How do I analyze games to become better at chess

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Malik243

Hey y'all I have been doing the following to try and analyze my own games I got a notebook and went in and go first to the analysis page I then write down moves all the way up to the first inaccuracy or good move or excellent move to look for the best move I would then write down multiple moves before hand that I think would qualify or guess they are good moves or otherwise then I would continue until its done is this an actual good way to improve my games. (I am analyzing my own games so is this a good method here a photo of how its done)

PopcornSC
Malik243 wrote:

Hey y'all I have been doing the following to try and analyze my own games I got a notebook and went in and go first to the analysis page I then write down moves all the way up to the first inaccuracy or good move or excellent move to look for the best move I would then write down multiple moves before hand that I think would qualify or guess they are good moves or otherwise then I would continue until its done is this an actual good way to improve my games. (I am analyzing my own games so is this a good method here a photo of how its done)

it's good. You want to become better and more efficient at analyzing so it's good to do at all levels. However, the purpose of analyzing your games is to become better at chess by figuring out where you need to devote your study time and to do that you probably need some understanding already.

So what you really need to focus on when analyzing is the moves where you realize you immediately are losing something, could have won something or where the engine evaluation changes by more than two pawns worth (do this part last, always use your own noggin first if you have time). If you can, create a database to store these positions. After that, you need to start thinking about why you are making each move and write that down, that way you can bring the game either here or to a strong player at your local club if you have one and they are willing. They will be able to tell you what is wrong with your thinking and that is the biggest thing in chess, you aren't trying to find the winning move every move, you are trying to fix the way you think about your moves and the positions you get because most moves in a well-played chess game aren't actually tactical, the tactics lie underneath in the variations that could have happened (not always true, sometimes games are actually just a tactical slug fest).

 

A lot of the work to get to the correct ideas is pattern recognition; solving tactics, learning endgames, etc. 

 

PS: You should start playing real people instead of the engine.

krikorian12

I think what is more useful is determining patterns that happen across many of your games. For each game you lose determine what the key moment that caused you to lose was (At your rating its going to be a tactical reason). If you then go and improve that area you have an issue with you will notice improvements. If you're having trouble finding the 'key moment' even after analyzing yourself, use an engine and see where the evaluation shifts a large amount (there may be many, but all that means is that whatever mistake you are making that causes the eval shift is an even more common problem for you.)