Chess improvement articles
Plain-language guides on reviewing your games, reading engine evaluations, and fixing the mistakes that actually cost you rating points. Written to go with RookSac, but useful with any analysis tool.
Last updated: September 29, 2026
Most chess advice is about what strong players do. These pages are about what the numbers from your own games say: where accuracy drops, which phase leaks the most, and how to turn an engine report into a study plan you can follow in twenty minutes a day. New to reviewing games? Start with the first article under “Reviewing your games”. If you just want to see what a full report looks like, open the sample report.
Reviewing your games
- How to Review Your Chess Games: A 20-Minute RoutineA step-by-step routine for reviewing a chess game in 20 minutes: what to do before you turn the engine on, how to find the moments that mattered, and how to turn them into a lesson you keep.
- Why Reviewing 100 Games Beats Reviewing OneOne game is an anecdote. Here is how many games you need before a pattern in your chess means anything, which slices are worth looking at, and how to avoid chasing noise.
- Training with Puzzles: Why Your Own Mistakes Make the Best ExercisesHow to get more from tactics puzzles: solving technique, how long to spend, what to do when you are wrong, and why positions from your own games beat a random puzzle set.
Understanding the numbers
- What Chess Accuracy Really Means (and What a Good Score Is)How a chess accuracy percentage is calculated from engine evaluations, why 90% does not mean 90% of your moves were best, and what the number can and cannot tell you.
- What Does +1.5 Mean? How to Read an Engine EvaluationWhat centipawns are, what an evaluation of +0.5, +1.5 or +3 means in practice, why material is not the whole story, and how to use the number without being misled by it.
- Chess.com vs Lichess: Why the Same Game Gets Different Accuracy ScoresChess.com, Lichess and RookSac each score the same game differently. Here is why, how far apart the numbers really are on 300 real games, and how to compare them sensibly.
Fixing common mistakes
- How to Stop Blundering: A Five-Second Checklist Before Every MoveMost blunders are not knowledge problems. A short pre-move checklist based on checks, captures and threats catches the majority of them, and here is how to make it a habit.
- Six Tactical Patterns Behind Many BlundersForks, pins, skewers, discovered attacks, back-rank mates and deflections: what each pattern is, how to spot it before it happens to you, and a checked example of each.
- Time Management in Blitz and Rapid: Where the Clock Costs You PointsHow error rates climb as the clock runs down, where the time actually goes in a game, and a simple time budget for blitz and rapid that keeps you out of time trouble.
Openings, endgames and structure
- How to Choose an Opening Repertoire Without Memorising Mountains of TheoryA practical way to pick, learn and adjust your chess openings: start from what you actually play, choose by structure and plans, and change only when the results say so.
- Five Endgame Ideas Worth Learning FirstThe opposition, key squares, the Lucena and Philidor positions and the rook-behind-the-pawn rule: the endgame knowledge that converts wins and saves draws, with positions checked against Stockfish.
- Pawn Structures Explained: Isolated, Doubled, Backward and Passed PawnsThe pawn structures that shape most middlegames, what makes each one strong or weak, and how to play with and against them, illustrated with positions from real openings.
These articles explain general chess ideas and how RookSac's analysis works. The engine is precise about single positions, but a review is a tool, not a coach: use it to decide what to practise, then practise it. See how the analysis works for the method and its limits.