It is rightly said that you will have to lose a hundred games first to win that one championship game. This saying hits home in context to the game of chess, traditionally played in a closed setting, the online chess game has now transcended to being just a mere brain game, thus paving the way for exponential growth and impact through its gameplay. The chess game indeed is a testing one and not everyone’s cup of tea, and seeing how widespread gaming geeks are now turning towards the game there will be pitfalls in the initial stages.
So, considering the new players or for that matter the existing ones are looking to add winning style to their plays, what should be their core area of concern, how can they address the issues and what is the concrete solution for the same? Well, in the modern-day world of chess gaming, the tool that will enhance, signify and elevate your gameplay is game analysis. Yeah, it might come as a surprise to a lot of people, but chess game analysis is the perfect tool through which you can open doors of success.
A Guide on How to Analyze Your Chess Game
1. Pen Down Your Thoughts and Feelings After a Game
This may sound strange to you a lot but penning down your immediate thoughts and emotions can tell a lot about your decision-making process during that particular game. Understand that, online chess games are tight, tense, and demanding, therefore you need to have a clear and focused head while playing them. Here you can note down the contrasting thoughts of that you would have been in a better position if your king was not left exposed, while in other instances you neglected the defenses in a bid for a strong attacking approach. You see, only by knowing our thoughts that were fresh after the game, can we truly understand the loose ends and start working towards improvement.
2. Replay All Your Moves
The only sure way to look back at your shortcomings and pitfalls is the play the exact same moves again on a fresh game. You can make a custom room for yourself in an online setting while simply laying down the pieces on a physical board. Repeating the entire process might be tedious but it allows you to understand what were the better options or moves for you in that particular situation. Do not act smart here, do the needful and play the same game where in you failed. Again as mentioned above pen down the obvious mistakes, better outcomes, and plays that could have yielded better results for you in the longer run.
3. Cross Check the Blunders You Made
Moves and blunders are two different things, moves are thought, planned, and executed, while blunders are plays which are backed by a hunch without any reason or understanding. For example, in the initial stages of the game, the way the pawns are randomly raised on the board can be called a blunder as it potentially weakens the position of the king and allows the opponent to exploit the gaps in our defenses. Moreover, at times we also may miss out on a crucial capture of an opposition piece and this too adds to the blunder list. So, make a note of all the possible blunders you have committed and make sure you do not repeat them.
4. Find an Alternative Move to Your Blunders
The good thing about hand-picking your blunders is that you can always work on them and try to find a better alternative to get positive outcomes. Blunders can happen to the best of the chess players and no one is perfect in their gameplay, this is the sole purpose we are analyzing our games so that we can overcome the previous shortcomings. Alternative moves might force you to improvise on your strategy or the planned moves and it becomes detrimental in your chess journey. For instance, you committed a blunder of advancing the queen in initial combat and eventually lost out on your major pieces, rather you can test the conditions, predict the opponent’s best move and then close the grip or advance with your queen.
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5. Get a Recording of Your Gameplay
The best way to analyze your chess gameplay would be to record your gaming sessions. The easiest way is to screen record your gameplay when enjoying online chess games on your mobile device. The recording allows you to dissect and differentiate your good moves from your bad ones. Even if you are playing on a physical board, its easy to set up a still camera where the entire board is visible and the play can be recorded. Once you have the entire recording of your gameplay, it becomes easy to take one aspect of your blunders and mistakes and try to find a way around them.
6. Learn from Your Opponent
Recording your gameplay and noting down your thoughts after a game have a significant advantage as it shows how well-prepared your opponent was. It was indeed a good move by your opposition that forced you into mistakes and blunders. So, the trick here is the carefully understand what moves, strategy or planning they invoke at a certain stage of the game that decisively put you out of your game. See, the masters of the game were not born or made overnight but only after learning from the better players, who honed the skill and were a tad bit better at adaptation and improvising their plays without changing the course of their action plan. So make sure you learn from your mistakes but further learn from your opponent’s good moves.
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