Analyze Your Draws and Losses?

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A piece of advice that we hear over and over again is to analyze your games, especially draws and losses.

On the surface, that seems like sound advice, and here is a game I played on Thursday which I not only won, but was quickly up material. So why would anyone waste their time analyzing such a trivial win?

So what would be the point of looking at this at all? Well, in spite of the fact that the win was pretty straightforward there is one extremely teachable moment for Black here.

Recently I learned WHY White plays 4.Bd3 in the Exchange Caro. The idea is to prevent an easy …Bf5 by Black.

So now I can work on what to do in a position like this one, reached in the game:

I have been saying for years that I need to work on openings, but it’s only for the past few months or so that I truly have been doing so.

Now I have a position to analze which will help me understand why 4.Nc3 is inaccurate, and knowing why the book line is played will help with that. Whereas if I simply took the position that this game isn’t worth looking at since I won then I would miss something.

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott