
3. You can run analysis of more than one game by first selecting them in a database list, and then hitting the analysis button. Once Fritz is done with analysis of the first game, it will move to the second game, and so on. This can be great for doing analysis of a large number of games, such as a collection of blitz games.
4. When solving chess problems make sure you turn off anything that will help suggest moves. Some programs such as Fritz or Chessbase will show an arrow to indicate which move it thinks is best. In my version of Fritz these are called “Dynamic Hints” and “Spy” features.
5. If you do plan on entering your game into a computer program manually, do it as soon as you can after the game is over. Being a former editor of a chess magazine, I know that most score sheets (even from high rated players) are often riddled with errors. If you enter the game soon after it is completed, you will have a much better chance of filling in the missing pieces.