With games you lost it is really nice to see what you did wrong and see how you could have done better.
How do you improve from analysis
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I use chess.com's review function immediately post-match and look at the most important moments. Then later on, I'll go over the review again move-by-move for both me and my opponent, re-doing any blunders and mistakes. This is quite useful, e.g. for identifying potential forks and mates. However, sometimes I have no idea why a move is highlighted as a blunder if there's no obvious piece hanging, fork, etc. The problem is that the computer thinks like a grand-master, not a sub-1000 player, but generally I do find this feature quite useful.
Cami_27 wrote:
I use chess.com's review function immediately post-match and look at the most important moments. Then later on, I'll go over the review again move-by-move for both me and my opponent, re-doing any blunders and mistakes. This is quite useful, e.g. for identifying potential forks and mates. However, sometimes I have no idea why a move is highlighted as a blunder if there's no obvious piece hanging, fork, etc. The problem is that the computer thinks like a grand-master, not a sub-1000 player, but generally I do find this feature quite useful.
The analysis can also show you lines of the best responses for both sides when one of them makes a mistake. Admittedly, some of these responses are just so absurd that not even 2000's can find them in live games, so just learn from whatever lines make sense to you and apply them in your future games and ask a higher rated friend to explain lines that confuse you.
Jan 16, 2022
0
#5
The more you know about chess, the more thorough the analysis is.
Now, to be specific. If all you do is click on review, let the engine do its thing and go through the game with the engine in 5 minutes, it is a time poorly spent. That is exactly the reason why many coaches say that beginners shouldn't turn on the engine at all. Many beginners abuse the engine and get nothing out of the analysis that way.
What should you do ideally? Play a long game. Think on your moves. After the game is done, do not turn the engine on. Remember what you thought of the position. Perhaps you thought of some other move. Write it down, you will check it with the engine later. Perhaps you figure something out or you wish to try out something you come up after the game is done. Write that down (AKA make the move in analysis board while the engine is still not turned on). Go through the entire game that way, perhaps try to figure out what went wrong for you or the opponent.
Only after you are done, you can turn the engine on. What to do? Play with it, figure out "the why" between the engine shift. In many cases you will not be able to, but something you will figure out. At least you will figure out simple blunders. Later on you might figure out more than that. Do not write every engine variation, just the one you understand.
This is how I do it in practice, if you are interested:
https://www.chess.com/blog/nklristic/how-to-analyze-your-games-first-steps-to-chess-improvement
The thing is, the more you invest into analysis, the bigger the return. For instance, I can be a bit of a slacker myself. I play a really long game (45|45 for instance), so I turn the engine on as soon as the game is over. But in my defense, as my game is already pretty long, I look at the position with my human eyes for quite some time during the game so I can sort of get away with not looking at the game afterwards without an engine. But someone who plays 15|10 really should look at it without an engine first.
For reference, my analysis can last anything from 20 minutes to 2 hours, if the game was long and complicated.
And you should study chess outside of analysis as well. That way you will notice more and more as you get better, but the analysis alone will teach you many stuff as well if you are stubborn enough, and always ask some questions.
I have been analysing my games don't know the best way to go about it, how do you guys analys your games and improve?