How to analyze chess games as a beginner

To analyze chess games as a beginner, don't replay every move with the engine on. Write down what you were thinking first, then find the two or three moves where the evaluation jumps the most, cover the engine's answer, try to find the better move yourself, and only then say in one sentence what you missed. That takes 10 to 20 minutes per game, and it is how I went through my own first 30 rated games.

This guide turns that into six steps you can repeat after every game. It uses two real positions from my Chess.com account (nacsol3), checked with Stockfish, so you can see what each step looks like on an actual beginner mistake.

Why most beginners analyze their games the wrong way

The usual way to do chess game analysis for beginners is to open the review, press the arrow key from move 1 and read the engine's suggestions as they appear. It feels like work, but very little sticks. At beginner level a game has dozens of small inaccuracies that don't change much, and a handful of moves that decide everything. If you give every move the same attention, the important ones get lost.

Engine lines are the other trap. Stockfish (the free chess engine behind most analysis tools) will happily show you a twelve-move variation that ends "+0.4". If you can't imagine finding that line during a game, it isn't teaching you anything yet. A reply in Chess.com's beginner forum puts it well: if you can't realistically see yourself noticing an idea in a random game, don't worry about it yet (Chess.com forum, "How to analyse a game?", November 2020).

What a beginner needs from a review is short: where did the game turn, and what did I not see? Everything below is built around that question.

Step 1: Write down what you were thinking (5 minutes, no engine)

Do this right after the game, while you still remember it. Replay the game on a board without any engine and note three things:

• The moments where you felt unsure or spent a long time.
• What you were trying to do in the middlegame (attack the king? win a pawn? just survive?).
• Where you think you lost, or won, the game.

This matters because the engine tells you what was wrong but never why you chose it. If you wrote "I thought I was offering a queen trade", you will recognise that exact thought the next time it comes back. Several replies in the same Chess.com forum thread recommend this order too: go through the game yourself first, then turn the engine on (Chess.com forum, November 2020).

Step 2: Run the engine and open the evaluation graph

Now get the computer analysis. Both big sites give you some for free (checked October 26, 2026):

We cover the Chess.com limit in more detail in how many free game reviews you get on Chess.com.

The most useful thing on the screen is the evaluation graph: the line that goes up when White is better and down when Black is better. The number behind it is measured in pawns. "+1.00" means White is about a pawn better, "-3.00" means Black is about three pawns better, and "M3" means someone can force checkmate in three moves. You don't need more than that to start.

Step 3: Find the two or three biggest swings

Look at the graph and pick the places where the line jumps the most, in either direction. Those are your critical moments. Ignore everything else for now, including the small "inaccuracy" labels.

Both sites label the bad moves for you (inaccuracy, mistake, blunder). A blunder is simply a move that throws away a lot of your position at once, for example losing a piece or allowing checkmate. Lichess picks its mistakes by how much your winning chances drop, not only the pawn number, so a two-pawn slip in a position that is already lost may not be flagged at all (Lichess blog, "Learn from your mistakes", December 22, 2016). That's a good habit to copy: a swing from "winning" to "losing" teaches more than a swing from "losing badly" to "losing very badly".

Two places to always check, even if the graph looks calm:

• The first big drop. In my first week, the first blunder of the game came in the opening phase in most games where I blundered at all. One early mistake shapes the rest of the game.
• Any moment where you were winning. If the graph was high in your favour and then fell, find exactly where. Throwing away a won game usually comes from one move, not from slow decline.

Step 4: Cover the answer and find the move yourself

Go to the position before the swing. Hide the engine's suggestion, and give yourself a minute to answer two questions:

1. What does my opponent threaten here? List their checks, captures and attacks on my pieces. These are called forcing moves: moves the other side has to answer right away.
2. What is my best move, knowing that?

Both sites have a button for exactly this. Chess.com's Game Review offers a Retry on key moves that could have been better, so you can replay the position and look for the best move (Chess.com Help Center). Lichess has Learn from your mistakes, which walks you through your errors one at a time and only shows the answer when you ask (Lichess blog).

Here is what this step looks like on one of my own games.

Example 1: the queen trade that wasn't a trade

January 11, 2024, my fourth rated rapid game. I had Black against ChocoteBABY (986) in an Italian Game, and the engine had me slightly better. My queen could take the pawn on b3, and from b3 it would attack White's queen. In my head, that was a queen trade on my terms.

r . . . k . . r
. . p . . . p p
. . n . q p . .
. p . . p . . b
. . . . . . . .
P P B P . N . P
. . . . . P P .
R . . Q R . K .

Now do Step 4. What are White's captures after my queen lands on b3? The first one is the obvious one: White's queen on d1 can simply take mine, and nothing of mine defends b3. There is no trade. Stockfish rates the position at -1.13 (slightly better for Black) before my move and +8.66 after it, which is "White is completely winning". The engine's choice is the quiet one: castle, get the king safe and keep the small edge. White took the queen and I resigned.

The point of the exercise isn't the engine's move. It's noticing that I asked "what does my move attack?" and never asked "what can they capture after it?".

Example 2: the winning game that ended in mate

Same day, game #7, White against mabelmoreno44 (930). At one point Stockfish gave me over a 96% chance to win: I had a queen, a rook and a knight against two rooks. Then I played a quiet pawn move, h2 to h3.

. . . . . . . k
p . p . . . p .
. . . . . . . p
Q . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
P . N . . P . .
. r . r . . P P
. . . . . R K .

Step 4 again: Black's checks. Both black rooks sit on my second rank, next to my king. Before my move Stockfish says +8.46, completely winning, with the queen taking on c7. After h3 it finds mate in three: the rook takes on g2 with check, the king goes to h1, the other rook checks from h2, the king goes back to g1, and the second rook delivers mate on g2. That is exactly what happened (the game).

If I had listed Black's checks before moving, I would have seen the rook capture on g2. One look at the forcing moves was the whole difference between a win and a loss.

Step 5: Name the mistake in one plain sentence

Once you have looked at the engine's move, write one sentence that explains the swing without notation and without numbers. Some of mine from those games:

• "My queen attacked their queen, but nothing defended it."
• "I was winning and made a quiet move while their rooks were checking my king."

If you can't write the sentence, you haven't understood the moment yet. Ask the engine to show its line one move at a time, or ask someone. This is also where an AI assistant is genuinely useful: give it the position and the engine's verdict and ask "why is this move better, in plain words?". Don't ask it to find the best move on its own; language models can describe pieces that aren't on the board. We explain why in Can Claude analyze chess games?, and if you use ChatGPT, these ChatGPT chess coach prompts keep it honest.

You'll notice that your sentences start to repeat. In my first 30 games, the three biggest swings I studied all had the same shape: I attacked something and didn't check my opponent's reply. That repeat is the most valuable thing a review can give you, because now you have a rule for the next game.

Step 6: Turn the mistake into practice

A review only helps if the lesson shows up in your next games. Two ways to make that happen:

• Make one rule for the board. From the examples above: "before any attacking move, list their checks and captures." Keep it to one rule per week.
• Replay your own mistakes as puzzles. Positions from your own games are the best puzzles you'll ever get, because they contain exactly the patterns you miss. Retry and Learn from your mistakes do this inside one game; we compare the options for whole collections of games in chess puzzles from your own games.

Every few weeks, look at your games together rather than one at a time. Which openings keep losing? Do you lose more games on time or to blunders? Do you throw away won positions? Patterns across 20 games are much clearer than any single game.

Common mistakes when you review a chess game

• Reading every move. Pick the two or three biggest swings. The rest can wait.
• Starting with the engine. You lose your own thoughts, which are the part you need to fix.
• Memorizing engine lines you can't follow. If you couldn't find it at the board, note the idea in one sentence and move on.
• Only analyzing losses. My game #3 that week was a win, and the engine had me lost after one "active" knight move; my opponent just didn't see the reply.
• Staring at the accuracy score. Accuracy is a summary. It doesn't tell you what to do differently. The one-sentence lesson does.
• Asking a chatbot without an engine. An assistant can explain an engine's verdict well, but it shouldn't be the source of the verdict.

A simple routine you can copy

How Chess Coach helps with this

Chess Coach is a connector for Claude and ChatGPT that does Steps 2 to 5 for finished Chess.com and Lichess games. Stockfish runs on our server, the board numbers the key moments ①②③ with arrows (red for the move you played, green for the better one), and your assistant explains each moment in plain words for beginners. There's a "Why?" button on the board for follow-up questions, and Practice mistakes brings back the positions where you went wrong so you can find the move yourself. The Free plan includes one in-depth review a day; it never helps with a game that is still in progress. See how the AI chess analysis works or connect it to Claude or ChatGPT.

The two examples above come from my own first week, which I wrote up in full in week 1 of my journey. The whole series, from 631 to 1385, is on the journey page.