How to review your Lichess games

Get Lichess’s free computer analysis

Open the finished game on Lichess and press Request a computer analysis. Lichess runs Stockfish over every move on its own servers, at no cost, and a minute or so later the game shows an advantage chart, each player’s accuracy and average centipawn loss, and every inaccuracy, mistake and blunder marked in the move list.

Do it for every rated game you want to learn from. The analysis stays with the game, so anything that reads your games later (Lichess’s own tools included) can use it.

Go through it yourself first

Before you look at the engine’s verdicts, play through the game once with them out of sight. Stop where you felt unsure, where you spent a long time, and where the game changed character: a trade of queens, a pawn break, a sudden attack. Say in a sentence what you were thinking there.

Then compare. The useful finds are the places where your feeling and the engine disagree: a move you were proud of that it marks as a mistake, or a moment you worried about that was fine.

Find the turning point

Most games are decided by one or two moves. On the advantage chart, look for the biggest drop on your side: that’s the move to spend your time on. Moves after the game was already lost (or already won by a mile) rarely teach much, so skip them.

Check the move times too. In blitz and rapid, a blunder often follows a long think a few moves earlier, or comes in a rush with the clock low. Knowing which one it was changes what you work on.

Ask why, not just what

Seeing the better move isn’t the lesson; knowing why you missed it is. For each mistake, ask what kind it was:

• A tactic you didn’t see, yours or your opponent’s.
• A threat you didn’t check for before moving.
• A plan that didn’t fit the position.
• The clock.

Lichess’s Learn from your mistakes button, on the analysis board, takes you back to each mistake and asks you to find the better move yourself. Finding it beats being shown it.

Look across games, not just one

One blunder is noise. The same kind of mistake in ten games is a habit, and habits are what cost rating points. Every few weeks, look back over your recent reviews and count: are your mistakes mostly in the opening, the middlegame or the endgame? In won positions or lost ones? With time on the clock or without?

Lichess’s Insights page can slice your results by opening, game phase and more, which helps with the counting.

Turn it into practice

A review is only worth what you do next. Pick the one weakness that showed up most and train it for a week: Lichess’s Puzzle themes let you drill one motif at a time (forks, back-rank mates, rook endgames), and its Practice section walks through key endgame positions. Then review the next week’s games and see if it shows up less.

Where Middlegame helps

Middlegame does this routine with you. It reads the Lichess analysis of your games and explains each one in plain words, pitched at your rating: the moments that decided it, what you played, the better move and how the mistake gets punished. Sign in with Lichess and review your last game right here; add the Chrome extension and every game after that gets its review beside the board on Lichess. Your first three reviews are free, then one a week.

Across games, your free profile does the counting for you: your accuracy, your clock and the way you play, counted from your own games and set against players at your rating.