Analysis confusion

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Avatar of remf3

I recently ran one of my games through the chess.com analysis.  The analysis showed that at least half of my moves were mistakes and I had at least one blunder.  My opponent was shown to have only two mistakes and no blunders.  Yet, through all of my poor play, I mated him.

What does this mean?  If my opponent doesn't capitalize on my mistakes, does the computer not recognize those as mistakes on his/her behalf?  I know I'm playing at a pretty low level, but I guess I'm curious as to how the bungler can win? 

Avatar of Shivsky

Very good question =>

1. The computer is not AI-equipped to verbalize the whole game summary to you like a good coach would. A coach would say "Well done, you got him good...but here's where you could have done better".  

2. Engines treat each move as a unique chess position and give it a corresponding score in evaluating the position,  based on what it considers best play moves are. They then look at your move, see how far under par it is compared to the best move that could be played in the position.   It doesn't look at your game as a whole, just a bunch of individual positions that it evaluates, one at a time, against the move the player played.

3., Based on how big  the difference it is, it is either a blunder, mistake or a mild inaccuracy.  If your move is not too far away (in quality) from the engine recommendation, most engines, and even Chess.com's nitpicking mother-in-law of an engine will shut the hell up and move on to the next position. Pat yourself on the back each time the engine does this ... if it doesn't criticize, you're evidently doing something right on THAT  move. :)

4. So it is possible that you can have a game where you have more blunders, more inaccuracies and more mistakes, but your opponent could have made one SEVERE blunder and you mated him.  You both made blunders, sure, but his blunder allowed you to force the win, either by the sheer awesomeness of his mistake or the fact that you opened your eyes to it and instantly punished him for it.

The engine just gives you a read-out critique of each position it saw in the game vs. the move that was played FOR that position ... it doesn't act as a live sports commentator glue-ing the whole game together as a story :)

Avatar of gorgeous_vulture

A blunder can mean that you missed a move that would have given you a big material advantage or even won you the game, right there and then. The fact that you made blunders and mistakes (by the computer's definition) and still won is typical: most games that I have won have featured at least one move the chess.com computer regards as a blunder and all have multiple mistakes. All it means is that you won in suboptimal fashion.

Avatar of Loomis

If your opponent makes 5 small mistakes, and then you make one bigger mistake this might even out to put you in an even position. The small mistakes might be below the computer's threshold for reporting them, but the one big mistake is above the threshold. So it looks like, your opponent has played perfectly, you have made a mistake, yet the game is even.

Avatar of remf3

Thanks for the input all. Shivsky's explanation was very helpful.  That definitely explains a lot.