Most players lose a game, click “next game”, and lose the same way next week. Reviewing your games is the cheapest improvement you can buy: it costs only time, and it finds your own habits, not someone else’s. This guide gives a routine you can finish in ten minutes per game.
Why reviewing beats playing more games
Playing teaches you only if you know what went wrong. A game of ten or fifteen minutes contains dozens of decisions, and your memory of it is selective: you remember the move that lost, not the quiet move ten turns earlier that made it unavoidable. A review puts the whole game in front of you.
Step 1: start with the key moments, not every move
Do not walk through all the moves. Look first at the turning points, the moments where the evaluation changed the most. Computer review tools mark these. In chessGM’s Game Review they are listed as key moments with the change in win chance, and a Next mistake button jumps to your next mistake (in the More menu on phones). Most games have only two to four of them, and these are where the lesson is.
Step 2: guess the better move before you read the comment
At each key moment, stop and find the move you should have played. Spend a minute on it. Only then read the computer’s suggestion. If you find it, you now know the position was within your reach, and the mistake was one of attention. If you do not find it, you know you have a gap in your tactics or your understanding.
Step 3: name the cause
A mistake without a name teaches nothing. For each one, choose the cause:
- Calculation: you looked at the line but missed a move.
- Missed threat: you did not see what your opponent was doing.
- Opening: you left your preparation, or never had any.
- Time: you moved too fast, or too slowly and rushed later.
- Plan: every move was fine but you had no idea what you wanted.
Keep a short list. After ten games the pattern appears: maybe half of your mistakes are missed threats. Then you know what to train.
Step 4: practise the same idea
Close the review by training the cause. If the problem was a missed fork, solve puzzles on forks. If it was an opening, add the line to your trainer. In chessGM you can replay the position against the coach, or open it on the analysis board, and puzzle themes can be chosen to match.
Understanding accuracy numbers
Review tools show an accuracy percentage for each side. Treat it as a way to compare yourself with your own past games, not with a master. An accuracy of 80 percent in a slow game is good at 1600. Over a month, the trend matters more than any single game.
Reviewing a win
Review one win in every few losses. Winning games hide mistakes too, and opponents who fail to punish them do not exist at the next level. Look for the moment where you could have lost the advantage.
Quick review and deep review
A fast review of a game runs in your browser in a few seconds. A deeper review searches each move to a greater depth, at the cost of a few minutes. Use the fast one for most games and the deep one for games that matter, such as a tournament loss.
Reviewing games from other sites
You do not need to play on one site to review. Paste a game as a PGN, which every chess site can export, or load recent games by username where supported. In chessGM you can type a chess.com username, paste a game link or paste a PGN.
A ten-minute routine
- Open the review and go to the first key moment (two minutes).
- Find the better move yourself, then check (two minutes).
- Write the cause on your list (one minute).
- Repeat for the other key moments (three minutes).
- Choose one puzzle theme or opening line to practise tomorrow (two minutes).
Feature descriptions checked against the app by the chessGM team. The training plans are general guidance, not personal coaching, and have not been reviewed by a titled coach.