Analysis: Engine On Or Off?

Ev asks:
Is it a good thing or a bad thing for club-level players to have an engine running while annotating their own classical games? A friend of mine, rated about 1000 USCF, argues that using an engine helps him "maximize learning per unit time." He feels that Stockfish helps him identify and address his mistakes much more quickly than if he were to review the game without computer assistance. I, rated about 1550 USCF, argue that analyzing without an engine (at least initially) is crucial for self-improvement. Even though an engine can tell me "the truth" about the position instantly, I find that it tends to blot out the web of thoughts I had when evaluating and calculating OTB, which is after all what I'm trying to improve. (We both agree that it's fine to use the engine after we've written down our thoughts.) Which of us has it right?

Just as there are many ways to play a chess game, there are many ways to analyze. They can range from a quick blunder check to hours of deep introspection. When it comes to blitz games, I am completely fine with doing a quick check with the engine and skipping the grueling self-analysis. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

But for classical games I do find it appropriate to go through a more involved and time-consuming process. These are the games you’ve invested a lot of yourself into, and unless you’re really burning up the tournament circuit there won’t be very many of them, so the time commitment is more realistic. As a minimum I would suggest writing down as much as you can remember of your thoughts during the game as soon as possible, while those thoughts are fresh. On this pass you don’t have to do any analysis at all, you’re just trying to create a record of what you were thinking during the game. These memories tend to fade quickly and are valuable for understanding where you can improve. It’s crucial to do this before looking at the engine, because once you’ve seen the engine lines you can’t unsee them, and it will become very difficult to reconstruct what you were actually thinking during the game.

I do have some sympathy for your friend’s position. Sometimes beginning to intermediate players are told to analyze without the engine, as though how to do this is self-evident. In fact, analysis is a difficult skill to master, in some ways more difficult than playing. Unless you’re a very strong player already, you won’t necessarily be able to draw correct conclusions about a position no matter how much time you invest in it. This is why I suggest writing down your thoughts as a valuable step that anyone can do.

After that you have a choice. If you want to go straight to the engine, I won’t judge you; but if you want to go for extra credit, you can do your own analysis of the game and try to figure out what was going on for yourself. Even if you don’t get all the conclusions right, the process of analyzing will provide valuable practice. As a compromise, you could pick one moment from the game to analyze on your own.

Finally, I would conclude with an engine check. For all intents and purposes, the engine is always right, so you can contrast what you thought during the game and analysis with the “truth” of the position. As always, how you do it is at least as important as what you do. It’s crucial to try to understand why the engine is right. Knowing the best moves in your last game is only valuable insofar as it helps you find good moves in the next game. You can only do that if you understand why the moves were good, and the thought processes you could have used to find them.

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Together we will be discussing our tips on this element of chess improvement followed by a live Q&A with you. You’ll receive the Zoom link when you become a paid subscriber to my Substack or if you join Ono's Patreon at any tier.