Tips for how to analyze games as a beginner?

chumbalumber, 5 months ago

Who are these games against? If it’s otb, I’d strongly encourage talking it through with the opponent BEFORE putting it into the computer. There’s a lot of ideas in chess (weak squares, pawn structure commitments, etc.) that are very hard for you to understand from a computer analysis, and conversely there may be moves you might make that are, at a human level, pretty reasonable, but that a computer sees leads to a highly complex tactical mistake.

Fundamentally, you want to be playing humans, and so you need to learn how to play well against humans. So analyse what the plans and ideas that you and your opponent were trying to enact. What were the key pawn pushes that shaped the areas of battle?

A book that has often been recommended is ‘logical chess move by move’, and I think that’s a good place to look for how to analyse games. The author explains the ideas white and black are playing for with each move, both in the short and long term, for humans.

Obviously this is very detailed, and only worth going over for games with longer time controls, where you have the time to develop more complex ideas than just ‘this looks good’.

A final thing that might be worth your while is (if you have the chance) finding a group of people you can play chess games with and talk to about your games on a casual basis. I play for a club, but also go along to a ‘pub chess’ night (the closest thing the UK has to coffee house chess!) that just has informal games among people of all ages and abilities. I’d highly recommend finding a space like this to play and chat. Good luck!

maltasoron, 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

Look for the first obvious (unforced) error you made, and try to work on that. The rest of the game is influenced by that first error, so for now, it’s a lot less relevant. E.g. it’s more useful to focus on not losing your Queen unnecessarily than to practice being down a Queen.

maltasoron, 5 months ago

Also, try to analyze the problem from a broad perspective. If you always get stuck in a defensive position and then lose, try looking up theory for working from a defensive position. Or you can work improving your openings, so you take the initiative early on. There’s loads of theory available online, so you don’t have to do all the thinking yourself