Chess Analysis: Learn to Improve By Studying Your Games
The key to taking your chess to the next level is often the simple practice of studying your own games. Every grandmaster knows the importance of chess analysis, but many casual and club players try to improve only by playing. Only by analyzing your games can you discover new depth in your calculations, stop making the same opening and endgame mistakes, and understand your unique playing style.
Read on to learn how to analyze your chess games effectively. Beyond the basics of rethinking your moves, see how you can use specific tools, techniques, and exercises to optimize your analysis.
How to Analyze a Chess Game
To analyze a chess game is to go through it move by move to identify errors, explore variations, and understand key moments in the game. Players can do this with a chess set, a computer analysis board, or using a score sheet or game record. By playing through the game again, you give yourself a second opportunity to evaluate the positions and find better moves. This process is supported with the use of chess engines, chess theory books, and coaches.
There are many different ways to analyze your games. The following steps are a general guide to give you a useful and insightful perspective on a game of chess.
Review the Game
The first step is to go through each move that was played. If you are using a physical chess set, this will mean playing the moves for both black and white using the game’s annotation or record. Learning to read chess notation quickly and play games out on the board is a helpful skill to develop.
If you are using a digital analysis board, you can go through games by using review functions on any of the major chess platforms. You can also load the record of the game, in the form of a PGN or a link, into your chosen analysis board. Using the interface, you can then simply click through the game, loading each position.
Identify Important Moments
Chess games have turning points and key moments. Identifying them allows you to focus your analysis. Important moves are ones that change or decide the course of the game. For example, a major blunder that gives your opponent the advantage is a good situation to analyze. However, key moments can be more subtle. Sometimes, a seemingly innocuous pawn move can alter your structure in such a way that the endgame is automatically losing or winning. Notoriously, Magnus Carlsen’s insistence on maintaining a powerful pawn structure is part of his endgame dominance and victory in so many chess matches.
Mark the Game Stages
Note when the opening transitions into the middlegame and then into the endgame, if the game gets that far. By categorizing a game into these different stages, you can analyze how strong or weak they were. Understanding which player was better in each stage of the game gives you a good understanding of its progression and helps you see where you need to improve.
Look at Alternative Moves
Explore new variations and lines stemming from key moves. For example, if you made a mistake that allowed your opponent to seize the initiative, look for different moves you could have made and see how the game could have progressed. This is perhaps the most important, active stage of studying the game. It is when you begin to recalculate positions, explore different variations, and begin the real analysis.
Apply Theory
Apply theory to understand how a specific chess concept could have improved your position. Often, it is not immediately clear why one move is better than another. Applying your knowledge of chess concepts can help you to better understand the game's progression. Some chess programs and platforms provide automatic links to chess lessons and concepts that could help you. Otherwise, researching types of positions will often allow you to link ideas in chess to your specific game.
Test Yourself
Chess analysis should not be a passive activity. Instead, you should imagine yourself as replaying the position. This can take the form of trying to calculate the best move in certain positions, learning a new line in your opening, or creating puzzles based on your chess game.
If this kind of analysis becomes a regular part of your chess training, you will quickly see improvement.
Extra Tips for Analysis
Here are a few tips and techniques you can use to improve your analysis.
- Analysis with and without an engine. Before going straight to the analysis board, try to study the game on your own. Look for key moments, ask yourself who is winning a specific position, and consider positions from your opponent’s perspective.
- Play the game again from specific positions. Identify a crucial moment in the game, and play from that point against the computer. This is a great way to see how a position can progress in different ways.
- Bring a specific focus to your analysis. While it is always helpful to study your games generally, it can also help to look at certain elements. For example, if you had a worse position in the middle game, consider how you could have applied positional concepts to improve it.
- Analyze wins and losses. You may be tempted to only review games where you made a mistake to see what went wrong. More balanced post-match analysis is more encouraging and informative.
Analysis Tools
The most common way to analyze games today is with a chess engine. They can be used to:
- Suggest the best move in a position
- Identify inaccuracies, mistakes, blunders, and brilliant moves
- Explore book openings
- Present possible lines or variations in any position
- Evaluate whether White or Black has a better chance of winning in any position
- Identify when a player has checkmate, sometimes as far as 40+ moves ahead
How you use a chess engine is up to you. If you are analyzing an online game, it is extremely simple on most platforms. For example, on Chess.com and Lichess, you can directly load your game to an analysis board after playing. Chess.com has an interactive review function, but non-paying members can only use it once a day.
Nevertheless, on both platforms, you can use the analysis board to carry out any of the functions described above.
You can also use a physical chess set and an engine. Either you can enter the moves from the computer as you go, or you can use an electronic chess set, many of which can directly display engine moves, evaluations, and recommendations.
How Chess Analysis Helps You Improve
It might not be obvious why analysis is helpful compared to playing games or reading chess theory – what are the real benefits of studying your games?
Pattern Recognition
As you study chess games, you will notice positions that lead to wins or losses. The more you analyze your games, the more you will be able to evaluate specific pawn structures, piece development, or threats. While you can see this during the game, the patterns that develop throughout an entire game and in many games are clearer in analysis.
Open-Book Study
Playing chess games can be like a closed-book exam. When you analyze your games, you can do so with the help of articles, engines, books, YouTube videos, or however you like to learn about chess. This allows you to apply concepts, ideas, and techniques to your real games, which is an excellent way to study practically.
Learn Your Playing Style
Part of the importance of analyzing your games is learning about yourself as a player. This self-reflection allows you to understand your strengths and weaknesses. This can be very specific, as most intermediate players will make clear mistakes in opening variations and endgame/middlegame scenarios. Identifying these repeated errors allows you to focus your study and quickly improve.
Combines Active and Passive Study
Improving at chess is a combination of learning rules, concepts, and ideas, and practicing a specific set of skills like calculation, board awareness, and visualization. Good chess analysis combines these active and passive study practices. You can absorb information about chess while practically applying what you learn on the board. Even if you are using an engine to review your games, your brain will be active, calculating new lines in a position and considering the position creatively.
Conclusion: Focus on Analysis to Improve
Analyzing chess games may seem like it's not worth the energy, but it is probably the fastest way to improve at the game. Combining creativity and knowledge, it allows you to get a deeper understanding of chess and develop the skills to make you a better player.
A final tip: Spend a day in which you analyze every chess game you play. You will immediately see the effects that analysis has on your gameplay, making you more focused and aware of the importance of each and every move.