What's the difference between the best move, a great move, and brilliant move?

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Avatar of Spogger

Title

Avatar of Raincoat123ddd

Best move is the best move in a position. Can be a developing that leads to other pieces having room to develop, attacking or supporting other pieces. Great move is finding a tactic that will get you an advantage over your opponent. Brilliant move is just kicking your opponent right in the balls and if your opponent doesn't recover quickly or give an equally good response then he can kiss his ahh goodbye.

Avatar of magipi
Heythatsme wrote:

Great move is finding a tactic that will get you an advantage over your opponent. Brilliant move is just kicking your opponent right in the balls and if your opponent doesn't recover quickly or give an equally good response then he can kiss his ahh goodbye.

What is the point of talking nonsense like this?

Avatar of samldiener
I’m also curious about a real answer to this question. My opponent blundered a queen. I took it. The engine noted it as a great move. I think it would be more useful to distinguish between a winning move on the one hand, which could be obvious, and a great move that was difficult to find or required more in depth calculation.
Avatar of Hurricayn

"samlidiener" I got 2 great moves in 1 game and it was just trapping a queen which wasn't very hard. Whats the point of a great move?

Avatar of magipi
samldiener wrote:
I’m also curious about a real answer to this question.

First of all, it should be noted that chess engines don't work with adjectives like this. They only produce numbers. The adjectives are produced by a chess.com script.

Okay, so here we go:

1. "Best move": the move that was the engine's top choice at the moment the Game review was made. As Game review is extremely shallow and bad, this "best move" might not be the best move for an engine that thinks more than 0.1 second on the position.

2. "Great move": the only move that is good. All the problems above also apply here. Also, this "great move" might be totally obvious, like in your example.

3. "Brilliant move": a sacrifice that is good. It's not necessary to be the best move. It also may be a move that makes no sense.

Ultimately, none of these categories mean anything relevant. You should never use Game review. Use Analysis instead.

Avatar of tygxc

Objectively there are only good moves, bad moves (?) and blunders (??).

"I have attached question marks to the moves which change a winning position into a drawn game, or a drawn position into a losing one, according to my judgment; a move which changes a winning game into a losing one deserves two question marks ... I have distributed question marks in brackets to moves which are obviously inaccurate and significantly increase the difficulty of the player's task ... There are no exclamation marks, as they serve no useful purpose. The best move should be mentioned in the analysis in any case; an exclamation mark can only serve to indicate the personal excitement of the commentator." - GM Robert Hübner

Avatar of putshort

I constructed a queen trap recently and zero of my moves were best moves or brilliant moves even though the trap was successful. It was like the analysis thing was totally unimpressed with my powers. Haha!

The one great move that I received in the five moves to trap the Queen, was a knight move that had sealed the Queen in her tomb, but the analysis said it was a great move because it protected one of my pawns! Even after I won the Queen for a rook the analysis said that the rook attack was only a good move and that I should have moved my king out of check to let the Queen escape. I was totally dumbfounded:

0-1, Review said Best move was 14...Kh8

Avatar of vitaminsonchess

Just made a great move a while ago. At first the engine categorized it as a brilliant move but then downgraded it as a great move.

I'm winning in that position before the great move, its an end game, I took a pass pawn with a knight.

I guess great move is the ONLY move you have make to maintain the lead or the current evaluation in the game.

Best move is an engine move you have to make to take an advantage.

Someone answers correctly only have two kinds of move, good move and a bad move.

Avatar of bennymanchessy

I played a game and I got given a Great! Move for playing mate in 2 despite there being an easy mate in 1 I missed, when I used the analysis review it called the mate in one the "Best Move" and the mate in to a "Great! Move"

Avatar of SimDarian

Hello

Avatar of JustALifeOfChess
putshort wrote:

I constructed a queen trap recently and zero of my moves were best moves or brilliant moves even though the trap was successful. It was like the analysis thing was totally unimpressed with my powers. Haha!

The one great move that I received in the five moves to trap the Queen, was a knight move that had sealed the Queen in her tomb, but the analysis said it was a great move because it protected one of my pawns! Even after I won the Queen for a rook the analysis said that the rook attack was only a good move and that I should have moved my king out of check to let the Queen escape. I was totally dumbfounded:

0-1, Review said Best move was 14...Kh8

Actually, taking a closer look at the position, the queen couldn't have escaped anyway. What was said is that:

So instead of getting a queen for a rook, you get it for a knight.

But still, Rg6 is the best move, but still, its not wrong.

Avatar of MartVH

I do not agree with magipi on this one.

Avatar of Hripfria202

The best move is the best move possible in a position, great move is either the only move that doesn't lose the game if the position is drawn, and doesn't draw the game if the position is winning or it also may be just a winning move. A brilliant move is when you sacrifice a piece which wins the game. For example, for checkmate, or for winning material

Avatar of Max_Byatler
Heythatsme wrote:

Best move is the best move in a position. Can be a developing that leads to other pieces having room to develop, attacking or supporting other pieces. Great move is finding a tactic that will get you an advantage over your opponent. Brilliant move is just kicking your opponent right in the balls and if your opponent doesn't recover quickly or give an equally good response then he can kiss his ahh goodbye.

Greats, I think, takes advantage of the current position, while brilliants will actually help in the future

Avatar of magipi
Max_Byatler wrote:
Heythatsme wrote:

Best move is the best move in a position. Can be a developing that leads to other pieces having room to develop, attacking or supporting other pieces. Great move is finding a tactic that will get you an advantage over your opponent. Brilliant move is just kicking your opponent right in the balls and if your opponent doesn't recover quickly or give an equally good response then he can kiss his ahh goodbye.

Greats, I think, takes advantage of the current position, while brilliants will actually help in the future

Both of you are totally wrong. The right answer is in comment #6 and / or comment #14.

Avatar of some-random-guy11

hi

Avatar of Dthue
I’ve had a few the engine called a blunder but I set up a checkmate 3moves later, so who knows
Avatar of magipi
Dthue wrote:
I’ve had a few the engine called a blunder but I set up a checkmate 3moves later, so who knows

You made a blunder, your opponent blundered back, so you won. Easy.

If you think that you might be right and the engine might be wrong... think again.

Avatar of cheetahisduma

I used stockfish to beat the heck out of everyone, but in the stockfish game, it said stockfish had no errors, but in the real game, it had a mistake and miss. Why is that?