Ideas for a New Chess Analysis

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Avatar of Doctor-Mobius

To begin with the story, I think that the chess.com analysis engine is a bit flawed. I know that for rapid I am not that good of a player, I am an intermediate at 740. But after crashing out and saying that I am going to quit, I decided to try again and start looking at areas that I am bad at, like openings and the theory behind the different openings. But as I am looking at how the theory of the dynamics works better across the whole game, I noticed that the analysis engine of this site isn't that good at actually computing moves. I know that the ai is 500% better at chess than I will ever be and it knows the best moves to make and at its max level I will never beat it in my life. However, I look at it's suggestions and best moves and I feel like that it doesn't know how to get out of bad situations, it always prioritises free pawns even when I had a knight and queen on my exposed 3rd rank and even though capturing the pawn would threaten me winning a rook, I could win that trapped rook and still lose because of the approaching checkmate but it swears up and down that the free pawn is worth it. After the game, I tried to see how the enemy could have done different tactics that I thought I saw when playing and discovered a brilliant move that my opponent could have played, my opponent did see it but that was after in the actual game that I had prepared to move my king for that, and when reviewing what my opponent and I had done, the engine said the best move instead of retreating to safety was to follow through and make it a brilliant move by sacking my rook and have the opponent immediately win it back. How is this one of the best chess engines? It feels like it's so smart, it becomes incredibly dumb and it has no idea what to do if you don't play like a grandmaster. Hell, I have even seen it analyse grandmaster games and watch it see moves that completely were phenomenal, that one the game for them, and then say that it made them in a position to lose. While I like the engine and using it to review, I think that it needs to be changed because when it gets into complicated games in which people can lose due to greed for material or an oversight, this engine cannot comprehend that because it's only good at thinking like a machine who doesn't make mistakes except when it's programed to. 

Another reason why I think this is because of how we look at chess games as well. We believe that there are only good and bad moves. That there are 3 different ways to Sunday to say it is a good move with good being slightly good but not the best, excellent being better than good but still not the best, and then the best move to be made. But there are great moves which don't even make sense why you would have those if it was still the best move to be made, because if we are supposed to be focusing on the best moves, we will naturally win tempos and material so there is out of all good moves except brilliant (which obviously requires a sacrifice in order to gain material, tempo, or a checkmate) there is no damn difference in the moves except the degree of "good" it is. The bad moves are a little clear, mistakes give you a disadvantage, miss misses material, tempo, and checkmates, and blunders sells positions and such, but the engine will sometimes say I blunder with a move that doesn't lose material but can "lead to lost material" that only a grandmaster would see, and one game when my opponent hung his queen but could recapture the rook and put me in a winning position is simply a mistake? And don't get me started on inaccuracies, because they are the most ambiguous move designation ever. "They are not a bad move, but not a good move, oh but there is no such thing as a neutral move, let's call it uh... a uh... 'inaccuracy' because it's not good, but I mean it's not bad." 

So here are my designations that I think should be used in analysis everywhere. There are good moves, bad moves, and neutral moves categories. Good moves strengthens the position of winning for the player, a bad move weakens the position of winning for the player, and a neutral move does not strengthen nor weaken a players position of winning. 

Good Move Category: 

Good Move (Light Green); A move that gives the player an advantageous position to whoever played it (Castling at a good time)

Great Move (Dark Blue); A forceful move that wins tempo or material to whoever played it (A fork or set of checks)

Brilliant Move (Light Blue); A move that sacrifices material to lead to either checkmate, greater material gain, or an unstoppable tempo for whoever played it (Sacked a bishop to checkmate or win a queen)

Phenomenal Move (Purple); A move that prevents the opponent's ability to stop checkmate by changing a key dynamic of the board's position (Mikhail Tal game where he sacked his bishop which if not taken or taken, prevents the queen from moving in place to block checkmate)

Trap Move (Dark Green); A move that prevents a piece from escaping capture and wins material advantage (Trap a bishop with a pawn chain)

Bad Move Category: 

Mistake (Yellow); A move that gives the player a disadvantageous position for whoever played it (Block a bishop from developing)

Miss (Pink); A move that misses to capture free material, block a set up, or stop a trap/fork if doing so wouldn't permit a player to gain a tempo of checkmate ability (Didn't nab a free Rook)

Blunder (Red); A move that leaves pieces hanging, allows the opponent to gain a tempo, or misses to protect a winning tactic, leading to the path of losing (Didn't protect a pressured piece by the King)

Abysmal (Black); A move that allows the opponent to checkmate whoever played it by changing the board dynamic position to where it cannot be stopped for whoever played it (Removing a back rank defender from a vulnerable King)  

Freelance (Orange); A move that makes a piece lose its castling rights without any advantageous gain (A King not recapturing a Bishop attacking it)

Neutral Move Category; 

Book Move (Brown); Text book moves like popular opening development or staircase checkmate (might make it more than openings or keep it openings so it's up in the air whether checkmates or certain forks will be kept) 

Forced Move (Yellow); The only move to block or escape a check (Since it is the only legal move to be made, it is neutral since you cannot make a good or bad move in that scenario)

Neutral Move (Light Grey); A move that does not give any advantage nor disadvantage to whoever plays it, but instead is the beginning of a set up, natural development (aside from book openings) or the game continuing (Like when an endgame gridlock occurs and a player has to move a Pawn to avoid moving a blocking piece and force their opponent to make the losing move, or developing Knights without any tempos in the middlegame)

Stalemate Move (Grey); A move that forces a stalemate or a path to stalemate through time, insufficient material, repeated moves, repeated checks, or the 50/75 move rule (A King blocks a King protected Pawn from advancing, forcing the King to give up the Pawn and have and insufficient material stalemate or to block the King from escaping and make a no legal move stalemate)

Alternate Move (Teal); A move that is equally as good as the best move but differs in that it does not win/ lose tempos, material, or set ups (Trading Knights in a way that cannot be capitalised on by either opponent and just simply trades Knights to simplify material)

Might there be some problem in differentiating some of these designations. Yes. But I feel like these will lead to people wanting to become more creative in how they play the game and not be afraid to try and develop new strategies because they are so fixated on making "the best move" when there can be so many alternatives to be made. I know that the whole "a perfect game of chess is a draw" saying has been memed to death, but I think that this is an example here of it being true, we try to be accurate instead of decisive, we try to have foolproof plans instead of adaptable strategies. Think about how many games you have resigned or your opponent has resigned after the Queen or a Rook was lost, you still could have won the game, but you didn't even bother to because the dogma of the modern chess community is that there is no coming back from mistakes, and that if one single bad move is played, the game is lost. I remember when my dad was teaching me how to play chess, he showed me how you don't need to win by sacking his queen with no advantage and then he completely destroyed me in about 10 moves after that. I played a game of Fischer Random with my mom recently while watching Andor, and even though I blundered my queen on my second move, I still won that game and ended up higher in material. So in conclusion, I think we need to rethink how we look at chess games and their developments and take on Bobby Fischer's approach to them, and not be afraid to make mistakes and try out new strategies, maybe take risks that we were afraid to, do gambits we thought were stupid. If Emil Deimer could only move his pawns for 20 moves and still win, what is stopping us from trying to do things that might not be considered "optimal chess", the stupidest idea to ever grace a strategy and probability game like chess.

Avatar of ldslionman
Why does chess.com. Or have stockfish built in?
Avatar of Doctor-Mobius
ldslionman wrote:
Why does chess.com. Or have stockfish built in?

Honestly the majority of chess analysis engines use that model, but I am pretty sure Chess.com's engine popularised it