How to analyze a chess position? A complete guide for beginners!

When analyzing a chess position, there are a few key things to look for. First, you want to evaluate the material on the board. Who has more pieces, and what are the relative values of those pieces? Secondly, you want to look at the position of the pieces. Are they well–positioned or awkwardly placed? Finally, you want to consider the pawn structure. How are the pawns positioned, and are there any weaknesses that can be exploited? Let’s see some standard ways to analyze a chess position. 

Why analysis is important?

Analyzing a chess position is a very hard and boring part of chess. If you are playing chess in the tournament then you have to analyze the chess position to make a proper plan. Analyzing a chess position is an art.

Strong players often analyze games when they are studying. They analyze a single game for more than 3 hours and sometimes more than 1 day. The analysis is a great way to explore chess. In the tournament, you have to be sharp and make the right plan. If you fail to make any plan then you will be suffered a lot.

Tips to analyze a chess position in a tournament game

1. Concentrate – Analysing the position is the hardest part of chess. When you are playing a chess tournament you should concentrate on your position only. To improve your concentration power, you can practice meditation. Meditation keeps your brain sharp.
2. Proper sleep – If you want to keep your brain sharp before your game then you should sleep at least 8 hours a day during tournament time. Proper sleep help to increase concentration power.
3. Make easy plans– Don’t make a very difficult plan and don’t spend your time In making a plan. Just check you are not doing any blunders and play the move. When you spend the time then you will get time pressure in the endgame and eventually you will be in trouble. Always make easy plans and play fast.

How to analyze chess positions at home?

1. Use various tools – If you scroll through this article you will find tools to analyze chess positions. Using various tools will help you to do analysis in a lot easier way.
2. Self Analyses – This is the most important part of a chess game. Analyzing chess’s position selfly is a very important part of chess. You should sit in one position and analyze a single position for at least 10-15 min. It will improve your sitting capacity and eventually this will be beneficial for you in a tournament
3. Find a chess coach to analyze your chess games – This is the most underrated advice. You can simply hire a chess coach who has more chess knowledge than you. They can understand your mistakes and give you honest opinions.

Selecting a chess position for analyzing the game.

This is a very important part of chess. Selecting a chess position is a very difficult job. Most players get confused about this.

You can use books that are based on positional chess. Here are some suggestions – Improving positional play by Boris Gelfand. The other way is to select any top-player game and start analyzing without an engine. This will help you a lot.

Always try to solve hard positions. Don’t select positions that are very basic and easy to do.

Also, you can play online rapid games and analyze critical positions in the game. You can also watch agadmator’s youtube channel and learn how he analyses the game.

Best tools to analyze a chess position

1. Aimchess – Aimchess is a tool to analyze your own games with a computer and get insights from AI. It is so powerful that chess coaches are also using it to analyze students’ games. Although this is not a free way to do this. You have to purchase a membership and then only you can analyze your games.
2. Chessbase reader – Chess base is one of the premium software and they provide free software called ChessBase reader. In this software, you can do multiple things. This is the only software that is available which gives a complete package. You can download this software from here.
3. Stockfish engine – Stockfish is a chess engine that is completely free and open-sourced. This is currently one of the best engines available in the chess market. You can use stockfish to analyze your games, find novelties, and prepare openings. You can download this from here.
4. Lichess – This is also a completely free open-sourced website build via Github. On this website, you can play and learn from various puzzles. Currently, lichess has millions of users and hopefully, it will become a top website in chess.