Game analysis is of vital importance, which is something every chess coach and author will tell you. Almost every book ever written on chess improvement suggests that analyzing your own games is essential for any improving player. How to analyze properly is not something the authors have agreed on. Methods of analysis vary, as does the amount of emphasis that should be put on analyzing your own games.
I have gone through maaany chess books, and managed to compile what I think is a very reasonable statistical breakdown of what strong players and coaches recommend.
Analyzing your own chess games should be broken down into five steps. I think neither one of them is the “most important one”, but I also think that not a single step should be omitted from your process of analysis.
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1.Thoughts after the game
This is something almost no one does. At least not intentionally. As soon as you finish your game, write down what you were thinking about during play; at which point did you think you were better or worse? Were you without a plan at some point? Was there a position you didn’t understand? Was there a line you think you had miscalculated? How much time did you spend in critical positions? Is there a bad exchange you’d made? Could your opponent have played a better move at some point? All of these questions and many more should be moving through your mind after the game. Write them down! Having access to them when you start serious analysis will show you your capacity during play, and how much more effective you can become while analyzing
2.Analysis without an engine
I cannot emphasize this enough. Strong players can afford to turn the engine on straight away, but people below Grandmaster level need to learn how to analyze. Analysis without an engine is almost identical to tournament play, so could there be a more effective training method? I recommend analyzing as deeply as you can without moving the pieces. Only when you can no longer visualize correctly, move the pieces and go deeper. The goal is to always recreate tournament conditions. Once you start moving the pieces your horizons should broaden significantly. Write your analysis down! Now you have your immediate thoughts from after the game from step one, and you have your deep analysis written down.
3.Engine analysis
A vital step that should be used to check your own analysis from the previous step, and not the game itself. You need to find out two things. What is the difference between your skill during the game and during analysis, and what’s the difference between your analysis and the engine evaluations. For most people, these three pieces of analysis should be very different. Your play should be poorer than your analysis, and the engine analysis should, of course, be vastly superior to both.
4.Analyze with a coach or a strong player
This is optional as not many people have access to a coach or a significantly stronger player who’s willing to analyze with them. If you have access to one, this step is the most effective way to improve in my opinion, as you learn how to analyze better by listening to a stronger player analyze positions. In addition to that, of course, you also learn chess! Post mortem analysis should be mentioned here too, even though it’s not done that much today. If you can, go over your game with your opponent.
5.Play out positions you didn’t understand
I cannot emphasize this enough. Chess is a skill. If you made a mistake in a certain position during your game, that means that your skill level isn’t high enough to navigate that type of position successfully. How do you improve? Practice! Play out positions you got wrong. Ideally, play them out against another human and then analyze your variations together. If you can’t find a human willing to do that, use noctie as a sparring partner.