The Benefits of Studying Past Games

I would like to weigh how important it is to study past games among opinions of this forum.

There are many methods to improve Chess ability: playing the game frequently, practicing tactics, hiring a coach, reading books or articles or watching videos...

but where would studying games of others rank among the ways to improve one's chess? 

I'm reminded from the 60 minutes story on Magnus that he has memorized some 10,000 games. I don't view that as remotely possible to a simple serf like me...but is that what helped stoke his genius? Sheer knowledge? 

Studying past games of masters is (almost) never a waste of time, especially well annotated ones. You're not going to learn something from every single game but you may remember games you'll want to look at later on esp. if they have openings, middlegames or endings that you're interested in. 

If nothing else I find playing thru the games of Fischer, Capablanca, Rubinstein and lots of other great GMs highly entertaining - just like admiring great works of art or listening to the works of Beethoven, Mozart, Bach and other great composers.

For now books like "The 1000 Best Short Games of Chess" and "500 Master Games of Chess" by Tartakower and Dumont would be helpful IMHO, and/or "The Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played" or "Logical Chess Move by Move" both by Irving Chernev.

Look for used copies at amazon and eBay.

How much and which masters to study probably depends quite much on your strength. In general it's probably more important for stronger players.

I doubt that Carlsen has intentionally memorized large amount of games. Rather remembering games becomes easier the stronger you get and probably all top players remember lot of games almost by heart. It's much easier to remember organised information and the stronger the player the more previous chess knowledge he has to help place new information into context. For GM it's quite likely that almost every position, althought technically completely new, reminds something he has seen before. One can then conceivably learn to remember games while just normally analysing them.

Admittedly, According to famous story at 5 year old Carlsen had memorized every Country, their Capital and population, so he seems to have developped special memory outside chess too. I don't really believe that such feats are necessary to excell in chess however.

http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/01/06/the-grandmaster-in-the-corner-office-what-the-study-of-chess-experts-teaches-us-about-building-a-remarkable-life/

http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/11/25/to-develop-expertise-motivation-is-necessary-but-insufficient/

The above inspired me to write the free program:

http://www.chess.com/download/view/guess-the-move 

which I have found to improve my game.

By the way, is there a version of Chernev's "The Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played" with algebraic notation?

Uhm, I'm not convinced that studying games is all that useful: I'd rather have a resource that points me only to the critical moment i.e. when a strategic concept emerge that I can learn and then apply in my games.

I am currently using the chess mentor of our website to improve my strategical understanding. It's like doing tactic trainer, but instead of finding a quick combo you need to find the strategical idea (e.g. a pawn break, improving a knight, exchanging a piece, etc.). And then it explains you the thing.

All exercises are taken from master games (especially the ones of masters of the past), so in a sense I am studying master games...but instead of doing the whole game I just focus on a particular key moment.

It goes without saying that a high chess aptitude being heavily g intensive would of course imply that one is stronger in other areas.  A common error in the thinking of less intelligent people about more intelligent people is that they are walking calculators or wizards of memorization, etc.  What they fail to understand is that those abilities have a source, and the source of those abilities also helps them in their everyday lives and gives them access to higher areas of employment.  In other words, that mathematical "wizardry" isn't simply a stand alone ability, but a representation of something deeper. 

As far as master games are concerned I'm studying Botvinnik's games.  It is said that the weaker the player the older the model player should be.  I'm looking at Botvinnik's games from the 1920s, but will still go back to Steinitz games from time to time too.  Studying a specific player is also good because they have a certain set of strengths and weaknesses that will be consistent from game to game, and helps contribute to our own "style" of play. 

Botvinnik is highly technical, and has a balanced style of play with a slight bend towards offense, and is also capable of creative moves requiring fantasy (such as finding an outside the box ...g5! move in front of his own king).