How to Analyze Your Own Chess Games

This guide will teach you the Self-Tutor Method, a three-part approach for analyzing your games to pinpoint your weaknesses and convert them into strengths. Stop asking what to study, and start learning from yourself. You Are Your Own Best Teacher.

---

Part 1: The Human Review (Emotion-Free Analysis)

The first and most crucial step is to analyze the game without the help of a computer engine. This trains your brain to calculate and evaluate positions independently.

Step 1: The Emotional and Critical Annotation

Before opening an engine, create a private study of your game using a tool like Lichess study, ChessBase, or simply a notebook. Go through the game, move by move, and focus on two things:

• Emotional Context: Next to each move, note your state of mind. ( "Felt rushed," "Overconfident," "Tired," "Was relieved here," "Got bored.") This helps identify psychological factors impacting your play.
• Identify the Turning Points: Go through the game quickly. Circle the move where you believe the advantage shifted. If you won, circle the move that sealed the victory. If you lost, circle the move that lost you the game.

Step 2: The Independent Annotation (The "Why")

Now, go through the game, move by move, and ask two questions: "Why did I play this?" and "What was my opponent trying to do?"

• Don't Erase Mistakes: Write down your original thoughts and intentions next to the moves you made, even if they were wrong.
• Find Your Missed Plan: When you reach the turning point, pause. Do not look at the engine. Try to find the best alternative move (or defensive move) and annotate why it was better. This is the moment you become your own tutor.

Part 2: The Engine Review (The Brutal Truth)

Only after you have completed your human analysis should you turn on the chess engine for validation.

Step 3: Comparing the Reality

• The Big Picture: Compare the engine's evaluation graph to your identified turning point. Did the engine agree on where the game turned? Often, the game was decided much earlier by a subtle positional mistake than the obvious tactical blunder you identified.
• The Deep Dive (Mistakes and Blunders): Focus primarily on the moves the engine flags as Mistakes (?), Blunders (??), or moves that show a large drop in evaluation (e.g., from +1.0 to -0.5).
  • Goal: Don't just accept the engine's move. Force yourself to understand why the engine's suggestion is better. If the engine suggests a long defensive sequence, try to find the logic.

Step 4: Mastering the Opening

This step helps you gain a good sense of your opening ideas, and your opponent's.

1. Book Check: Check how far into the opening you played "book moves" (known theory).
2. Your Deviation: The moment you deviate from theory, stop and note the exact position. What was your plan, or did you just react? Compare your move to the book/Engine move and understand the fundamental strategic difference (e.g "My move was passive, the engine's move seized the open file").
3. Opponent's Mistake (The Training Moment): If your opponent deviated and the engine flags it as an error, do a full analysis:
   • Understand the Error: Why was the opponent's move a mistake? How should they have continued to maintain equality or a reasonable position (e.g., "They should have played ...0−0 instead of ...h6 to finish development")?
   • Maximize Punishment: What did the engine suggest you play to maximize the punishment? This trains you to recognize and exploit errors in real time. What is the key difference between your move and the engine's recommended continuation?

Part 3: The Consolidation (Converting Weakness to Strength)

This final phase is the most critical: turning data into knowledge.

Step 5: Categorize Your Errors

Look at the most severe errors flagged by the engine and categorize them into a maximum of three types of weakness. Be specific!

Step 6: Create Your Next Study Goal

Your analysis should lead directly to your next study assignment. This is your personal, highly effective curriculum.

• If you constantly miss tactical shots: Your next study goal is to read a chapter on Tactical Vision and solve 50 puzzles daily.
• If you constantly enter poor Rock endgames: Your next study goal is to master Rook and Pawn Endings for one week.

The Self-Tutor Commitment: The true value of this Method is that it is entirely customized and personalized to you, focusing 100% of your energy on the areas that need the most work. By using your own games to define your study plan, you stop wasting time studying generic theory and focus only on the issues costing you points. Regardless of the game's result, the analysis is invaluable: it shows you where you missed a faster path to victory or failed to maximize punishment against an opponent's error. By identifying these errors you don't just fix one move; you prevent that systemic failure from repeating in every game that follows. Commit to this rigorous three-part structure, and you will quickly move past generic improvement and start building the targeted knowledge necessary to climb to your next rating plateau.