This post is part of a series describing the process I am using to attempt improvement in chess. The main post gives an overview of the process while this article explains one of the steps in detail. The first step on our chess improvement journey is to understand factually the strengths and weaknesses in our game. I am speaking from lifelong experience when I say that this is difficult to intuit. It is simple to remember recent blunders and draw conclusions that are not aligned with your performance over a longer period of time. The cognitive term for this is Recency Bias . So, the question we are faced with is: How do you measure your chess ability? There are a great many approaches for this, and my choice is not necessarily the best fit for everyone. My approach is to identify all mistakes from my competitive chess games with a classical time control. Basically, taking the idea of the "List of Mistakes" that Axel Smith describes in the excellent book Pump Up Your Rating,
Thoughts on whatever I am obsessed with at the time.