This is something that I have done in the past, many years ago. Back in the early '80s and throughout the'90s, I kept chess notebooks. I would copy down my club and tournament games, good bad and ugly. But I also kept a second notebook, in which I tried to analyse my more difficult games. Not the games where I played without an opponent and won fairly easily, nor the games where the primary lesson was that some days it's best to not get out of bed. Rather, those games where, win lose or draw, both my opponent and I played well enough that the outcome hung in the balnce. We both had ideas, good and bad, but our assessments were coloured and far from dispassionate. We both saw a lot tactically, but there was more that we didn't see. The kind of games that tell you something about yourself, your strengths and weaknesses. I used to do that, and do it the old fashioned way. In a notebook. Pen, paper, and a chess board on the table.
I took about a 25 year hiatus from chess, but I've been back into it at the club level for a year now. I'm half way through the club championship, and with a record of +2 -1 =2 so far I have a few games that I think need deeper analysis than I have given them so far. Mostly I just think that back in the day, I could have calculated during the game a lot better. (I have one particular endgame in mind where I offered the draw perhaps too early, but it was late and I was in that bloody tiered state where any kind of misperception was possible.) but looking to the broader question, is it worth the time and effort of going back to the old ways?
an idea whose time has come again
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