How to Analyze Your Chess.com Games: Step-by-Step (Free and Paid)

Updated October 2026 · 8 min read · Every position checked with Stockfish

Most players either never look at their games or click Game Review, glance at the accuracy number and queue the next one. Neither raises your rating. This walkthrough covers where your games live, how to review them with and without an engine, what the free tier gives you, and how to turn a pile of red question marks into one thing to fix this week. If you rarely review games and want the broader method first, see how to analyze your chess games without wasting hours.

1. Find your games in the Chess.com archive

Every game you play on Chess.com is saved automatically. On the website, open your profile and choose Games, or use the game archive in the menu. In the app, tap your profile and open your game history.

Use the filters for time control and result. Don't review everything. Pick:

• Recent losses in your main time control
• Close games you drew or nearly lost
• Games where you were winning and then weren't

Skip bullet games and anything you resigned on move 8 out of frustration. Rapid and slower blitz games show your real thinking, so they teach the most.

2. Review it yourself first (no engine)

This is the step most players skip, and it's the one that builds skill. Open the game in the analysis board with the engine off, play through it, and spend five to ten minutes answering these:

• Where did I feel unsure, and what did I choose?
• Where did I lose material or get mated, and did I see it coming?
• What was my opponent threatening on the move before my mistake?
• Where did I spend too long, or too little, on the clock?

Write one line per key moment. You're recording what you were thinking, because the engine can only show you what was best, not why you missed it.

In the position above, Black's 3...Nf6 develops a piece but ignores the queen and bishop both aiming at f7. If you replay a game like this without the engine, the question "what was my opponent threatening?" finds the error on its own. That habit is exactly what you need at the board.

3. Run Game Review or use the free analysis board

Now switch on the engine. From the finished game, open Game Review. It shows an accuracy score for each side, labels every move (Best, Excellent, Good, Book, Inaccuracy, Mistake, Miss, Blunder and so on), marks key moments and lets you retry the critical positions.

Free tier limits: free accounts get a limited number of full Game Reviews; paid memberships unlock more. Check your account for the current allowance, as it changes. What stays free and unlimited is the analysis board: from any game, open Analysis and turn on the engine lines to see the evaluation and best moves.

If you want another free option, download the PGN from the game page and paste it into the Lichess analysis board, which also runs Stockfish at no cost. You lose the move labels and coach commentary but keep the part that matters: the evaluation and the better move.

4. Read the analysis properly: find the first big swing

Ignore the small inaccuracies. Scroll the evaluation graph and find the first move where the evaluation swung sharply against you. At most club levels, that one moment usually decided the game.

For that moment, ask why, then give it a label:

• Hung piece: you left something undefended or moved a defender away
• Missed tactic: a fork, pin or mate was there for you or your opponent
• Opening: you were worse out of the opening because of a principle you broke
• Endgame: you were fine but misplayed a simplified position
• Time: you rushed or burned the clock

This classic trap shows why labels matter. White's pawn grab 4.Nxe5 and then 5.Nxf7 look like free material, but Black's Qg5 hits g2 and ends with Nf3#. The label isn't "bad opening luck". It's missed tactic: didn't check what the opponent's next move attacked. That label tells you what to train.

Don't fixate on the accuracy figure. It moves with game length and how sharp the position was. If you want a benchmark anyway, read what counts as good accuracy on Chess.com.

5. Turn reviews into a training plan

One reviewed game is an anecdote. Twenty is a pattern. Keep a simple tally of your labels from step 4. After ten to twenty games, one category almost always dominates. For most players under 1500 it's hung pieces and missed tactics, which is why learning to stop hanging pieces is often the fastest rating gain available.

Then pick one fix for the next week: a blunder-check routine before every move, a tactic theme, or one opening line. Review again and see whether the count drops.

How Chessy helps: if the tallying feels like a chore, Chessy connects to your Chess.com username (no password), imports and analyses your games with Stockfish automatically, and shows recurring mistake patterns, blunder rate and win rate by opening. It also turns your own blunders into puzzles, so you drill the positions you actually got wrong.

6. What to study at 1200 (and around it)

If your reviews keep landing in the same categories, here's the order that pays off around 1000–1400:

• Blunder check every move: what does their last move attack, and what does my move leave undefended?
• Tactics: forks, pins, skewers and back-rank mates, ideally from your own games
• One simple opening per colour, played for principles: develop, castle, fight for the centre
• Basic endgames: king and pawn, rook endgames with the king active

A calm setup like this Italian Game gets your pieces out and your king castled without memorising long lines. At 1200, a sound plan you understand beats a sharp line you half-remember. For a fuller breakdown, see what keeps players stuck at 1200 on Chess.com.

Common mistakes

• Letting the engine think for you. If you open Game Review before forming your own view, you learn the move but not why you missed it. Always do the no-engine pass first, even if it's only five minutes.
• Only reviewing wins. Wins feel good to replay but hide the leaks. Losses and thrown-away winning positions are where your rating goes, so review those first.
• Chasing the accuracy number. Accuracy depends on how sharp and how long the game was. A sloppy win and a sharp loss can score similarly. Track your blunder count and the category of each game-deciding mistake instead.
• Reviewing many games shallowly. Clicking through ten reviews in ten minutes teaches nothing. Three games reviewed properly, with a label for each key mistake, are worth far more.
• Memorising engine opening lines. The engine's fifth-best opening move is often irrelevant at club level. Note whether you broke a principle, fix that, and move on.

FAQ

Analysing your Chess.com games doesn't need hours or a paid plan. Find the first big swing, label it honestly, and let the tally decide what you train. Do that for a few weeks and your reviews stop being a ritual and start showing up in your rating. If you'd rather have the importing, pattern-spotting and puzzle-making done for you, Chessy is free to download and connects to your Chess.com username in seconds.

Sources

• Chess.com Analysis Board — How the free analysis board and engine lines work
• Chess.com Support: What is Accuracy? — What the Game Review accuracy score measures
• Lichess analysis board — Free alternative for analysing a pasted Chess.com PGN
• Wikipedia: Blunder (chess) — Definition of a blunder and why it decides club games
• Chessy: How to analyze your chess games — General post-game review method