Can you help me with 'accuracy'?

Q.1 - What are the 'accuracy' points given to me after the game? Q.2 - What is a good or normal amount of these points for me (550 rating)? Q.3 - What is the difference between the normal accuracy and the other accuracy on page 2 or analysis? Q.4 - Is 100 the max accuracy points? Context - I was playing the defensive guy (1100 maybe?) bot and after winning I clicked my game analysis button for the day. One of the big numbers was the accuracy, which I got 80. However, looking in the next page, it shows me another accuracy score (with takebacks and hints taken into account?) and mine was 89 (In was playing on challenge mode). If you could help me, that would be great, thanks!

1) I think chess.com calls it CAPS? I think they have a YouTube video where Danny explains it. They envisioned it as a sort of report card for your game. They reasoned that non-players don't understand things like average centipawn loss, so why not use a metric people can understand from school (you get 80 out of 100 for example).

The more dismissive point of view (mine) is it's a silly marketing gimmick. It doesn't mean anything since even players under 1000 can get games in the high 90s, and it confuses a lot of people who think it means their opponent must have cheated. "Best" moves aren't best in an absolute sense, they're just moves that didn't drop the evaluation very much.

 

2) The way I view for my own games is 85% or above means I probably felt comfortable during the game. Things were in control. Anything 70 or below means I was confused or it was a chaotic game. 70-85 is a grey zone. Of course this isn't very helpful since I already know how I felt during the game... but this is as much as I read into those numbers. They don't mean anything else to me.

What many people don't realize is low rated players can play e.g. the French exchange opening, trade off all the pieces, and get a game in the high 90s meanwhile two GMs can play a chaotic opening and both score in the 70s or 80s. A "good score" based only on your rating doesn't exist, although like I said they envisioned it like a grade in the US school system (90 and above is an A, 80-90 is a B and so on).

 

3) I don't know what page 2 means. If you mean the accuracy after you do the analysis stuff, that's just a gimmick to encourage people.

 

4) Yes, max is 100

thank you! :)

accuracy is sort of weird -- to get a very low score you have to consistently play very bad moves, while playing a solid opening and wrapping up with an efficient endgame will net you a great deal of points, more if the game is short and is mostly opening and endgame, less if you drag it out in the middle for a long time.   So, accuracy for a middle of the road  (advanced beginner or intermediate player) play for like a 50 move game looks like 10 opening moves or sensible early moves (full points) and 15 or so mopping up moves that are hard to screw up.  That is 50% accuracy right off the bat, so if you do reasonably in the middle (else, you would not have the won endgame!) you are going to get at least 50% of what's left, so accurate range is actually going to ride 75% to 100%  in most of your won games.   The line between 75% and 100% is very steep, though: to get 100% you have to match nearly every remaining computer move.  Worse, level of play comes into it.  If you are playing intermediate level games (say 1500s or so) finding the best move after your opponent messes up is MUCH easier than finding the mistake of a 2300 rated guy and matching it with the right response.  That is, anyone can take the free queen, but not everyone can see that GM move that gets you 0.0003 score increase. 

Accuracy is just too fiddly to try to use it as a score of your ability or progress, because of all that.   If you play some guy that falls to the scholars mate and you get 100% accuracy over 4 moves, your play has not improved nor did you do something amazing beyond messing with a new player.   Likewise if you run into a trap and get a 65% accuracy, you haven't forgotten all you knew or suddenly started playing poorly, you just got tricked and while you can learn from that, its no indication of anything outside the one game.