Game Review: New Feature

Fool’s Mate is 100% book. Likely Arthur Saul’s 1614 text, but here it appears in 1656 in such a manner that some people mistakenly credit Greco.

I noticed the "retry", "hint" and "best" buttons are too small for the text they're supposed to contain, so only partial letters and symbols show up. Without a tooltip to show what the buttons do, I just have to guess, based on previous experience. This is a pretty severe design flaw for something that's rolled out site-wide.

To show what I mean about the buttons being truncated:

What device are you using?

So, i tried the game review as a gold member i think i get one or something along that line. I got the following message, and I’m paraphrasing but certainly not exaggerating: “this move doesn’t help you but it doesn’t really hurt you.” 

Hmmmm…. Is this what I’d be paying for to upgrade? Maybe I’m missing the whole thing, but this seems geared towards players far below even me. Am i missing it altogether?

I asked the same in a different topic/post. I could only get that to happen by making the browser window smaller than my screen (about 75% of the screen width).

I haven’t tried this feature on my phone, but the buttons are full and clear on my iPad, notebook, and desktop.

Yeah, they didn't try very hard to come up with some good texts. But it's only partly their fault. There's no AI technology at this moment, that could actually understand and explain the chess game in human terms. It's some engine line, with some generic words slapped over it and then you have the option to "Show line", which might or not be useful. You could do the same in the analysis tab without being distracted by the Coach's pearls of wisdom. 

That's why I think it's a marketing gimmick aimed at new players, to give the impression of learning and understanding, while not doing much, if anything at all.

I think that some of the advice is counter-productive. I noted above that concrete threats when risky are called mistakes in favor of “developing a piece”. Yesterday, “developing a piece” was given as the reason for making the only move that protected a pinned piece. There was a concrete tactical threat explained by a generic “development” principle.

I agree that's quite bad on top of everything else, that's wrong with this "feature". I'm sure, there's going to be a lot of these.

Analysing the suggested engine lines is not a simple and easy task. In order to generate the advice text correctly, the software would need to go into variation starting with a bad player's move, understand why is it bad and generate text description. Then it needs to pick the best engine move, understand why is it best and generate the text that takes into consideration the consequences of the bad move.

It's not as simple as saying, you should develop a piece. Yes, Qd2 is a developing move, but it's doing so much more. I mean look at the position after 12. bxc3 Qxc3. Although the material is even, evaluation is almost -2 in blacks favour. Why? Putting it into words is hard even for experienced chess players, let alone some half baked software.

This feature might be somewhat useful for a complete beginner who makes a lot of basic mistakes, other than that it's just a shiny bling-bling to attract new diamond members, that's useless at best and confusing otherwise.

Windows 10 Home, Firefox (latest update). 

I cannot reproduce the problem you showed using Chrome.

bxc3 is a blunder that loses a pawn and the right to castle

Is that supposed to prove that it's easy to come up with an explanation? 😂

Yup. 

For me, the same thing happens on Chrome as well as on Firefox, when the browser window is too narrow. That's a limitation of screen size and a compromise between the size of a board and the review panel, can you not just make your browser window wider?

I don't like it. old game review was better. it just a money grab

Ok, grandmaster😂

What if I argued that loss of a pawn is compensated by material being equal, that if I didn't take that pawn, I'm down a piece. And lost right to castle by itself is not enough to cause the position to be losing?

And why Qd2 is the ONLY good move that keeps the position equal, even though I'm down material?

I don’t think I would upgrade for this alone. I think that chess.com means well with the new review, especially in light of the great number of youngsters. But then again, the young ones seem to advance much more rapidly so I doubt it will be useful to them either. 

There are severe limits for a virtual coach. I’m not convinced that Chess.com is employing AI, but rather using code like ChessBase used for Fritz analysis two decades ago. Nonetheless, they could add substantially to the coach’s vocabulary. Maybe they will.

I agree that as it is, the new feature is more gimmick than helpful. I also think the confidence it gives to some could make them inflexible in their  preference for generic developing moves over making and assessing concrete threats (see John Watson, Secrets of Modern Chess Theory and Dan Heisman, Elements of Positional Evaluation).

The coach’s effort to highlight the game’s critical points is a step in the right direction, but this was done more easily in the old system because the game was always viewed from both sides and the evaluation slider was always prominent beside the board. It may be there still, but there are distractions seeking attention.

I’m not a GM, but I’ve coached many beginners up to the 1500 level, and some have gone on upwards from there, even exceeding my skills. I’ve been coaching youth chess players the entirety of the twenty-first century. I taught my own children in the twentieth.