Going over your games: Error flagging approaches?

Would anyone mind sharing their hopefully effective system of going over games and flagging errors (both tactical and strategic, as well time-trouble + thought process)? When I say flagging, I mean marking them in a meaningful manner (beyond just a ? or ?? after the move) to serve a statistical purpose or merely be part of a future review.

Of course, I'm talking real notes and not variations churning out of your favorite engine.

For instance : Would you annotate things like  "Should have played this instead" in your chess database app.?  If so => How often would you review these notes?

Curious to know if anyone's done a statistical breakdown of their problem spots (for example => I miss trapped piece tactical motifs more than any others etc.) and how/if this has helped them get better?

Thanks in advance!

At the start of a game when I'm not playing OBT rules,  I use the analyze board feature under "moves" and, the note section provided and make many notes to myself during each move.  If I want to come back to them at the end of a game and check them  against  a computer analysis, I can see what it says vs. what I said.  I found it useful.  You might also.  

I keep track of my problem areas that way and can also annotate it as well.  I look at the notes as often as I can in my games.  

I haven't done any breakdowns as of yet as I like others am still learning new things everyday.  But maybe I should take the time to do that as well, but there are only so many hours in a day and it takes a lot of time to compile notes. Even longer to try and memorize them all.  Hope what I said has helped you a little.

 Thanks, Knightspawn5.  Nice idea. Though the chess.com note-taker doesn't "merge" with the saved pgn so I tend to save the game and do my post-game note-taking using a database application, that ways I don't have to do it twice.  

My question was more catered to "post-mortem" analysis w.r.t the notes they take when they made a mistake and how different players approach this.   Many a good player in these forums has advocated "analyzing / annotating your games thoroughly even before going to an engine to check things" and I wanted to see if these notes were best embedded within the game notation or as in my case, I pick out all messed up positions and journal them into a seperate location with my notes (what I did wrong, what was better etc.)

Notes are only good if you actually go back and read them again. If you're just taking the notes and forgetting about those until you know "sometime later"--you may never use them.

For me, drawing general conclusions/specific-move-mistakes/inaccuracies can really help, but something not so complex that I won't have time to go back to and analyze, or something that I can simply remember well.

Yes, I write my notes in the .pgn file for analysis. I don't do statistics.

I had a 7yr old student with a 1000+ rating that missed discovered attacks. I mean they were oblivious to them. They simply could not see them if their life depended on it. Over the next two weeks, I had this child do 2,000 discovered attack puzzles and instantly a +100 rating point jump.

Another example, I had a 8yrs old student that could not/would not see tactics coming at him. I simply set up the puzzles on the board and turned it around for the tactic to happen to him. This helped but still was not enough. The method altered slightly as I requested that the student list the weakness then find the tactic against himself (weak backrank, exposed king, overworked pieces...ect). It helped the little one's play but not enough. I had to move it into his active thinking technique. I had him to implement this sequence of reasoning durring his blunder check phase. Bing! +200 rating points.

I was playing a OTB blitz ladder and missed a combo. I didnt beat myself up nor was i even rattled by this. It is impossible to see everything in such a brutal time enviroment. However, durring my second game i missed the same tactical theme (i believe a bishop backwards move skewer). Much to the dismay of the gentlement i was playing, instantly excused my self from the ladder. I then proceeded to setup and solve 100 puzzles with that theme. Needless to say, the rest of the night was all wins. 

@knightdreamer : It looks like you've gone after a problem area aggressively and it has returned dividends. Though in the case of your students (and yourself), did you have a system for writing down what troubled them/you or did you choose to focus all the attention on eliminating one problem area at a time, from memory?

I review my games once with no outside help as I put them into my database, making mental notes and looking for mistakes, better moves, etc. Then I have Fritz analyze the games for me and I go back over them again, this time taking notes. I write all my notes and annotations the old fashion way in a journal, simply because I like writing. 

The final step is making my "Hall of Shame" workbook. Once I have identified all my errors in a game, I print out a diagram of the position in which I screwed up, and paste it onto a sheet of paper. If it was a missed tactic (which at my level is 99% of my errors) I set it up like a tactic problem, and note what my actual blunder was, and maybe why I made it. Other things include positions where I try to play tactically in non-critical situations and should play a more strategic positional move instead, or if I allow my opponent to do things like double my pawns or open a file for his rook, etc. Also a big thing is the losing point in my games, the move I make that cost me the game. Though that image is usually burned in my mind by the anger and rage from the moment it happened, but I need to be reminded of it.

This is a recent work in progress though with only 8 USCF OTB games under my belt, so I can't attest to how well it works, but it's a fun, hands-on way to learn from my mistakes.

A Hall of Shame workbook, eh?  That's a Dan Heisman idea that works really well.

Like others, for missed tactics I save the position where I made the mistake and add it to a database.  I have one for OTB, one for puzzles I missed, and one for blitz.  Then I review the situations until solving those positions is second nature.  If there's similar tactics I may focus on that area in CT-ART for a while. 

But for more strategic errors, I do make comments but I rely on a teacher to help me.  In the last batch he noticed poor bishop play.  Too often I get bishops to close to the action.  That's not something I would see since it's not an immediately losing thing in any one game, just a bad practice overall.

Shiv, i discovered the problem area in the students play from reviewing their tournament OTB games. It was not hard to see. Out of the child's previous 10 loses, 9 had a discovered attack at the turning point.

It would be ideal if the student could review his own games. Make a list of why he/she lost the position (particular tactical motif, mishandling Sicilian middlegame, Rook ending...ect). However, most people prefer to hand the problem off to someone else or would rather complain instead of taking the time to improve.

For OTB games, I just go over the score with a database until we leave book (which is usually shockingly and incorrectly early) and then I just follow the game with an engine. 

But for cc games, i like to use the notes feature and put down variations and candidate moves and the like. I do this diligently but I've got to say I don't find it particularly valuable. I'm always a bit disturbed to discover my thoughts tend to be beside the point. I find when I blunder it is rarely because I considered the correct move and choose an error... much more often in blunder or bad move situations the correct move is one I simply never considered.

Examining a game, there's no substitute for the careful attention of a master level or stronger player. The second best thing is a chess engine "churning out variations" as you put it. I've found no better way. 

Can we try to keep it civil?

Everyone is welcome to comment regardless of their rating.  There's always going to be somebody stronger than you over here who will think you're full of it, the same way you assume your astounding 300+  correspondence rating points gives you some bizarre right to lord over somebody else's comments.