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Master games are the games of great players that have been written down using chess notation, and saved forever on computer databases. By looking at master games you see chess at its best.

Where do you find Master Games?

Right here. Look under ratings, or simply click on play to see entire lists of great games to go through, many of them with commentary. Until now, you had to go out and pay big bucks for chess books, and chess books are not as easy to review games because you have to move the pieces manually on a board while reading the book. Here we do everything for you.

What is Commentary?
When you are learning chess, commentary are comments on important moves that help you UNDERSTAND the moves that are played. Commentary is essential for learning players. Basically, chess books, have games and lots of commentary to help you. On this website you will find games with commentary, very good commentary designed for kids and learning players….play through these games first reading all the commentary.

What are variations?
When you look through an annotated game, it will have moves in parenthesis that show lines that could have been played and weren’t. These are called variations. In all games, there are many variations possible, that may be extremely beneficial to look at. When playing through games on the Academic Chess viewer, you will see boxes on the right that you can click to see variations.

Do all Chess Masters Look Through Master Games?

Yes, absolutely all of them without exception. It is the best way to get better at chess.

Why Master Games?

Playing through and understanding Master games can greatly better your chess. When you look through the moves of someone who is much better than you, and you actually understand the moves, you are much closer to playing the moves yourself. Looking at games of someone who is not better than you would be a waste of your time.

Which Master Games?
Here at Academic Chess, we have spent 100s of hours sifting through our database of millions of games, to find the few games that are the most educational and the easiest to understand. We highly recommend that you stay with these games. Newer master games (Kasparov, Polgar, Kramnick, etc.) tend to be very boring for the learning player. We have picked exciting games with exciting finishes, like the games you will be playing once you understand the chess principles.

Memorizing Master Games

Memorizing chess games is a great way to make sure you understand the games.

It is much harder to remember a move if you don’t understand why it was played. By understanding each move of a game, you will find the game much easier to memorize. For this reason it is a tremendous exercise of the learning chess player to memorize a game.

Guessing the moves on Master Games

A great exercise is to play through the games of your favorite chess legend, and try to guess what the next move he plays is. Doing this will make you feel like a chess legend, and if you do it enough...you may become a chess legend yourself! You can do this with a written down game by covering up the future moves with a piece of paper. If you are looking through games on the Academic Chess Play section, simply do not push the go forward arrow until you have guessed the move. Guessing the moves is almost as fun as playing.

Master Move Questions

• Why did he play that move?
• What other obvious moves could he have played?
• Why didn’t he play those obvious moves?
• What is his plan?
• What moves are coming up?

The Wrong Way to look at master games

Rocketing through the moves without asking yourself the Master Move Questions, or putting any kind of thought into the games. Remember, you should UNDERSTAND each move. If you can breeze through a master game, and you can UNDERSTAND every move quickly, then you are a master yourself and you should be out making millions of bucks becoming an American Chess Legend.