To find your chess weaknesses, look at many of your games at once instead of one at a time: gather your recent games, measure where your play breaks down — opening, middlegame or ending; blunders, lost endings, conversion of good positions — and let the pattern, not your memory of the last loss, decide what you train. A single game tells you a story; fifty games tell you the truth. You can do this by hand with a notebook and an engine, or let a tool do the counting: the game scan on ChessMind AI imports your public Lichess games (Chess.com too on yearly and lifetime plans), or a PGN file, and turns them into a report of your strengths, your recurring mistakes and the areas to work on first.
Why You Probably Have the Wrong Diagnosis
Ask a club player what their weakness is and you will usually hear one of three answers: "openings", "tactics" or "I blunder too much". They are almost always guessing, and the guess is shaped by the last painful game, not by the hundred before it.
The problem is memory. You remember the dramatic losses — the queen you hung, the mate you missed — and forget the quiet ones: the equal endgame you drifted out of, the winning position you let slip in time trouble, the twenty games where your opening was fine and your middlegame plan was not. When a player's self-diagnosis and the evidence of their games disagree, the games win — and the real weakness is usually the one the player never mentioned.
So the rule is simple: diagnose from data, not from memory.
What to Measure in Your Games
Whether you do it by hand or with a tool, these are the questions that matter:
- Where does the game turn? In the opening, the middlegame or the ending? A player who loses most games in the opening has a different problem from one who loses them after move 40.
- What kind of mistake turns it? A one-move blunder, a missed tactic, a wrong plan in a quiet position, a misplayed ending, a collapse in time trouble?
- What happens to your good positions? Players often look only at losses. The more telling number is how many better or winning positions you failed to convert.
- How do you play the ending? Count how often you reach an ending with a good or equal position and come out with less. For many club players this is the single largest leak, and almost none of them know it.
- How stable is your level? A rating that swings a lot from game to game often points to blunders and tilt rather than to a missing piece of knowledge.
Doing It by Hand
The manual version works and teaches you a lot, but it takes time. Take your last 30 to 50 serious games — not the bullet games. For each loss and each draw from a better position, find the moment where the evaluation turned and write down the category of the mistake. Then count. The category that appears most often is your main weakness; the second one is your next project.
My guide on how to analyze your chess games explains how to review a single game properly — first without an engine, then with one. Do that for the games that matter, and use the counting exercise above to see the pattern across all of them.
Letting a Tool Do the Counting
Counting dozens of games by hand is exactly the kind of work a computer does better. The ChessMind AI scan analyzes your 40 most recent blitz, rapid and classical games in one go:
- Import your games. Enter your Lichess or Chess.com username — it reads only your public games, no password needed — or upload a PGN file, for example the games you played over the board.
- Watch the analysis run. Every game is analyzed, and the report fills in as the games are processed.
- Read the report. It shows your level and how stable your rating has been across recent games; how well you play the opening, the middlegame and the ending; how often you spoil endings you should have held or won; and a review of the games behind each number — click a figure to see the games and moves that produced it.
- Train on your own mistakes. The positions where you went wrong come back as exercises, so the first thing you practice is exactly what cost you points.
You can run it again later to see whether the work changed anything; when you are signed in, your previous scans stay in your history.
Turning the Diagnosis Into Training
A diagnosis is only worth something if it changes what you practice. Match the weakness to the training:
- Blunders and missed tactics: a pre-move checklist in every game, and the habits in my guide on how to stop blundering.
- Planless middlegames: structure-by-structure practice; see how to train the chess middlegame.
- Lost or misplayed endings: play endgames out against accurate resistance; see how to practice chess endgames.
- Openings that leave you worse: drill the lines you actually reach, as in how to practice a chess opening repertoire.
- Rating stuck despite all of this: read how to break a chess rating plateau — a plateau usually means the training is still aimed at last year's weakness.
Then give it time. Work on the main weakness for six to eight weeks, run the diagnosis again, and only then decide whether to move on. Changing the plan every week is how players stay busy without improving.
Common Mistakes When Diagnosing Your Chess
Using too few games. Five games are an anecdote. Use at least thirty, ideally fifty, of the same time control.
Mixing bullet with serious games. Bullet measures your mouse as much as your chess. Diagnose from the time control you care about.
Looking only at losses. Draws from winning positions and slow drifts in equal ones show your weaknesses as clearly as defeats.
Reading the report and training something else. The most common failure of all: the data says "endings" and the player buys another opening course. Train what the games say.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I find my weaknesses in chess?
Look at many of your games at once rather than one at a time. Gather 30 to 50 recent serious games, find where each game turned and what kind of mistake caused it, and count the categories. The most frequent one is your main weakness; train it for several weeks and then measure again.
Is there an app that analyzes my online games and shows my recurring weaknesses?
Yes. ChessMind AI's game scan imports your public Lichess or Chess.com games, or a PGN file, analyzes them together and shows how well you play the opening, middlegame and ending, how often you spoil endings, your level and rating stability, and the positions from your own mistakes to practice first.
How many games do I need to find my weaknesses?
At least thirty games of the same time control, and fifty is better. With fewer games a single bad day can look like a weakness; with more, the pattern that remains is the real one.
Should I analyze my games with an engine?
Yes, but after thinking for yourself. Review the critical moments without an engine first, then use it to check your conclusions. For finding patterns across many games, let a tool do the counting and spend your own time on the games and positions the pattern points to.
Can I analyze games I played over the board?
Yes. Export or type them into a PGN file and upload it to the ChessMind AI scan, which analyzes it the same way it analyzes your online games. Over-the-board games are often your most serious ones, so they are worth including.