Analysis improvement tips from the masters

Once you've selected some candidate moves, it is time to analyze them, to think through variations and decide which candidate is best. In a previous post I described what the masters have to say about when and how much analysis is needed.

What most of us want to know, however, is how to get better at analysis. Herein I include three different techniques recommended by three different authors. If anybody has other suggestions, please let us know!

A. Kotov: learn to analyze by analyzing
Kotov's suggestion, in Think like a grandmaster, is a natural one. To get better at something practice doing it!

Specifically, Kotov suggests picking a good annotated game collection and working through the moves in a game until the position becomes fairly complicated. He then puts the book away and "set myself the task of thinking long and hard so as to analyse all the possible variations. [...] I would sometimes write down the variations I had examined and then I would compare them with those of the annotator. At first there was a big discrepancy in favour of the latter, but then I leraned how to widen my scope and delineate each variation with considerable exactitude."

I am using this method, as it most closely resembles what I have to do in real games. I write down all the variations (I know this detracts somewhat from the "real game" goal, but it helps me to compare my analysis to the annotations).

B. Soltis: read through master games
Soltis' method is somewhat similar. He says:

A worthwhile exercise is to play over an annotated game [...] Stop at each point where there is a short comment, one that gives an alternative variation that runs one or two moves into the future. Once you visualize that note to its end, continue playing through the game until you rech the next short note and repeat the process. When you've gone through the entire game and exhausted all the short notes, go over the game again and try to visualize slightly longer notes. [...] Eventually work yourself up to the five-movers. But ignore the really long notes (unless you are a masochist).

This is a nice method which I have used a little bit. One shortcoming compared with the Kotov method is that in real games you don't just have to visualize, but visualize moves that spring from your own imagination.

C. Buckley: memorize the squares and visualize auras
Buckley, in his popular book Practical chess analysis recommends Kotov's method but recommends starting by memorizing the board. He also says that it is helpful during analysis to visualize lines of force emanating from the pieces, lines that pass through other material on the board, as this helps you avoid making blunders such as not correctly visualizing that a file has been opened by one of the variations.

I know a lot of blindfold experts say it is absolutely essential to have the board memorized, and I even posted about various software available for this skill. This technique seems more important if you are interested in blindfold chess. I have just begun visualizing lines of force (this is something my coach suggested as well), so it is too early to judge how helpful it is.