Behind the Board: Demystifying My Chess Game Analysis Rituals

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💨 3-Bullet Summary

• I find my mistakes with Game Review on Chess.com

• I only pick one thing to work on from the game

• I immediately work on it for about 10-20 minutes

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 ⚓ Going Deeper

WHY IT MATTERS:

Any book or course you consume is from the lens of the person producing it. Analyzing your own games allows you access to the mistakes and biases you currently have, with the hopes of improving them.

STORYTIME:

"Self-reflection is a humbling process. It's essential to find out why you think, say, and do certain things... then better yourself." - Sonya Teclai

In this blog post, I will show you my three-step process of how I analyse my own chess games. But first, let's talk about the principle of analysing these games:

The Principle

I would only play games worth analyzing and look for one mistake to work on.

This means that I will analyse online rapid games and all my tournament games. I don't analyse my blitz or bullet games because the mistakes made are usually from time trouble which is less constructive. As for the mistakes, I would use the computer to help me identify them.

What It Looks Like:

Let's say I choose to analyse this Benko Gambit game from the white side.

#1 Put the game on Game Review

After completing the game, I will put it on Review and look at the points where I made mistakes on the evaluation bar:

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#2 Understand the type of mistake I've made.

The moment the mistake was made

The next step is reflection. Why did I make the wrong move in that position?

There were two answers to this.

The first reason was I simply missed 12...Ba6 as a strong option for my opponent, creating a pin. The second reason was that I mixed up my opening plans. I will determine which one is the more prominent problem. In this case, it was me mixing up the ideas in the opening, so this brings us to the next step.

#3 Work on the mistake

I will go back to my notes and review them. Let's imagine that this was a tactical mistake (which I believe is more common). I would then go to Custom Puzzles and start solving Pins exercises for about 10-20 minutes.

Once this is done, we go back to the beginning.

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