how to properly study master games

Hi I was wondering how to properly study master games. I've heard of solitaire chess, but I can't help but think thats not all I should do when looking at master games. A little help here please?

There are a lot of different ways to do it.

The most basic way would be just to play over the game and then play over a lot of them. That can help you become familiar with good opening play and potentially some middle and endgame patterns.

You can go over well annotated games and play over the variations to find out why some moves weren't played or alternate lines that may have been better.

You can do the solitaire method. You can do something like a Stokyo study on a complex position.

If you play certain openings you can search out well annotated games in those openings and get familiar with those patterns.

There are probably a lot of other ways to do it too. Probably isn't any wrong way to go over games. Just certain ways will provide different benefits.

What's the stokyo study?

What I liked to do when I had a computer was to use a chess program to go through the books on games. The reason for this is a lot of books have deep variations, and it's easier to keep track of where your at. I use to save the files. sometimes you can find the game in a database, and use it to go through the book. I noticed a drastic increase in my chess visualization and pattern recognition. more than that it helped me play more concretely in the formation of planning.

Never mind lol, I Googled it

Wow thanks

really recommend Kasparov series. the annotations are excellent plus I really got into the history.

I got the chessbase mega database 2014 so thats what I'll be using if that helps