One of the most effective ways to learn how to play chess better is to analyze your own games. Legendary World Chess Champion Mikhail Moiseevich Botvinnik emphasized the importance of this activity and even called on masters to publish analyses of their games in the media.
But there's one tiny problem: most players don't know how to do it. So the game is over, you're a little tired and worried about the next game, so why make it worse by remembering the loss? Oh, sorry, you won? "Why watch a game you won?" the person thinks. It sounds funny, but many chess players actually do it.
Therefore, as a continuation of the article about best chess apps — I have made a selection of applications for analyzing chess games. I suggest you test each of them, choose one or two and regularly check your past games in them.
DecodeChess.com
Sometimes a simple answer is not enough. Remember how the computer Deep Thought in the movie "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" calculated the answer to the ultimate question of life and the universe? It answered: 42. The problem is that "42" requires further explanation. And the same with chess analyzers.
DecodeChess not only shows the correct move, but also explains it in human language (and in Russian), unlike other competing programs. The service is based on artificial intelligence that runs on the Stockfish 12 engine. On the site, you can not only analyze games, but also play with AI that will adapt to your level of play to give you at least some chance to beat it.
Position analysis can be done directly during the game. For each position, DecodeChess shows several areas of interest in chess analysis: the opponent's threats and what remains of them if the best move is made, shows the best moves in descending order, reveals important positional and tactical motives.
DecodeChess was created for players who want to understand the reasons behind each chess move. If you are a chess player with an ELO rating of up to 2000 and use other applications to analyze games, but cannot understand the essence of the recommendations, then DecodeChess is what you need.
In the free mode, only 2 transcripts are available per day. If this is not enough for you, you can pay for an annual subscription for only $ 15, then the number of available transcripts will increase to 60.
Aimchess
Aimchess is a great app for learning and improving your chess skills. Every day you will take new lessons, learn new strategies, and earn points that will allow you to access new lessons.
The two most popular and free online chess sites are Chess.com And Lichess. Aimchess works with both of them, conducting an AI analysis of your playing style. Just enter your username and the app will generate a report in which it will analyze your recent games and point out your weaknesses and strengths, as well as give advice on how to improve your game. If you don’t speak English well, use built-in translator in Google Chrometo translate the recommendations into Russian.
In addition, you will have access to daily lessons tailored specifically to your playing style. At times, the app will review games you have lost and analyze them for you.
The free version provides nine free lessons per day, analyzes up to 40 recent games, and limits reports to three. The paid version, at $8 per month, provides unlimited lessons, analyzes up to 1,000 games, and limits reports to three.
Available for Android / iPhone / Online.
Listudy
To become a good chess player, you need to master the basic openings and endgames, which you must know by heart and be able to use at the right moment. Service Listudy This is exactly what it will teach you.
He uses spaced repetition method, which significantly improves memorization: you repeat the same action after a set period of time, which gives amazing results with due diligence.
With Listudy, you will master the main chess openings, such as the King's Gambit, the Indian Defense, the Evans Gambit, and many others. You will also master the variations of each tactic, which is also important for a successful opening.
In the app you also practice playing the endgame, i.e. the final stage of the game. This is a very important skill, because at the end of the game the clock starts counting down the last minutes and it is important to be able to quickly make the right decisions.
Listudy also has a large collection of different tactics, which will give you the opportunity to try your hand: the program will give you a random position and ask you to find the best move in this situation. There are no restrictions here, you can practice as much as you like.
Chess Vision
Chess Vision — is an amazing AI-powered chess toolkit. It consists of three parts, and for regular users, a browser extension is more than enough Chrome or Firefox.
Once you install the Chess Vision extension, it will be able to analyze chess boards directly from your monitor. For example, if you are racking your brains over an online game or watching a chess match stream, just launch the extension: in a minute or two, it will scan the board and suggest the best moves and combinations. In general, this is a great way to learn to analyze your own mistakes.
The second component of Chess Vision is a search engine for YouTube, tailored for chess. The search engine filter includes starting positions, phases of the game, opening positions, and pawn structure. You can search for general topics, such as pawn gambits and castling. Just enter the necessary parameters and the service will immediately return a list of all the relevant videos on YouTube.
The last part is an AI e-book reader that turns regular chess books into interactive pages: you can immediately play any game you find in the book. This feature is limited for free users, so you'll have to pay extra for full access.
Stockfish
Stockfish — is probably the most powerful open-source chess engine, capable of using up to 512 CPU cores on multiprocessor systems. It is free and available for both desktop (Windows, Linux) and mobile platforms.
Among its capabilities, it is worth noting the support of the algorithm alpha-beta cutoffs, bit boards, greater search depth due to more aggressive pruning and move reduction, as well as Chess960 support and much more.
Stockfish is much stronger than the best grandmasters. Unlike most chess engines, it is open source (GPL license), so you can read the code, modify it, and use it in your own projects.