Taking a break from the Issues circus, how do most people go about playing through games when studying?
I have seen many different methods recommended, and I guess they probably each serve a purpose and should be used to varying degrees.
Choose side to play as. Possibly play through the opening, then with the moves covered analyze and come up with a move (write the analysis down to compare with annotations later). Compare your move with the move played. Make opponent’s move. Rinse and repeat (Silman gives this method in Reassess your Chess, and I’m sure it has been discussed elsewhere)
Same as above, but without the writing analysis down. (Tom Rowan wrote article about this in NW Chess)
Play through many games fairly fast, emphasizing pattern recognition.
Play through the game, making sure you understand the reason for the moves.
Since playing over master games is supposed to be one of the best ways to improve I am curious how others go about it.
David Bronstein, in “Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” suggests a three-pass approach. First, go over the game (always with a board), without spending more than five seconds on a move. If you feel the temptation to spend more time on a given move, take down notes instead and move on. Take a brief break, have a cup of coffee, try to reconstruct the game in your head and think about what just happened. In the second phase, go over the game again, a bit slower, and write down everything you didn’t see the first time around. Finally, in the last pass, work with your notes and take as much time as needed. Pretend you disagree with every move on either side, and try to assess them critically. Finally, if you didn’t take any notes in the first pass, skip the game entirely, at least for the time being. I’m sort of loosely translating from Russian, and doing that from memory, since I don’t have the book in front of me – Bronstein’s exposition is quite a bit more colorful and convincing.
I don’t know if that works for everyone, but I’ve noticed a few things with this approach. Phase I seems to be designed, whether intentionally or not, to let you spend just enough time to notice the critical points in the game. That amount of time seems to be just enough to not require looking at the score in phase II (the notes help, as well). By the time I’m done with phase III, the game latches on to my long-term memory in a barnacle-like fashion, which gives me something chess-related to do when I don’t have a board (e.g., going over it in my head while at work).
Anyway, I doubt any particular method is applicable in each and every case for each and every game (in particular, this is diametrically opposed to the “guess the next move” approach, and you suddenly have retrograde analysis at your disposal), but I personally am rather fond of that one.