Should I analyse my games?

I always analyse my games and I think it's a great way to improve. Even when you lose, you'll probably be surprised to see that you made some really good moves and it will cheer you up. You'll also see your mistakes and sometimes it's only small things that makes a difference. With the computer help, most of the times I only take few minutes to review my game.

Agreed and I'm actually going to do that here in a few minutes, review a game I just played a few hours ago, I won but I still want to see where I could improve.  

Also if you're a beginner, I'd say just focus on your blunders (the computer usually shows these in red), that's usually where you either dropped a piece, or will lose a piece tactically, or get checkmated.  The reason I say that is because the other things are usually too complex for beginners to follow and most don't have enough Chess knowledge to put long computer lines/variations to good use. 

Of course you should. Because u can see the cool moves, that you could have done but didn't. Also it's very important to focus on your blunders and trying to not repeat them in the future. I personally analyze about 80 percent of my games I think. 

First off the shorter the duration of a game the less the worth in analysing it. The OP can forget all those Bullet games they have played, and Blitz is a wee bit iffy as well.

For the Rapid games, run the analysis to find the first blunder you made then take a screenshot of position. Use an engine or whatever to work out why the move was a blunder - often this is just tactics but not always. Write a note on the blunder in a chess notebook and cross reference to the screenshot. Make a point of REGULARLY running thru the notebook and positions. One of the problems with chess.com platform is that although you can analysis a blunder there is no provision for remembering the blunder other than running thru the whole game again - which few would do! There is no point in analysing games without some sort of active effort at learning from your mistakes which involves some sort of repetition and recall of some sort.

Alternatively, an application like LucasChess will take your downloaded games, calculate the errors and convert them into a highly useful set of chess problem/blunder positions, all held in a single PGN file - as well as a lot else. You can then select a set number of random blunders to solve/review each day.

As for puzzles, I would recommend doing only mates, you can filter for these using the custom option.  Being very good at mates is the biggest bang for your time as far as puzzles go. The default method of doing puzzles on chess.com is pretty much waste of time - regards chess improvement - unless you really enjoy puzzles of course.  The reason for this is that you will never get time in on-line short duration games to display your superiority. Once you master mates you will see them instantly you might even set them up!

The only time I would analyse a game is if there's a situation where I did not know what to do. Most of the time, I play my moves knowing why I'm playing them, and knowing that there are more positive things about it than negative things. Probably why I hate chess so much when it tells me that a move I worked so hard on and found 3+ reasons to make it is still wrong.

Game analysis is very important, but maybe don't think of it as reasons why what you did was "wrong." 

Rather, think of it as a learning process and look for ways to make your chess position easier for yourself in the future

Even if you have good reasoning for your hard-thought-out move, there might be a better move available and you'll never find those for future games if you don't analyze and look for those teachable moments.

I completely disagree, but more power to ya if checkmate puzzles only gives you results. Chess is a vast game and you really never know what will come up in a real game, so this is why studying all types of puzzles/tactics is useful. By getting a mix of everything, you are more likely to find whatever comes up in your games. If you struggle with checkmate nets or a particular tactical theme, then by all means use the filter and practice just those, but there is a danger in ONLY doing one type of puzzle because then you condition yourself to only look for those. 

If you filter for a bunch of mate in 2 puzzles, then you are conditioning your mind to look for checkmates...but in a real game you don't know beforehand if a mate in 2 is present and worse is that there are also many tactical patterns you are not studying if you only focus on mate in 2 puzzles. This is just an example to illustrate my point, but I believe that one of the most powerful things in chess is pattern recognition.

Solving all kinds of chess puzzles helps grow this valuable ability of pattern recognition, but doing only a few types of puzzles (or none at all) limits your exposure to these patterns and therefore, puts a self-imposed stop to your potential learning. Just my opinion

Totally agree, Tactics are very important, especially at the lower levels but really all levels of Chess.  I've even said that if you don't want to do tactics you might as well not even play passed a certain level because you will be wiped off the board rather quickly, this can be frustrating.  You do tactics for 2 reasons, to catch your opponent with them while at the same time preventing him/her from catching you with them and believe it or not both are very important.  Thus, as KesetoKaiba is saying, while doing checkmates help and even some of those puzzles have tactics in them, like a double check into mate, this is always based off of a "discovered attack", which is a very common motif/theme and in case you don't know what I mean by "very common" I simply mean it happens quite frequently in practice. 

yes.

@ReefKayoss Nope! Unless you're studying a few specific lines of theory/openings, there are too many possibilities in any given position.

Chess is like learning 50 languages! Just try to have fun & find the style of chess you want to play. 

I don't agree with this but I understand your point, in short, it would depend on the player, I think most players on this site want to improve but I'm sure there are quite a few who just play Chess casually or for recreation purposes.  However, for the improving player, it is absolutely necessary for one to study his/her games, if overall improvement is the goal. 

Also, analyzing your games is more then just studying a few lines of openings, I'd say on the lower levels, it's all about finding out where you blundered and what mistakes you made, understanding them and thus hopefully not repeating them.  

#32 Absolute rubbish, he is absolutely right. The only thing that analysis does is tell you what is theoretically best in one specific position you may never experience again, according to an engine with god knows how many biases. I'm not interested in it anymore, given how fricking crushing it is to spend hours on a single move and be told it is wrong and you wasted all that time.

This simply is not true, you must not know how to analyze your games correctly, I think you should learn to analyze your games properly.  Oh and by the way, what you learn in one position may apply to another position, this is the essence of what is known as "pattern recognition" but to dismiss something as "absolute rubbish" without knowing the proper technique is...in a word, ludicrous and I can think of some other words but let's leave it at that. 

My advice was directed at the OP who described themselves as a beginner.

Although there might be a few dozen different puzzle themes, they are not of equal worth. The mate puzzles have all the big and most valuable themes and more importantly highlight how different pieces work together - examples being Q+N and B+R. Also, but more subtle, mates encourage beginners to think in terms of squares and provide an obvious endpoint. This may be a simpler approach, but I think the best for beginners. That said I am old school where you won all your games by delivering mate, rather than on-line flagging (the most popular tactic in low level games!).

The key problems with the default puzzle method for beginner's are time efficiency and game playing utility. I believe that concentrating on mates is sufficient tactics for beginners and the likely time they will set aside for 'improvement'.

Don't get me wrong, I love puzzles - possibly more than actually playing chess - but I can tell you having a puzzle rating of 2400+ is of little worth against a ~600 rated wood pushing flagger in short duration games. 

#34 Honestly I don't give a sh!t anymore. I am completely done with chess, and this community. Say whatever the hell you like.

I think you did a good job standing up for that person.

Friend I understand your frustration, I've been there many times, I don't think you should give up but you do whatever you feel is best for you, even if that's just taking a break and coming back to it with a new perspective.  I think it may go beyond analyzing your games, it may be a break down of understanding at some point or another, may I see one of your games, I'll see if we can find a few things together?