How does one look at hundreds of master games a day? IM Jeremy Silman responds to the question, "What kind of study program did you use?":


  I mostly looked at endless master games (while simultaneously eating copious amounts of ice cream), sometimes going over several hundred in a single day (only stopping when I was slaphappy and drooling). Most young players I talk to don’t go over nearly enough master games, but now that databases are available there’s simply no excuse for this. 


Does one simply just take in the patterns that the masters play? How can one learn like this? 

Wouldn't it be better to look at maybe ten games in a scrupulous manner?
That depends on what you want from the games.

If you are looking for deep human style analysis, it is of course not possible.

If you are interested in shallow computer automated analysis (like lichess evaluation graph), then it’s possible.

If you are interested in opening theories, it’s possible again. For example, a French player would skip Ruy Lopez games.

Professional players generally don’t study chess games randomly. They would have an objective like rook endgames with two pawns down. Good database search would be useful.

Please define what you want from the games.