How to Study Chess Games with the Computer (In-Depth)

How to Study Chess Games with the Computer (In-Depth)

How to Study Chess Games with the Computer (In-Depth)

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Improve the Chess Board Visualization (Step 1)

The first step in my recipe is to “scan” the game rather quickly without a chess engine.

You can do this very easily, simply by loading the game (most typically in PGN format) into your favorite chess software, for example LiChess or ChessBase, and use your keyboard arrows to replicate it move after move.

Do this with the engine turned OFF. For example, in LiChess you can toggle off Stockfish analysis just with a click (on a toggle-like button, indeed).

The tricky, but also most important part, is that you must keep your brain AWAKE while doing this. Weak chess players often have the tendency to shut off their brain when they look at the engine’s evaluation. This makes your training process passive, and therefore much less effective.

Instead, you must keep your spider-sense well awake, in particular to spot any moment in the game that rings a bell, or that just seems interesting for some reason.

You can, and should, also keep track of these moments, for example by writing down on a piece of paper the move number, or more simply by adding a comment in the file, like “Interesting moment spotted!”.

What is the purpose of this first, very quick, step in the process of studying a chess game? 

The idea is to work constantly on the board visualization and on your intuition. Strong chess players “feel” the position, which is why they are very strong even at extremely fast time controls.

By simply taking a quick look and making conclusions such as “something is happening right here right now”, you will train your board visualization. Of course, lots of error will happen at the beginning, but don’t worry — keep doing it anyway. Improvement will arrive by repeating the process over and over again.

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Error checking in a Chess Game (Step 2)

The second step in this chess training plan is to scan again the entire game, and again rather quickly, but this time with a chess engine active.

Your task in this phase will be to take note of the moves that create a strong change in the engine’s evaluation. Watch out to avoid misinterpreting the word “strong change” though!

Amateurs, and in general inexperienced chess players, often make the mistake to consider any change in the evaluation like a blunder of the player. Things can’t be more far from the truth!

In my opinion if your level of play is anywhere below 2300 you can discard every change in the evaluation that is less than 1.00 point. So, for instance, if the evaluation at some point is -0.2 and after the black’s move it becomes +0.2 you might be tempted to conclude that the black players has made a mistake.

This could even be technically true, but it’s irrelevant from all practical points of view. A change in the evaluation of 0.40 is something that you would never spot at the chessboard in a real game.

Chess engines and chess software in general are great tools, but they must be used with grain of salt. Calling “mistake” a move that loses less than half of a pawn if frankly non-sense.

Based on my experience, jumps in evaluation of 1.00 and above are signals that something wrong has actually happened. Strictly speaking about numbers, loosing 1.00 is kind of blundering a pawn, which is something you should definitely watch out for.

So in short, you must take note of all moves that cause a change in evaluation of 1.00 point or more. Again, you can do this on a piece of paper, or simply by adding a comment in the file, like “Stockfish passes from -0.6 to +0.8”.

What is the purpose of this phase, that is scanning the game with the chess engine? The idea is that your eyes will be trained in checking errors made on the board. Mainly classical mistakes such as hanging pieces, or 2-moves combinations that loose material, but chess engines can also detect strategical mistakes, like when the fact of choosing a wrong plan changes the evaluation drastically.

If you iterate this step in the training when studying (a lot of) chess games then your natural instinct will be strengthened in avoiding mistakes and blunders… before they happen!

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Training Chess Tactical patterns (Step 3)

The first two steps were somewhat “easy”: you just kept pressing the right-arrow on your keyboard and made the additional effort to keep your brain awake. Which shouldn’t really be called “effort”!

By doing that, you now have a list of positions to analyze. The ones coming from Step 1 are positions that you think are interesting, basically because something caught your attention. The ones coming from Step 2, instead, are interesting because the chess engine tells you something is not quite right.

Now the “hard” work begins, and it will also be the more productive work.

First of all, you have to forget about the game. Yes, just forget about it. Your task now is to focus on each position like if it was a puzzle to solve.

One position after the other in your list, set it up on your chessboard (in the computer is also fine), and study it. Analyzing a chess position is a tough task, but you can start by asking yourself the following questions:

1) What are the main features of White’s position? What about Black’s?

2) What are the main weaknesses of White’s position? And in Black’s camp?

3) Who has the initiative?

4) Is there any counter-play target for the side without the initiative?

5) What plans are available for the two sides?

6) What tactical themes are in the position?

Then, something that I warmly recommend is trying to guess the next move (or the next few moves). As always, the choice of a move must be based on a mix of precise calculation, positional and strategical thinking, and an overall objective. In this sense the above questions should be very useful.

The effort you make to choose a move is like a gym for the brain. You should also set a time limit, for example, a maximum of 5 minutes allowed to choose the move, but within this limit try to focus at the highest peak you can.

When you are ready with your chosen move, compare it with the move chosen in the game. If the two are different then the questions you should ask yourself are the following: Are the two moves pursuing the same objective? If yes, what is the difference in playing one versus the other? If not, what is the other move’s objective? After seeing it, do you think it is any better than your choice?

All of the above must be done with the engine OFF. After you have analyzed the position and made some conclusions with your own brain, then it’s time to turn the engine ON again.

Let the chess engine analyze the position for at the least 60 seconds. Then, new questions to think about arise:

- Look at the top-3 suggestions from the chess engine. Do they have similar evaluations? If yes, then it means several moves are possible in the position. If not, then it means the player has a almost obliged choice, and missing it might bring big troubles.

- Is your move among the top-3 engine’s suggestions? If yes, is it the best among those three? If it’s not the best, why so? What is the difference between the first engine’s choice and your choice? Play a few more moves in both variations (with your move and with the engine’s move) in order to better understand the differences.

- At the previous bullet point you went deeper in two variations. For sure, doing that has pointed out many details that you previously missed, both tactical and strategical. What did you miss? Was it something that you more or less knew in advance, or a complete new light on the position?

This part is probably the toughest of all steps in this recipe. Making your own conclusions about a chess position, BEFORE looking at the chess engine evaluation, requires a lot of effort.

Yet, it’s the most important part of the training because it simulates very closely what you are required to do during a real game. In a tournament game, over a real chessboard, there is no engine that suggests you moves or evaluations, so you have to make your own conclusions. And these conclusions will guide you through the choice of a move.

Training your decisions process is a incredibly valuable part of your overall chess training. In my opinion, the secret is to keep doing it over and over, again and again. Study as many chess games as you can. Maybe group them by the opening. And when you arrive to this Step III then give everything you have to make your own analysis of the position, and then discuss your choices by comparing them with the chess software that you are using.

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Practice Chess Calculation (Step 4)

Down to the last step! This time you are going to train pure calculation, which is arguably the most important skill in critical moments of the game.

You will start with the list of positions that you got at the end of Step 2, those where a move causes a change equal to or greater than 1.00 point in the chess engine’s evaluation.

For each of these positions, your task is to set it up on the chessboard and start calculating variations! Spend a reasonable amount of time performing your calculation (I suggest between 5 and 10 minutes), while trying to stay as focused as you can.

I warmly recommend to try to put yourself into the tournament mindset, because the ability to focus and concentrate is a skill that you should train too. That means no distractions, no music, no chats.

When you’re done with calculation, you might want to spend 1-2 minute to write down the variations that you calculated, to make sure you don’t mix them up in the upcoming step.

Now you can activate the chess engine for the last time, and your objective is to check each one of the variations that you calculated with the engine. You should really check EACH move in EVERY variation.

The engine will tell you what you missed, and what tactical shots you overlooked. Your ultimate goal should be to have a sort of photographic memory that allows you to quickly spot these patterns and therefore to make less errors in your calculations.

Of course, this is a very difficult objective to achieve. Nevertheless, there is no way other than training, training, and … training! Good luck!

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Conclusions and References

In this post I showed a 4-steps recipe to study every chess game.

I am aware that it’s not a easy training. Actually, it takes a lot of effort, and if you have a full-time job and lots of other commitments (like I do), it may seems impossible at first.

However, I saw that in my case it is possible. In fact, at the beginning it seemed really really hard, but after the first couple of games the process becomes somewhat “easier” (not really :D). As with everything, one simply has to get used to it.

Also, if you keep doing it you will learn a incredible number of things by looking at other people’s games in real depth. You will learn how to spot tactical opportunities and how to quickly recognize if a strategic plan is sound or not, in a given position.

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Source

https://softwarechess.com/how-to-study-chess-games-with-the-computer/