Chess Analysis

I have know how to play Chess for a number of years now, but I am looking to improve my game.  As far as game analysis goes, can anyone show/ tell me a general format to follow and in order to be efficient as possible, how I long I should spend on one particular game played?

http://www.chess.com/blog/CHESSUSA39/pre-move-checklist

For improving your game more generally see:

http://www.chess.com/article/view/study-plan-directory

You are asking about analyzing games for study and improvement, correct? Not analyzing while you are playing, correct?

Yes, analysis after the game is over.

Are you talking about your own games, or games from a book?

My own games.

Tricky to see how to improve on your own play (unless it was a game with short time controls).

I would recommend you post a game on the game Analysis forum and see what other people say about it - that should give you some ideas to look into on your own. Ideally post a game you lost against a stronger player.

I'm not sure how to annotate though. Thats why I came here, to get pointers on how to annotate.

You could post your game and just ask other people to suggest improvements, although it's best to have a go yourself first.

But to annotate you usually just say which moves you thought you went wrong on, or why you played a move you thought was a mistake (in hindsight). Or maybe why you didn't play a move that you were thinking about. For example - "I didn't play e5 here because I was worried about ...Ng4". It really doesn't matter if it's wrong - it will be - the point is to get in the habit of trying it, and so you can get better at it. At the very least, look at the opening and see where you or your opponent left the "book" moves.

Have a look in the "Game Analysis" forum and see what other people do. 

You could post a game here, I'll give it a go, and I expect others will too. I expect it will become easier with an example game, without that it's all a bit abstract.

Thanks, how do I post a game?

Do you see the row of icons above the box where you post comments? Click on the left-hand one, which is an image of a chess-board, and follow the instructions. You will be able to enter moves, comments and variations.

Without going through the whole thing, right off the bat you moved your bishop into a spot it was easily going to be chased off of, then you brought it down to a spot you could have moved it to first. You allowed him a free constructive pawn move.

Once you put your bishop back to d3, it then trapped in your center pawn keeping your center relatively weak.

The main things in an opening are develop your knights and bishops and only move them once if at all possible to do so, and also build a strong center.

So in most cases try not to block that center pawn in, and down allow him to chase the first piece you develop around the board. Unless it gets your piece to a better position.

This is assuming you were white, which based on the names i suppose you are.

Michael, I've just had a very quick look (I'm at work right now)

With regards to annotating this, I'd be looking at things like:

What is a better line than 2 Bb5 ? You can see why this is bad, as the poster before me pointed out, since your Bishop gets kicked about. And 3 Be2 would have been better then your move 3 Bd3 - but both these moves are much better than 3 Ba4?? - can you see why this would have been a big mistake?

Your first big mistake was 10 Na4. You're moving a piece for the 2nd time before all of your pieces are out, and moving the piece to a worse square. You need a really good tactical reason for doing so - do you recall what your reasons were for this move? This move actually loses a piece, although your opponent failed to capitalise. See if you can see what he should have played here, rather than 10 ... Be7 (Hint: there's actually 2 moves that win a piece for Black here!)

You actually lost this game with 33 Bb3 ??. How could you have avoided losing material here ?

Answering questions like the above will form the basis of your annotations. Unfortunately, you probably need stronger players (or an engine) to point you at the places where you could improve. Fortunately you can always post on the forums, but you'll get a better response if you've had a go at adding some of your own comments first.

Immediately after the game is over do a post-mortem analysis together with your opponent.  This is when your opponent's and your thoughts are the freshest.  After that analyze the game with a strong player.   Finally analyze the game with a chess engine.   Input the game into your games database. 

I don't have a chess engine, Yaroslavl.

Go to RSS Torrent and download almost any chess engine you want for free.

michaelcmelton wrote:

I don't have a chess engine, Yaroslavl.

Download Arena and Stockfish. Both are free. Then you will have an engine that is within 25 Elo of the best in the world.

http://kickass.to/chess-chessbase-chessbase-12-premium-package-version-english-t7748754.html Here is torrent of  probably the best software, chessbase. If you know to use torrent, I truelly recommend you this chess application. There is fritz 11 in it to analyse your chess games.

Are you sure this is legal ? My browser says this is illegal, but maybe that isn't so outside the UK?