Is Game Explorer Misleading? It is!

 Chess.com Game Explorer can be complete misleading!

In respect of "the next move", many people look up Game Exporer to check:

1. which move was most played next by GMs in thew data base, and

2. the percentage of games which were won by white or black, or were drawntange for that move

For example, in a Vote Chess game, in which I was involved, Game Explorer, suggest - based on historical data - that among GMs playing black, the results for "the move d6" were Black won 28% of games, White 44% and drawn 28%. For the King-side castling move, the results were Black won 33%, White 41% and drawn 26%.

So - mas were playing black - some people were thinking  castling might be the better choice. Interestingly, although Black had a slightly higher win-rate with O-O, 10 times as many GM games chose d6. There is something amiss here – GMs are not dumb.

IMHO, what is amiss is that this kind of analysis is crazy and misleading. We do not (or should not) play chess by looking solely at “the next move”, and checking Game Explorer to see what was a popular choice among GMs.

The bigger picture is that “the next move” may be;

1. the start of a sequence of moves, or plan, or

2. an intermediate move within an existing sequence.

We should be focussed on “the sequence” or the mini-plan for the current or next phase of our game.  

But Game Exporer is leading people astray, by portraying GM chess as a simple matter of "only the next move"!

Game Explorer is deficient (misleading?) in that:

1. it provides no chessic context for “the next move” - and what followed in a sequence of moves - which led to Black winning 30% or so of games, despite White having 1^st mover advantage.

2. it does not provide the full pgn for all the moves in those games where Black went on to win.  

If only we knew which games had the sequence of moves to the current stage, AND THEN, the moves which followed which resulted in Black winning! Did Black outplay White, or did White make blunders? We do not know.

Conclusion: Chess.com needs to put a warning on Game Exporer - this can by dangerous for your chess-game life!

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/is-game-explorer-misleading-it-is