After game analysis mistakes and blunders

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Paikuhan69
so I have been playing on chess.com for a little bit now and when I finish my games and look at the analysis it shows multiple mistakes and blunders where it would seem to be sacrificing pieces for no real gain or when you wouldn't need to sacrifice anything just to gain a piece. why is it like this? would it really be better to sacrifice pieces for what seems to me to be no real gain?
blueemu

Give a specific example.

The most likely reason is that the analysis is correct and you just don't get the point of the suggested line of play.

Paikuhan69

like this for example I moved my knight to f7 it targets the inside rook is protected by the queen and my rook targets the outside rook. The Queen moved up targets the queen and rook but in this scenario it doesn't seem advantageous to sacrifice the queen to gain the same outcome

Paikuhan69

And if I take the rook with the knight and queen takes I can take with the rook and have the advantage

Paikuhan69

Or like this I moved my bishop to a6 to target his rook but it says to move my knight up. It targets the queen but is taken by the pawn with no seeming advantage

Scan321

I suggest you play those seemingly weak sacrifices out a few moves more... Use the engine to keep finding it's Best Moves and you'll see that each of those above scenarios works out quite well for you if you continue to play Best Moves.

 

 

Scan321
Scan321 wrote:

I suggest you play those seemingly weak sacrifices out a few moves more... Use the engine to keep finding it's Best Moves and you'll see that each of those above scenarios works out quite well for you if you continue to play Best Moves.

 

 

Ex. in your second example, try taking that pawn with your Q, then Bxd5

Paikuhan69

Ok I will try. Can you explain a bit more the queen bishop move. If you take that pawn you lose your queen and bishop.cant reach d5 from their positions. Looking at it now again though I see how moving the knight would be beneficial

blueemu

First example:

After Nf7, Black just pins the Knight against your Queen with Rf8 and then takes it next move... leaving you a piece down. The suggested move Qxf7 (instead) avoids this.

Second example:

Nc5 and if Black takes with dxc5 then you recapture with your Queen Qxc5+ forking his King and his Bishop on d5. Your next move (after White gets his King out of check) will be Bxd5 taking his Bishop off the board.

The engine knows tactics batter than you do.

Scan321
Paikuhan69 wrote:

Ok I will try. Can you explain a bit more the queen bishop move. If you take that pawn you lose your queen and bishop.cant reach d5 from their positions. Looking at it now again though I see how moving the knight would be beneficial

See Blueemu's reply above. You will not lose your queen or bishop if you move Nc5.  dxc5... Qxd5+, Kh1... Bxd5 wins you a bishop

Paikuhan69

Yeah looking at it now I see it thanks guys. Is there any way for it to explain why these moves are better because just at a glance some of these don't make sense. An explanation of why it's the best move would be helpful

Scan321
Paikuhan69 wrote:

Yeah looking at it now I see it thanks guys. Is there any way for it to explain why these moves are better because just at a glance some of these don't make sense. An explanation of why it's the best move would be helpful

Not that I'm aware of, but when I get confused about a sacrifice in the Analysis, I usually do what I mentioned above: play around until I can sort out what the following Best Moves are that would result, and you usually see that you've missed a sneaky mate or capture

blueemu
Paikuhan69 wrote:

Yeah looking at it now I see it thanks guys. Is there any way for it to explain why these moves are better because just at a glance some of these don't make sense. An explanation of why it's the best move would be helpful

That's what the forum is for. Post your questions, and mixed in with the trolling and the rude replies will be quite a bit of helpful and useful info.

Computers don't explain. Even if they did, their explanation would be worthless to you, because engines don't FIND moves the same way people do.

Engines find good moves by process of exhaustion... by considering EVERY POSSIBLE REPLY, and every possible reply to those replies, and every possible reply to that... and building a tree of analysis, assigning numerical weights to different factors, then using a min-max routine to find the most efficient path through the tree of variations.

What people do is NOTHING like that. People use pattern recognition and basic concepts to set strategic and tactical goals, and then use those guidelines to choose a handful of candidate-moves (usually fewer than five) to actually analyze. Where an engine might look at literally hundreds of thousands of positions before choosing a move, a human player's tree of analysis is constantly being "pruned" as it is growing, so it never includes very many possible positions.

A computer's explanation would make no sense to you. Or to me, and I've been working with computers since the mid-1970s.