LETTER SENT TO VARSITY TEAM PARENTS

All:
Parents please read this e-mail & then pass it on to your child to read.  Please be sure they read WFM Uyanga Byambaa's commentary.

I have been pleased with many of our players.  They, after a couple of years, are doing an outstanding job in analyzing their chess games.  However, a few players still don’t get it or do not care to get it. WFM Uyanga Byambaa the top woman playing chess in the area answered one parents request to take a look at her son’s game.  In so doing, she has provided me, for all time,' with the perfect explanation and information on the why's and how to annotate a game.  I am inserting her analysis in this letter and attaching an example of why Oliver Wu in fourth grade has busted most of the records ever held by any other Weibel players while at Weibel.  There are still a few records held by Kevin Moy—made Expert at Weibel and won a National Championship and Micah Fisher-Kirshner—won three Spring State Championships while at Weibel and went through a whole year of Weibel Chess w/o losing or drawing a game at Friday chess.

Before inserting WFM Byambaa’s analysis of why & how to analyze here is some information about the three weeks until our next chess meeting on December 5.
1) Have a Happy Thanksgiving and a fun break.
2) Chess homework needs to be done only for this week.  Of course, since I won’t be checking it until December 5, it is due December 5.  This means 40 puzzles for the Novice Team, 30 puzzles for the Varsity Team, 60 puzzles for anyone new to Junior Varsity this year and 30 puzzles for anyone on JV that was here last year.
3) The game played Friday, November 14 is to be turned in on December 5 or earlier.  Please remember that you can e-mail the work to me with a scanned copy of the game played.  If the game is for some reason not available—you weren’t at chess that day--it is OK to do a game you played with a person that week or even the computer. While Tigran (my Assistant) and I do not have time to go over every game, once in awhile we send out notes or notice that the game annotation says something like, "Morphy should have played Nf3."  And, yes I did get a paper like this.  So please tell you children to wait to cheat until they get into the business world.  Ok, I am being a wise guy here.  Simply tell them that cheating is not acceptable and could land in expulsion.

FROM WFM AND NM Uyanga Byambaa:
Analyzing your own game is the most important aspect to improve. The purpose of the analysis is not only finding your mistakes (of course this is very important), but to improve your thinking process. Going to the next level definitely requires better thinking process.

The thinking process includes these main concepts:

    •    Why you’re doing what you’re doing?
    •    What did you think about your position during the game? Are you winning, equal or losing?
    •    Why did you make this decision?
    •    Did you constantly double check you moves before you moved? Did you figure out what your opponent was trying to do before you moved? Were any checks or captures? Did you seriously consider all your options?
    •    Did your opponent’s move surprise you? Was it expected?
    •    Did you recognize the critical moment of the game?
    •    Did you calculate certain variations? How far did you see?
    •    What were you thinking during the game?
    •    Did you have a plan? What was it?

Your analysis should include answering these questions.

Note that these concepts are not just your moves, it also related to you opponents moves. That means you should make a comment on one or two of your opponents moves in your analysis.  

I often see comments like: “pawn to center”, “minor piece development”, “rook to the center”, “king running away from check” and etc, these are not a part of your thinking process. These are just a label of your move.  At the level of most of the Weibel players, these kinds of  comments  are very obvious and, therefore, there  is no need state.  

You don’t really have to do the opening moves or obvious recaptures.  Instead of saying “king running away from check”, you should say “since king in check, running away is my only choice or best options. I have these possibilities  blah blah blah. I don't want to go there because blah blah. I thought going this square is the best option because blah blah.

When you analyze your own game, you should first do it on your own with chess sets in front of you to write down your thinking process. Next,  put it in your chess engine. Computers will only help pointing out your blunders and tactical mistakes or suggest good moves; however, they don't help your thinking process.

There are some good examples of analysis in the following link. You should check it out.
http://uyangabyambaa.blogspot.com/ See game:
Graham Grindland (2030) - Uyanga Byambaa (2171) [E99] Sacramento Chess Championship (4), 05.07.2014
http://uyangabyambaa.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2013-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2014-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=2 See game:  SAMIR ALAZAWI (2003) - UYANGA BYAMBAA (2075)  

Another very effective thing you can do in your analysis is to make a conclusion. I make my students do this and I witness tremendous improvement in their games.

Point out 3 main mistakes in your game. Answer these questions.
Why did I make that mistake?
What could I have done better instead?
How do I fix it?

Finally, sum up your analysis: What did you learn from the game? Write it down. It could be anything. For example:
I learned that the most natural moves are not always the best.
Instead of recapturing automatically, there might be an in between move I’m missing.
Sometimes double pawns are fine because they make my pieces more active in the open lines and diagonals.
In time pressure, moving too fast is not a good idea.
In Sicilian dragon, castling opposite side gives me good chance to manage a strong attack and etc.

Of course, it’s a lot of work. GM Jesse Kraai told me once, that he spends months to going over just one game. He’d write 10-15 pages of analysis. I was highly impressed and motivated at the same time. He has an incredible work ethic!   However for me, it takes one or two days, sometimes just few hours. I recommend  for our Varsity Team players that they spend at least an hour to working on their own game.

Just take it slow. You don’t have to do all this once, it will take some time. Make sure to put more details in  your analysis on the critical moments of the game including certain variations you see during the game.

I hope my recommendation will not intimidate anyone.

Sincerely

Coach Uyanga