Chess lessons › Good chess habits
Learn from your games
Reviewing a game teaches you more than playing another one.
The idea
Going over your games teaches you more than playing more of them.
- Soon after the game, find the move where it turned.
- Ask what you were thinking when you played it.
- Work out what question would have saved you, and practise it.
In a game: After a loss, find the move that lost it and ask why you played it.
How the lesson begins
You improve fastest by finding out why you lost. After a game, go through it and look for three things: the moment the game turned, what you were thinking when you made the mistake, and what you could have asked yourself instead. Do it while the game is fresh.
A game review that marks your mistakes will find the moments for you. Your job is to work out why they happened.
A question
You lost a game because you left a knight undefended on move 20. What do you do next?
Show the answer
Look at what you were thinking, and add a blunder check to your routine.
Right. A mistake is useful when you find its cause. Here the cause was a missing question before the move.