Computer Aided Analysis - What is your process?

A lot of people think computer analysis is useless. I just finished a blog post where I go through the process I use. See what you think. Click Here

I'd like to hear how you analyse. Do you use a computer? How? What is your process?

Anyone?

I'll generally look through my game on my own, trying to figure out where I went wrong; if necessary I'll look at the engine recommendation and then try to figure out why it's the best move, but I always look at it without the engine first.

I agree it is best to look at it on your own first. I sometime run the engine to look for tactical mistakes, and as I wrote in my blog to tell where the shift in power occured. Thanks for responding.

1. My opponent though rated in the 1500's violated multiple opening axioms. Like don't bring out your Queen early, and Knight's on the rim are dim. Yet I lost this game.
2. My opponent developed like a new player. Looking for a "cheapo" Qf7#.
3. I must have blundered in the middle game.
4. I remember only playing on so long on the chance of a stalemate. 

You lose because you played worse that those facts from your opponent  and even after powerful computer analysis, you dont see your mistakes? How? Your computer setting must be incredibly weak ( scid is 3 times slower than Arena in my setting, 1.5 Mnps vs 5.0 Mnps for my Stockfish), or you cant follow computer suggestion.

Some facts,

7. ......Ne5? is strategic blunder ( inaccuracy ) cos you waste your tempo and exchanging his bad bishop vs your kt , corrected his misplaced Queen on f3, and make semi open "d" file with backward pawn d pawn. If your pawn is on "e5" , that can be a strong bishop instead, e6 on pawn make his bishop a bad one.

16......f6?? I cant see any logic behind blocking own bishop and weakening king safety.

There could be more, but I did not follow all game. For those strategic blunders, Stockfish would show more than 0.5  pawn evaluation loss . 

After that you mentioned about blundering piece, so I wont mention it again. But before blundering piece, your position is cramped and aimless. People blame, I am bad I blunder pieces. But they never realize that people in bad position blunder more. The solution to prevent blundering is " improve position".

What a lot of strong players, Kasparov, Gelfand, and others, have stated is the first thing an inexperienced player should learn about software is when to switch it off. The main points are looking at numbers from software become blind to analysing positions yourself, and humans can't operate by calculating millions of lines, so need to learn to make good decisions by other means.

From quick look your use of software seems reasonable.

Process

1.  Look at the graph showing the overall evaluation.  See how my performance is overall and how many ups and downs there were.  It is not always the same as I felt it went!  CLick on those parts of the graph where big changes occured and look at the positions for those moments. 

2.  Look at details - Accuracy, percent best move, time per move, avg diff.  

3.  Do the retry exercises.  If there are a lot focus on the red (blunders). 

4.  Step through the game and watch the arrows that show best moves.  Try to understand the key moments and mistakes.  

5.  Sometimes finish against computer.  

Thanks. That seems like a very good process to me.