Home › Guides › Analyze chess games

Game analysis · Updated October 10, 2026

How to analyze your chess games (5 steps)

Clicking "review" and watching the evaluation bar swing is not analysis. Real analysis answers one question: what will I do differently next time? Here's a 5-step method that gets you there in about 15 minutes per game.

Step 1: Annotate before the engine

Go through the game while it's fresh. At each moment where you thought hard, or should have, write a short note: what you were afraid of, what you were planning, what you missed. This is the most valuable part, because it captures your thinking, which is what you're trying to fix.

Step 2: Find the turning points

Now turn on the engine. Ignore small swings. Look for the two or three moments where the evaluation changed by a large amount (roughly a pawn or more). Those are the moments that decided the game.

Step 3: Ask why, not just what

For each turning point, compare your note to the engine's line. Classify the mistake:

• Didn't see it: a tactic or threat you never considered. That's a pattern-recognition problem, so train tactics.
• Saw it, misjudged it: you calculated but evaluated wrong. That's a calculation or evaluation problem.
• Didn't know the plan: you drifted. That's an opening or structure problem.
• Clock: you knew, but had no time. That's a time-management problem.

Step 4: Write one lesson

Turn each game into a single sentence you could apply in another game. "In the Caro-Kann Advance, don't play ...c5 before ...e6 lets my bishop out" is a lesson. "I blundered" is not.

Step 5: Look for repeats

Keep your lessons in one list. After 10–20 games, the list tells you what to study. If the same lesson appears three times, it's not bad luck. It's your next training block.

Common game analysis mistakes

• Only analyzing losses. Wins hide mistakes your opponent didn't punish.
• Trusting the engine's top move blindly. If you don't understand why it's best, you won't find it over the board.
• Analyzing too many games shallowly. One careful review beats five glances.
• Never looking across games. Single-game review misses patterns.

Tools for chess game analysis

Lichess gives free Stockfish analysis for any game (see our Lichess game review guide). Chess.com's Game Review adds move labels and a coach-style summary, with limits on free accounts. Neither looks across your whole history for patterns. That's what ChessMogg's AI chess coach does: it surveys hundreds of your games, finds the repeats, and teaches them.