How to identify the flaws in my play from analysis

I'm looking for advice more along the lines of how to annotate to allow me to find the holes in my chess game. If this level of analysis is ok, should I repeat for several games then reassess them all to find common themes?

Thanks!

I think it's a very good start but you were correct when you said that you need to look more than one move for your opponent.

You need to further examine the middlegame, where you were slightly worse.

The annotation was good but you confused square names in several places:

I prefer b7 as black freeing his bishop and helping prepare a b7 push. 

Since he moved his knight, I have ideas on taking on f3 and controlling the e4 square.

I think you need to look over the book moves in the QGD. I doubt anyone will recommend 8 a3 as a hiding hole for your bishop.

 

I really like your ideas here. This will definitely give me pointed items to pick out during my play. I think you've actually hit my weakness pretty well with the first/fourth bullet points. I usually can have a decent plan, but I come by it often by just letting myself think for a bit then combining or assessing all the individual positional concepts I see. I will try to define a more rigid approach as a metric I can consciously apply for analysis, and hopefully some of this will carry over to my play.

 

Aside from what @PawnstormPossie has already pointed out, it’s advisable to focus your analysis on where your plan or idea failed to work. There are two such cases in the game above:

8. a3 was played so you could respond to ...b5 with Ba2. However, on the next move you decided to retreat to d3 instead. In retrospect, 8. a3 basically did nothing. Is the bishop really better on d3 than a2? You didn’t have a chance attacking h7, as the game has shown. Or should you ignore black’s plan of ...b5 and play 8. O-O instead?

You played 12. Qc2 to pressurize h7, however you abandoned the idea 3 moves later and followed up with 15. Qe2, wasting a tempo as you could have played Qd1-e2 in one go. There are other things to consider, but a useful question is: Is the attack against h7 legitimate? Why or why not?

We make less-than-idea decisions constantly. It helps to analyze “why this didn’t work” so that we can make better decisions next time. This is where Stockfish helps us the most, rather than checking for blunders and mistakes.

I don't want to go too deep specifically into this game. I think my analysis can improve when I post my games as well because I dont believe I captured many of my thoughts correctly. For example that a3 move was 98% made to prevent Bb4 which seems to not really be a threat. But either way I agree that it still was not an optimal move and could have been spent other ways. Qe2 directly is a good point as well. I think qc2 idea could have worked if i didnt waste that a3 move. Potentially also rc1 ruins my ability for qc2 as well making qe2 the better choice. Seems like I was stuck on the idea though. 

Thanks for your help. These observations help me criticize and try to explain myself and then realize where I was wrong.

After your own analysis , never forget suggested moves from 3500 rated mentor Stockfish. You said, you think 15. Qe2 is good.

Really? 

But there is a free pawn on 15. Bxh7+!

Without Stockfish, it may takes you hours to see those mistakes or never, but a few seconds of Stockfish power can improve you a lot.

You are not quite strong enough to recognize your mistakes. Need a strong player to help you with this.

I'm trying to expand my self-analysis. I have an engine but chose not to use it to assess this game. I'm interested in how I should be writing notes on my game, maybe there are certain topics that I omit from mentioning that are crucial, or maybe its a waste of time to try to recall every thought, or maybe I should be writing out all opponent lines and checking off which ones I noticed....things along these lines. 

In the past I run my games through an engine and I notice what I did wrong...but it does little to actually improve my play. This is why I wrote some of my thoughts out for this game. Keep in mind this was not a post-game analysis I posted, but some thoughts during a game. Maybe there is a different more important first step than writing out your own thoughts. Or maybe it all comes down to personal preference.

 

I will disagree with the comment that I'm not strong enough to analyze on my own. Self analysis can happen at any level.