How to Use Computers for Post-Mortem Analysis
Submitted by
on Tue, 09/22/2009 at 11:05am.
Here is a series of notes from Whitesox7 that I think will be helpful to all of my students:
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Original Message by 
WhiteSox7 on 9/19/2009 @ 10:49pm:
Hey Sam, i had just looked at one of your games that you annotated, may i ask..how did you get so good at analyzing positions so well? Is it from studying many GM games? or what?
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Original Message by 
sam_musil on 9/20/2009 @ 11:13am:
In short, the answer is practice! I have been playing tournament chess for 35 years and teaching chess for several years. My chess mentor Israel Kutasov taught me to follow the openings of strong GM's to develop my style of play, but then to analyze my own games in order to improve my middle-game play. Israel taught me the absolute importance of post-mortem analysis of my own games! "Izzy" forced me to explain a reason for every move in my completed game that we were analyzing!
I started using Chessmaster, Fritz, and Sargon to help me study critical positions from my own completed games and became a "GM" in analytical ability just through learning the intricacies of my own openings and explaining the reasons to "Izzy." I love chess and teaching chess because it is truly a "search for the truth" about each position in a game.
If you keep reading my blog, your analytical ability will increase just by learning the critical aspects of certain opening positions. Opening books just scratch the surface. I demonstrate how to win with my openings!
Sincerely, Sam
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Original Message by WhiteSox7 on 9/20/2009 @ 11:54am:
oh ok, thanks! but one more question if u dont mind, i actaully have fritz and chessmaster also, which i have used to help analyze my games, but how do u use the machines to their fullest so that i understand why they are suggesting such moves? It recommends a move and some of the time i will understand the positional or tactical importance of the move, but other times i dont understand why it would suggest a move, is there any way RIGHT WAY that you should be using these machines?
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The right way to use these machines is to make them tell you the "top 3" moves in a key position. I never look at just the recommended move as it is often a stupid "computer move" that is completely illogical! If you disagree with the machine evaluation, you must make the machine show you its refutation to your line. I often play ahead 20 to 25 moves to check out the two top alternative variations. I only analyze a few positions from a losing game. I look at moves that I was concerned about during the game referring to my game notes and at moves flagged by the Chess.com analysis!
If the master DB was still "in play" at the position of the key move that I am analyzing, I definitely check out the "next best" master move in Fritz to see the computer evaluation of that move. If there are more than 20 games in the database, I put more trust in the DB than in any engine. With less than 5 games in the DB, the engine is more trustworthy!
The only winning games that I analyze are games where I was clearly lost early and won due to an opponent blunder!
Typically, I find two or three innovations to a completed game and always play the earliest improvement in my next game! If I am unhappy with my position in that game, I will try a later improvement next.
Sincerely, Sam Musil
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