Improve Your Chess Analysis and Your Game

In any chess training plan, nothing is more important than proper chess analysis. Not only does thorough analysis reveal your strengths and weaknesses, it sharpens your mind to see the tactics and strategies that you won’t miss next time.

Sadly, most chess players aren’t doing their analysis the right way. Chess engines have caused many to become lazy, and the precious lessons from proper analysis are going overlooked. To overcome this, we’re sharing eight top chess analysis tips so that you don't miss out on the most powerful element of chess training.

Record Your Thoughts!

One of the golden tips any chess coach can offer their students is: write down your thoughts! Immediately after a chess match is finished, write down everything you can remember about your decision-making process during the game. Write down your game plans and tactical thinking, as well as what you missed and any mistakes you might have made.

This process will help you to identify the thought patterns that helped you to find a winning maneuver, as well as those that led to your downfall. By writing down your thoughts, you'll soon be spotting the calculations and decisions that need better training. Improving your thought process is the key to better chess!

In addition to this, write down notes on your mindset. During the game, were you feeling calm and focused, or nervous and distracted? Were you feeling intimidated by your opponent, or were you overconfident? Recording your psychology can be incredibly revealing! By doing so, you’ll be much better able to identify and foster the mindsets that lead to victory.

Self-Analysis Before Engine Analysis

If you’re serious about chess study, you’ll want to do your chess analysis in the most thorough way. For this, always do your own post-match analysis before using a chess engine.

While chess engines have made it much easier to see an instant ‘objective evaluation' of each move, they can also make us lazy! It’s all too easy to let a computer tell you what was a brilliant move, miss, or a blunder, but did you fully understand why each move received its evaluation?

Oftentimes, complacency allows us to skip over the more nuanced lessons that would actually help us improve. By performing self-analysis first, you’ll train your brain to look deeply and thoroughly understand the reasons for your mistakes, as well as the tactics and strategies that gave you the lead.

Performing self-analysis, don’t try to analyze every move—but just the critical moves! Just focus on the moments that required a careful decision-making process or the ones that changed the game. Did you choose the right strategy or tactic at the crucial junctures? Why did you underestimate an opponent’s attack?

Only after making these thorough checks for yourself, use a chess engine as a comparison to your analysis and see if there was anything you missed.

Remember, Chess Engines Aren’t Always Accurate for Practical Play

When using a computer analysis board, it’s important to remember that chess engines don’t think like humans do! Therefore, computer evaluation is not always accurate for real-life games.

It’s especially important to remember that computer analysis doesn’t always tell you the best moves for your level. The most powerful chess computers are rated above 3500 Elo and evaluate the best moves on the basis that the opponent is at the same rating. But these super machines make even Magnus Carlsen look like a rookie!

Often, an excellent move could be deemed an inaccuracy by the computer on the assumption that the opponent will find the perfect sequence of moves—even if they're practically impossible to find! Equally, a chess engine could tell you that you made a brilliant move without you even realizing it's brilliant at all! If you don’t see the winning tactic that follows, the evaluation is meaningless.

Use a Chess Openings Explorer to Analyze Your Opening

It may seem surprising, but chess engines don’t understand opening principles very well. Instead of computer analysis, then, it’s far more helpful to see how successful different opening lines were against human opponents of your level. For this, chess opening explorers are invaluable.

Millions of games of online chess are played every day, and online chess platforms like lichess.org record every move. With their opening explorer, you can view the success rate of every common opening move to see exactly which variations are most likely to win. You can even narrow down the data to chess matches played at your standard and time control!

This is gold because you get to see what works well against fallible human opponents—not perfect machines! Perhaps your opponent played a move you’ve never seen before, and you want to find out if you gave the right response.

In the example below, Black is playing the Stafford Gambit. White played an unusual move: 6. f3. Now, what should Black do?

Despite the engine recommending castling as Black’s strongest move, statistics reveal that in blitz games with players rated 1400-1600, 6...Nh5 is Black's killer move! This is because many human opponents fail to spot 7...Qh4+ that can follow.

Review Your Transition Into the Middlegame

Checking that your opening followed the best moves is important. But an even more critical phase is where the opening transitions into the middlegame. At this stage, you can’t rely on book moves anymore—you’re on your own!

This is where your middlegame plan kicks in. Reviewing your game, were you left with the ideal setup to swing into your middlegame plan? Or were you left in an unfamiliar position, unsure of the best middlegame plan to follow?

Understanding which middlegame plans to implement in different positions is frequently what separates well-prepared players from the rest. Studying, playing, reviewing, and then repeating the recommended game plans following your favorite openings is the path to mastering the middlegame.

The example below is taken from the Caro-Kann Classical Variation. Black has an inferior pawn structure and wants to avoid an endgame. What is the best middlegame plan from here?

Include Time Management

How many chess matches have you lost on time, despite being in a winning position? Imagine now that you could have won all of those games had your time management been on point! If you do the math, you might realize that poor time management could be costing you hundreds of Elo points!

When analyzing games, however, many chess players forget to include time management. By the time you analyze, you may have forgotten how much time you had on the clock and then wonder why you missed a tactic or made a blunder. It wasn’t down to poor calculation; it was lackluster time management.

To keep tabs on your time, note down approximately how much time you and your opponent had on the clock at given intervals (every five moves, for example) immediately after your game. Also, take notes on how you handled time during the game. Did you take too long on trivial opening moves? Or perhaps time pressure made you slip up toward the endgame?

As with other parts of your game, you’ll then be able to correct any mistakes you notice. In the future, you could set time milestones, like still having half the time on the clock by move 25. Or you could aim to divide your time for the opening (15-25%), middlegame (50-60%), and endgame (20-25%).

Chess Analysis: Revisit Old Games

A great tip that many chess players are never told is to revisit old games. We’re talking games that you played at least a few months ago, and perhaps as long as a few years ago.

Revisiting old games is not only really interesting and fun, but it’s also a fantastic way to assess your progress. Oftentimes, you’ll be amazed by the tactical opportunities you overlooked or the unsophisticated game plans that you used to rely on.

Occasionally, you might even revisit an opening or middlegame plan you enjoyed years ago and decide to reinstate it, bolstered by the superior understanding and strategic knowledge you’ve gained in the meantime.

Revisiting old games often serves as a wonderful affirmation of your chess training plan. On the other hand, if you notice little improvement, it may serve as an invitation to rethink your chess study for better progress.

Devise a Chess Training Plan to Improve On Your Flaws

After deep analysis of your chess matches, you should have a good idea of the shortcomings that are costing you the most games. This can be humbling, maybe even painful. The great news, however, is that you’ll now be thoroughly prepared to tailor the perfect training plan to improve your game!

For example, if you’ve discovered that you’re losing a high proportion of games from tactical oversight, you could prioritize tactical puzzles to improve this aspect of your game. If you’re losing in the endgame, then focusing on endgame strategy would be the obvious remedy.

A clever system some chess players have devised is to calculate the percentage of games lost in the opening, middlegame, and endgame. The same percentages can then be applied to your chess study time. For example, 15% on openings, 50% on the middlegame, and 35% on endgames.

One month after adjusting your chess training program, check your loss rate again to see if your study is achieving the desired results. Double down on any aspects that are still costing you games until you see the difference!

Proper Chess Analysis Final Thoughts

Proper chess analysis is the single most powerful training tool to improve your game. While not as exciting as playing games, analysis is one of the gritty components of a rigorous training schedule that’s essential to any serious player.

By recognizing your weaknesses and developing a training plan to improve upon them, you’ve discovered the perfect formula to elevate your chess in the most powerful way.

Puzzle Answer: ...Ng5 is Black's only good move. Capturing Bxc3 fails because it unleashes White's dark-squared bishop to attack further down the line. Very hard for humans to spot!