How do you decide what to study after analyzing your games?

A lot of players ask how to actually improve without drowning in random content. What I’ve noticed after coaching for years is that most people don’t have a “chess problem” — they have a direction problem. They study openings they never reach, tactics that don’t match their mistakes, and endgames they don’t lose. What helped my students the most was always the same approach: analyze their own recent games identify recurring mistakes (not one-off blunders) train only the themes that show up again and again Doing this manually is time-consuming, so I ended up building a small tool that analyzes your last games and turns them into a structured study plan with targeted exercises. It’s been interesting to see how much faster players improve when they stop guessing what to study and just follow what their games are telling them. Curious to hear how others here decide what to study at each stage — especially if you’re under ~2000.

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Has anyone here used a tool that turns recent games into a clear study plan instead of just engine analysis?

I’ve been using chesstrive. com for this. It analyzes recent games, detects recurring mistakes, and generates a structured study plan with exercises based on those patterns. What helped me most was finally having a clear direction instead of guessing what to study after analysis.

I am very interested in chesstrive. com. Thank you so much. What to study at each stage? Each stage of what - please explain what 'stage' means to you. Thank you!

ADDED: And please people - put a few paragraph returns in large blocks of text so it is easier to read. :-)

By Stage I meant level.

I'm not being annoying - I truly do not know what you mean then by level either.

ADDED: What then are the various levels? Is the rating?

When it comes to study, if, as Black, I seem to be regularly meeting an opening I am not familiar with I will look into it and try to find a variation that is sound and where it is Black's move that gets play into that line. I will then try and learn a few moves but not worry about deep theory ( I won't see that anyway ). I do the same as White if I start seeing a defense I am not used to. I.e. I got tired of not knowing how to deal with the French very well, so I focused on the Advance Variation and now I really enjoy those games. A few years ago I started trying out the King's Gambit to force myself into practicing highly aggressive attacking chess. Those are extremely fun games, and my nerves are slowly getting used to the situation. 🙂

Middle game practice is mostly focused on looking at unexpected replies when I thought I had worked out the various lines. Not a concern if they played an unexpectedly bad move, but when it is one that causes me problems I try and work out how I missed it. Also, I will look for points in my games where I should have considered things like manoeuvering a knight to a good outpost or other improvement moves when there are no obvious tactics. Sometimes, if I have a position where I think "I must have a knockout win here" but can't find it, I will go back and just keep trying to calculate it. If I never figure it out, I will call on the computer to see what I missed - which is sometimes I just missed my opponent really can defend in all lines.

Endgame study is, sadly, something I neglect far too much. My brain knows I need to work on it, but my heart prefers the opening and middlegame phases.