Does this level of play deserve a "37.5% accuracy score?"

Hi everyone,

I recently played this game on here: [Check out this #chess game: GaucheInTheMachine vs aramirez8321](https://www.chess.com/live/game/114221973215).

I'm baffled by my extremely low accuracy score of 37.5 (and estimated ELO of 100...not that I take the latter seriously.)

Now, I certainly didn't play my best. Here are a couple of my worst mistakes in the game:

1. Move 5- This move allowed my opponent to capture my pawn on e4 with the queen, leading to an unfavorable position early on.
2. Move 23: Qd7 - Moving the queen to d7 was a significant blunder, leading to a stronger position for my opponent.

But still, I feel like the accuracy algorithm's output doesn't remotely reflect the reality of the game. (This is the case on a regular basis - though I acknowledge I could simply be biased/inexperienced.)

It's highly frustrating to see such a low score, even after winning a game, as it doesn't seem to be a fair or informative reflection of my level of play. Not to seem overly sensitive, but let's face it, improving at chess is a journey that is hard on the old ego. These bizarrely low accuracy scores sometimes have me feeling like I'm in the latter half of Flowers for Algernon, if you know what I mean.

I'd appreciate any insights or thoughts on why the accuracy score might be so low and how I can improve my game.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Best,
GaucheInTheMachine

The engine only judges if the move is bad or not according to its calculations and evaluations. It does not reflects of your knowleadge of chess. That was indeed a unusual game for a high 700 elo because important principles were broken. I understand the idea of getting the black queen out of g2 after Ke2 but it breaks the principle of castling and immediatly exposes your king. As the game kept going, you moved it to d3. Do not forget that a safe king is your priority!

It wasn't a good game but you know that already. If you'd told me it was 60% accuracy i'd have believed it. If you'd told me it was 15 % I'd have believed it as well.

I don't think I've ever looked at a game score accuracy after any of my games, reason being it doesn't really mean much, as a lot of the time the acccuracy depends on the type of game it is, not just how well you play. Playing badly in a 'messy' positon where the computer can see moves that have a large deviation from what you played (as was probably the case here) will lead to pretty low scores.

I would forget it and move on. You can't measure your improvement this way. Good luck

@GMSilva109 “Do not forget that a safe king is your priority!” Thanks for the advice. I know a safe king is *a* priority, but I don’t yet have a good instinct for when to castle vs when to focus on offense/other defensive measures.

Another reference point: here’s another game where, unlike the game I posted above, I felt my play was absolutely putrid. Yet my accuracy score was 60. I suppose as a relatively inexperienced player, I shouldn’t always expect my intuition for how well I played to reflect objective measures of play. However, Id say I know enough to fairly say: my play in Game 2 was not remotely *twice* as good as it was in Game 1.

Check out this #chess game: HoAxxB vs GaucheInTheMachine - https://www.chess.com/live/game/108239497076

Appreciate your insights @JamesColeman. I felt this was key to the focus of my post: “Playing badly in a 'messy' positon where the computer can see moves that have a large deviation from what you played (as was probably the case here) will lead to pretty low scores.”

Could you elaborate on this a bit?

Wait, but you didn't win that game. You were white, and you lost.

Don't confuse yourself. It would be possible that you had to counter-attack as fast as possible, so you don't castle. After Ke2, you have lost the right to castle forever. It's different than simply not castling, it's giving up your castling rights.

The biggest advantage of the computer is that it can calculate any kind of position, when certain positions are extremely messy for humans, it doesn't get harder to calculate for a computer. Though i don't think this situation applies here since the position was not messy for anyone above 1000 elo, since your current understanding of chess limits you. I'd recommend focusing on pure practice and analysis of your own games, as it is the absolute best you could do for yourself right now. This is how i got to 1100 elo (on another account) and then to keep advancing i had to learn basic chess strategy and etc.

The accuracy rate is a calculated thing, out of maths instructions given to a software by a programmer (or coder).

Hence, if that accuracy rate do actually reflect the quality of play or not, you cannot "deserve" the result of the said calculation anymore than you can deserve the result of 2+2.

Your mistake is to believe "calculated accuracy = quality of play".

You might have only a fuzzy idea of what characterizes “1000-level” play etc. on chess.com. At least at the intermediate levels. You can’t be 700+ on chess.com without knowing that you can’t castle after moving the king 😂 not by a long shot

Thanks for the tips though, it’s appreciated

When someone pops their queen out that early you either have to get your queen out (and try to force an exchange) or kick it way back, which can be difficult because of the queen's ability to move any way it wants to.

Trapping it is better

its harsh but when the game is really sharp like this your accuracy is always gonna be worse

You did not play that well, the opening might have not been familiar and there were too many unnecessary moves, like Ke2. I think that overall this level of play was 40-45 accuracy.

You claim that you can guess the accuracy better than the computer that calculates it? Harsh.

Dropping the e4 pawn at move 5 isn't a mistake, and actually Black should not capture it- the Queen loses a lot of precious time and opens the e-file early.

Had you played 6.Nc3 (instead of Nd2) and some active moves, the game wouldn't last long.

Well maybe it's not the material but your weak king position and badly placed pieces, you're opening was a bit slow and white had nice position (No offense)

I once saw a intermediate player sacrifice all his pieces into a mating conbination that stockfish couldn't see but it was RIGHT THERE I finally rounded it up with Fritz but that player made some player made some wrong attacking moves like he was up 16.4 then he played a move that made it 7.3 though it was actually Mate in 6 and like the computer hates some positions wheareas a human could easily see a pin so stockfish gave him a accuracy of... 31.0 so stockfish relies on SINGLE moves not deeply thought plans and bases so sometimes stockfish goes TOTALLY haywire.