How to Analyze Your Chess Games and Find What to Practise

Write your thoughts before opening the engine

Start a review by recording what you were trying to do at a few important moments. Which move worried you? What reply did you expect? Where did you feel lost? These notes preserve information an engine cannot reconstruct from the moves alone.

Then choose a small number of positions to inspect. A game contains many imperfect moves, but treating every inaccuracy as an equal homework task usually creates an unusable list. Prioritise a repeated mistake, an important decision you misunderstood, or a moment where your calculation stopped too early.

The aim is not to prove that every loss came from one blunder. It is to identify a trainable decision. A useful review finishes with something you can do in the next session, such as checking a fork pattern or practising a specific mating net.

Use a clearly labelled teaching game

Consider the composed sequence 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. Nc3 Nf6 5. d3 d6 6. Bg5 h6 7. Bh4 g5 8. Nxg5 hxg5 9. Bxg5. This is a legal teaching line, not an attributed tournament game, and no engine verdict is implied by its inclusion.

At move six, White develops the bishop with a pin against the knight on f6 and the queen behind it. That is a relative pin: moving the knight may expose the queen, but it is not automatically illegal. At move seven, Black’s pawn advance changes the king-side structure and attacks the bishop. At move eight, White chooses a sacrifice that needs calculation rather than a slogan about attacks.

These three moments raise different questions: what the pin actually restricts, what the pawn move changes, and whether the sacrifice is justified against best defence. Separating them prevents one vague explanation from being pasted onto the whole game.

Find your own candidates before checking

At a selected position, list two or three serious moves and the opponent’s most relevant reply to each. Keep the lines short enough that you can actually visualise them. If you are unsure whether a move is legal, settle that before comparing evaluations.

Record the reason behind each candidate. “Develop the bishop while pinning the knight” is more informative than “engine-like move.” If a move aims to win material, identify the target and the expected exchange sequence. If it improves the position, say which piece or square improves.

Now compare your calculation with the actual game. Did the opponent find a reply you never considered, or did you consider it and assess the result incorrectly? Those require different training: candidate generation in the first case, evaluation or calculation depth in the second.

Pause at any move in a diagram, then open that exact position in Chat to ask about it or in Coach to practice.

Use engine evidence to check a question

Run analysis from the exact position, retaining side to move, castling rights and en-passant state. Ask a focused question such as “Does this sacrifice work after the strongest defence?” rather than treating a numerical score as a complete explanation.

Inspect the principal variation legally from its stated start. Note the engine depth or time budget and the score’s perspective. A limited search can change its preferred move, and a large score does not by itself tell a beginner which idea to learn.

If the engine rejects your move, follow the refutation until you can explain the concrete problem in words. If you cannot see why the line matters, ask about the first confusing move. Do not replace your own mistaken story with an equally unexplained decimal number.

Separate rules, calculation and planning errors

A rule error means you thought an illegal move was available or misunderstood the result. Fix it with a rules lesson and a contrasting example. A calculation error means you missed a reply or lost track of the resulting board. Practise short forcing lines with explicit opponent replies.

A planning error means your legal, tactically acceptable moves did not address the position’s needs. Compare piece activity, pawn breaks and king safety, then test a plan in similar structures. Do not label every move the engine dislikes as a tactical blunder.

The sacrifice node in the teaching line is intentionally a question for analysis. Its legality is verified, but the article does not present an invented engine score or claim that White has a forced win. Use it to practise the review process honestly.

Finish with a small reusable review note

Use this template: position and side to move; my candidate and intended idea; opponent’s reply I missed or misunderstood; checked alternative; one practice task. Keep the task specific enough to complete in a short session.

For example, “practise recognising a relative pin and looking for a forcing reply before moving the pinned piece” is actionable. “Improve tactics” is a category, not a task. Save the position before the mistake so you can face the decision again without seeing the answer.

At the next review, look for the same pattern. Progress may mean noticing the threat sooner, generating a better candidate or explaining the position more clearly. A single game’s result or rating change is too noisy to measure that skill by itself.

Check your understanding

Continue learning

Import and review a PGN

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