It is well known that the Botvinnik school of chess emphasized, above all else, the analysis of one’s own games. Kasparov has hailed this as an important principle in his own improvement, and world renowned trainer Dvoretsky devoted over two chapters to it in his book Training for the Tournament Player. Clearly, analysis of your own games is an important improvement tool.

But how to go about it?

There are various ways to go about it. The most important thing is to try to reestablish the course of your thoughts during the game and then to test critical positions where you had problems. I begin analyzing my games by writing down (or typing out) as many of my strategic thoughts and calculations as I can recall. Then I seek out one or two positions were I struggled during the game.

This is where you have a choice. You can either use the computer or a coach to help you re-establish where you might have done better, or you can try to work out for yourself the correct response in those situations. In the latter case, any findings you make will seal themselves on your mind much more clearly. In the former case, the work is bound to go more quickly but also somewhat more superficially.

The key here is to focus on just one or two key positions and no more. This is in stark contrast to running a game through the computer and identifying every single moment where you could have done better – there are bound to be many even for a seasoned grandmaster. If you choose the effort-based method of looking for your mistakes on your own you can still run them by a coach or computer afterwards.

There are other more rigorous methods of analyzing your games which I will cover in the near future, but this should be enough to get you started.

Happy King Hunting!