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I'm finding annotated chess games very handy to increase my level of chess knowledge.

Are there any recommendations on good online resources for annotated games? I've found a few, but the annotations are either not very good, or the ratings of the players are very low.

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There are blogs and news sites that regularly publish analysis of recent games. Chess24 also provides a lot of videos with analysis of games, competing in that regard with various youtube channels.

You can also find annotated games on Chessgames.com, most easily in the form of game collections via google "site:chessgames.com annotated".

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Here are some of Annotated game archives I found:

GameKnot Annotated Games

ChessGames.com Annotated Archive

PGN Mentor

Use this method to search for annotated games: Search for annotated games

Will add more when I find them.

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    That Chess.com 600+ Annotated Games link is broken. Too bad. Good on the other two free ones. A quick check of the PGN mentor ones show that they are free to download; but a quick check of half a dozen games turned up none of them with annotations.
    – CodeLurker
    Oct 16, 2017 at 2:47
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I'm glad some have found the downloadable annotated PGN game archives at Path to Chess Mastery - https://pathtochessmastery.blogspot.com/ - useful. Although the individual game analyses (my own tournament games and commentary on Master games) have been posted on the blog for training purposes, I think a number of the positional and tactical insights gained could be of general interest for improving Class-level players. I'm a Class A player that uses the Komodo engine for position evaluation (with my own explanations), so you get what you pay for, heh.

As a more general answer, I find that there are a lot of good Chess.com master videos that in fact consist of annotated games - often disguised as training in particular openings or on middlegame principles or whatnot - but there is a paywall, so no unlimited access.

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The best annotated PGN game collections I found were added to my website after searching for days, see

Annotated PGN file download page

I added 950+ annotated games and every world championship match game ever played. You can get a good free PGN reader app from there too, which comes with Stockfish built in.

If any one knows about any other annotated ".pgn" sites please can you post here?

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Here are a bunch, although they are supposed to be used with a defunct product called ChessVU: http://www.angelfire.com/games3/smartbridge/ Note the huge and deeply annotated middle-game database. Edit: I have since tried some of these games out with SCID vs. PC, and it works great. That middle-game tutorial seems to be a really great resource; and there are many other there, too.

Follow-up: Many of these links are broken and/or pop up ads. While it's still worth going through, I'd make sure to either use a sandbox, or a chromium variant. Some of those same materials are here:

Chess Openings: Opening Analysis on the Web

Some of these are annotated games, some are raw PGN, and some are other materials. They are nicely broken down by opening.

This guy at https://pathtochessmastery.blogspot.com/ calls himself only "ChessAdmin", and calls himself a Class C player. On the right column of his blog, he has two databases you can download, one with 180 of his own games, and 77 games of masters, that he's commentated.

Here's a small, older cache of annotated games, for those who are still using the discontinued Chessmaster software:

Chessmaster Grandmaster Edition Downloads | Forums

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  • I don't think annotations of a "class C player" will be very useful for a general audience. I usually don't even trust my own judgement, let alone the chess evaluations of a weak club player.
    – TMM
    Oct 18, 2017 at 12:57
  • He still seems to be a well stronger player than me (maybe 1600). I think I'd learn stuff from him. That's why I do warn as to his strength, however. OTOH, that first resource looks really good.
    – CodeLurker
    Oct 18, 2017 at 13:10
  • Even if he is better than you, you have to be careful when accepting judgements from him. He may well give wrong evaluations, miss tactics or refutations of tactical ideas in the game, and go for wrong strategical plans. It's like learning tennis from someone who might not even know how to hold the racket properly - the lessons may be helpful, but they may also teach you wrong things which will make your chess worse.
    – TMM
    Oct 18, 2017 at 15:40
  • I wouldn't even mention it, except free, well-annotated games on the 'Net are so rare. FWIW: I had a tennis instructor who insisted we didn't try to serve like the pros, since it's so hard to control. She thought we would do better if we did more of a bent elbow serve instead of a real smash. Sometimes, the pro techniques aren't always the ones to get better with. Of course, it's important to know the difference - which is why I was forthcoming with communicated the commentator's strength.
    – CodeLurker
    Oct 18, 2017 at 16:17
  • *** BEWARE of the Angelfire PGN file links which used to be excellent. They are now mostly broken and some seem to have been hijacked so that they open multiple layered browser windows
    – Norman
    Aug 20, 2019 at 6:44

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