Using Lichess to Improve your game, everyday!

I use Lichess extensively for my chess coaching. My students are part of teams on lichess and use the platform for both practice games as well as competitive tournaments. 

Today, I am going to explain how you can use the platform not just for playing but for improving your game by analyzing your own games and learning from them systematically. This article alone can add 100 elo points to a beginner over a period of 3 months if you follow systematically.

The feature is called "Learn from your mistakes" under the Analysis Board and Computer Analysis.

Firstly, know that all your played games on lichess are archived on the cloud and available to you for review or download. You need to go to your "profile".

  Your profile page will show a lot of data and stats about your games on lichess. Towards the top right of the page, you get an option to "download" all your games, Towards the middle right, you can click on "games" to look at the summary list of all your games.

Choose any of the games you are interested in analysing and click the "analysis board" button.

Now, you can either play through the games and look at optional moves varying from the game. The top right toggle button enables/disables engine estimates of the position and there is an option to "show the threat". 

You can also "request computer analysis". I suggest you do this only after you have gone through the entire game yourself first without seeking computer help. This is the best way to improve. 

Computer Analysis will take a few seconds to a couple of minutes depending on quality and length of the game.

As you can see, firstly, the engine estimate of the game progress is shown as a graph. 

(In beginner games, this graph will jump to positive and negative territory many times showing that both sides made blunders and the game swung wildly. In a master game, you will see very little oscillation and one side steadily increasing its advantage to a win or almost equal through the game to a drawn game. The numeric analysis is always in terms of unit equivalent of a pawn. +1 means white if effectively a pawn ahead while -0.5 means black is effectively half a pawn ahead)

The analysis below the game notation shows the number of inaccuracies, mistakes and blunders of both the players (each category is more severe than the previous) and also an average centi-pawn loss score. The latter shows how many centi-pawns you are likely to loose on every move you make. 

(Average of 50 centi-pawn loss means you are effectively losing half a pawn on every move you make! Obviously, the lower is this number, the better is your play. But do not look at it as a single game. Average it over 20-50 games and you get a pretty good idea of your playing strength).

It doesn't end here There is more and its all free!

Click the "learn from your mistakes" button and you are taken to the critical junctures in the game where you made a mistake. You are prompted to think and play a better move. If you cannot find it, the solution is viewable. Look at it carefully - one time, two times, three times and understand why your move was a mistake and the solution is a better move. Try to understand it fully. 

If you have come up to this, then congratulation! You are really committed to improvement. There is one more tool for you.  

At the bottom of the graph, you will see more options. Go and click the last link "FEN and PGN"

 This will make the entire game, including the blunder and mistake analysis available to you as a PGN download.  You can download the raw game, the annotated game with commentary, get a link to embed it in your webpage and also download an animated gif of your game.

Is there anything else that you need ?? Not until you reach the Expert Level (Level 7 in my ladder).