How to analyze your chess games and learn from them

Game analysisBeginner3 min

Playing a lot makes you better slowly; analyzing your games makes you better fast. A few minutes after each game show you which mistakes you keep making, and those are the ones worth fixing.

The routine below works for a five-minute blitz game and for a long tournament game alike.

Step 1: your own thoughts first

Before you turn the engine on, go through the game yourself. Where did you feel unsure? Where did the game turn? Write it down: your own conclusions, right or wrong, are what you will compare the engine with.

Step 2: find the turning points

Now load the game into an analyzer and look at the evaluation graph. Sharp drops mark the moves that mattered. Most games are decided by two or three of them; the rest is noise.

Open in the analyzer

A typical turning point: one natural-looking capture loses the queen.

Step 3: ask why

For each turning point, find out why the move was bad, in words and not just in numbers. Did you leave a piece unprotected? Miss a check? Overlook a threat? The analyzer on this site writes the reason for every move, so you can read it instead of guessing.

Step 4: look for patterns

The same kind of mistake again and again is your real weakness: hanging pieces, missed forks, a weak back rank.
Learn that pattern on purpose. Read the lesson about it and solve a few exercises.
Check your openings: if you are often worse after ten moves, look again at the first moves of those games.

Exercise: punish the greedy capture

ExerciseBlack to move

White has just taken the pawn on e5 with the knight. Black to move: punish it.

Make the move on the board: drag a piece, or click it and then a square.