If you have yet to explore our Database, Analysis & Coaching tool (just "Analysis" for short), or if you want to learn how to use it more effectively, here's a brief introduction. The Analysis page is a powerful tool with a wide range of uses. You can study master games, create a library of your own games complete with annotations, and share it all live with other chess24 members.

Whether your watching a live broadcast, trying to improve on your last playzone game, or collaborating with coaches or students, you really should check out all it has to offer. Let's take a closer look!

You can always find a direct link from our main menu in the Learn tab

What is this and what can I do with it?

You can think of it as a fully-realized analysis tool in the cloud. It starts with an interactive chessboard that will be familiar to all chess24 members. You can make moves, import games, prepare for your next tournament opponent, and save it all in your chess24 account, so you can access it from anywhere.

You can even open any game directly from our Live Tournament broadcasts!

Nakamura vs. Carlsen, Leuven 2016, from the Grand Chess Tour rapid

In order to give a full overview of this tool we'll go into a bit more detail and explain each feature.

Start an analysis session

The setup menu

There are several ways to get started, either from scratch or by importing a game or position you upload or bring into analysis from elsewhere on chess24, such as Live Tournaments, the Playzone, or even the Tactics Trainer!

Start from scratch

When you open the page or launch a new session you can immediately start making moves and carrying out analysis.

Set up a position

If you’d like to set up a position you can click on that option. From there you can define a position manually, or load a position from a FEN string, then choose which side is to play, and a few more options on the "advanced" tab.

Set up a position by drag & drop, or paste a position FEN

Import or Paste a PGN

If you click or tap this option you will open a dialog box where you can import a game or several games from a PGN file. 

If you prefer to paste the text of a PGN you’ve copied from elsewhere, you can use this option instead.

Import a Playzone game

Examine an interesting game from your the chess24 Playzone history with this option. Annotate the game and save it to a personal library.

Annotating a game

Now that you have the game loaded, it’s time to see all the tools that you have at your disposal.

Arrows and colours

On the toolbar to the left of the board you have four coloured buttons used to draw arrows and highlight squares. Below these are an eraser which will let you remove an individual highlight or arrow, and the trash can button will remove all marks from the given position.

Click for a square highlight, or click & drag for an arrow using one of four colours

At the bottom of the toolbar are buttons to promote or remove moves which are part of sub-variations you may enter in the Notation, as well as a mode toggle for inserting or replacing moves. So, now let’s move over to the Notation area to the right of the board, where you can find some other handy features:

Notation

In this tab you can see all the moves, time taken for each move (if available) and the evaluation given by the chess engine. Any sub-variations entered will also be shown.

You can add comments to any move using the text box below the notation, or a variety of annotation symbols by clicking the !? icon, and then choosing symbols from the "move", "position" or "other" tabs:

You have three sets of symbols to choose from

Info

In the next tab you can see and edit information on the tournament, players, date a game was played and more.

Opening explorer

This tab is is a mini version of the Opening Tree in the tabbed area below the board area, allowing you quick access to browse through the moves played from the position on your analysis board, without scrolling. It's a great way to peruse opening variations culled from our massive game database.

Chat

If you start a broadcast of your analysis, you will see an additional chat tab appear, which you can use to chat with other chess24 members you invite to join the analysis session.

Engine Evaluation

At any moment you can see analysis from a chess engine (you can also turn this off in your Settings if you prefer!) which analyses the best moves and shows the top three lines. You can also collapse this to one line if you wish for a more streamlined view, using the triangle toggle on the right hand side.

Choose to display the top line or the top three lines according to the computer

A basic chess engine running in your local browser quickly provides initial analysis of a move, with the deep cloud analysis kicking in as soon as it's ready! As with all other site areas, Premium Members can analyse any move from any game on chess24 using the deep cloud.

Database

The online database of games is at your disposal so that you can see any games that coincide with the position on the board. We’ve also added the ability to search by player, result, year, rating and opponent. This is an extremely powerful tool for work or fun!

In this particular example we’ve searched for all games between Carlsen and Anand between 2011 and 2016 featuring the Berlin Variation of the Ruy Lopez. Results are shown almost instantly!

The world's fastest online database!

Double-click on a game from the Database to have it added to your current analysis session! You can then, annotate it, share it, or save it for future reference.

Share and collaborate!

Now that you have an analysis session up and running, what’s missing? Knowing how to share and use this tool to its fullest! There are the following options:

Analyse on your own

You can carry out and save the analysis for yourself. This enables you to comment on your own games, analyse recent tournaments and keep everything safely in the cloud. Each session is saved independently and you can choose whether to make any session public or keep it private at any time. 

Display analysis as a list or grid, search for games or tags

There's a built-in tagging system to help you organize your saved sessions in any way you want. For instance, you might enter tags by tournament, or opening, or create a "best games" collection.

Invite others to a "broadcast" of your session

Our Analysis tool is designed to be social. You can invite a friend or a coach (or student) using their chess24 username directly, or grab a link to share in any way you choose. Click the Broadcast icon in the toolbar to broadcast your session to one or many, and together you can chat, make moves, add comments and in general do everything you could if you were together at a real board.

Invite one or more individual chess24 members, or share a link for anyone to join!

Save your session

After the session you can save all your analysis and it will always be available in My analysis. You can even download a PGN using the familiar game menu to the lower left of the board.

Still unsure about something? Missing an important feature? Let us know. We’d love to have your comments!

We use this feature a lot around chess24, including in live shows like GM Niclas Huschenbeth's Premium Coaching so this is just the beginning!