I want to try and demonstrate the benefit to be had of analysing games. It's something that we all tend NOT to want to do, we would probably rather put the game down to experience and erase it from our memory BUT there is actually a great deal to be had from taking the trouble to analyse a game. The lovely thing about chess.com is that it does the hard work for us! All we have to do is tap in the moves and hey presto, it will analyse it for you - how good is that?!

So, by way of example, let me show you my match against Matt last night, a game that he won with a rather lovely checkmate. Bearing in mind about the fundamentals that I have outlined in previous posts: aims of the opening game, trying not to blunder, trying to anticipate what your opponent is doing and, never, ever giving up.... let's take a brief look at the game.

You will see that on the analysis, the computer thinks Matt and I made 1 blunder each. The openings are pretty straightforward, really not a great deal going on. I noted on my move sheet that at move 14 I had 33 mins on my clock and my opponent had 48 mins on his. By move 31 (well in to the mid-game), my clock was down to 48 secs and yet my opponent still had 32 mins. Now THAT point for me personally, is not insignificant.

But look what happens at around move 34. Matt took a bishop with a rook, but not only lost a rook and bishop in the process, but we then ended up exchanging rooks. So from move 38 (ish) he is a rook down. Now a rook is not an insignificant piece but and it is a big but, my clock is down to <10 secs.

If you flick through those last few moves, there I am, up on material, but down on time, and I do not have time to analyse a rather nice checkmate manoeuvre from Matt. I think it fair to say, if you look at the material on the board, it is an outcome that is entirely out of kilter with the material on the board, but this is my point about the analysis.

So what do I learn from this match? Well, it is nice to see that the analysis puts my blunder down to just one at the very end (move 41) and that is encouraging for me. It is not easy to play 40 moves of chess and not make a blunder - I think you'll probably know where I'm coming from with that. I'm up on material, again, another good point and something to definitely take note of as you enter the endgame. As you play (over the board - otb), you can every once in a while tot up the score count of the taken pieces and keep an eye on that - you may have heard me encouraging Tristan (our 8 year old player) to do that, because it IS important to track whether you are up or down on material. Generally, if a player is up on material, they have no qualms with sac'ing (sacrificing) material for the exchange - you take your opponent's pieces, they reciprocate and due to the fact that you are up on material, you will go into the end game with an advantage. So keeping track of material is good, as is time. You don't have to record your clock, but as is demonstrated above, it can turn out to be quite illuminating if you do take the trouble. And time was clearly my issue in this game.

This is the lovely thing about chess at competitive level, there are so many facets to the game that you need to take into account. And what I conclude from this match is the need for me to be more time aware in my opening/midgame.

I say all of this for one really good reason. It is very easy to get disheartened at chess. There is little fun in losing, and losing, and losing. It can get quite demoralising, you lose faith in your ability and before you know it, you give the old Club night a miss one week, and guess what, the week after you don't go again, and low and behold, you lose your appetite for playing chess. But as with most things in life (and I definitely remind my learning to drive pupils about this), there is a great deal to still take out of a disappointment. Losing is not defining, in fact, a bit like I've shown above, I am now going to really, really focus on time. And that is a really good use of my time to have gone through that exercise. I've seen some encouraging stuff along the way. My opponent WON the game and well done to Matt, it was a very enjoyable game of chess and I really look forward to playing again next week.

It just takes a bit of effort - you have to tap the moves in (just once), and then the computer does the rest for you. I really can't encourage you all to do this enough - ESPECIALLY if you lose.

Happy chess everyone!

P.S. By the way, if anyone wants me to bung up on here, their own match, and send me over a description of their analysis (a bit like what I have done above) then please do - there is much to be gained by doing so. Once you have analysed the game on chess.com, simply save it as a PGN and then send me over the PGN - it really is as simple as that!

Bourne Chess Club

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