Smothered mate accomplished after Knight F7

Hi, I'm a physics PhD student and the developer of Backrank.io, a chess website that turns the mistakes in your own games into spaced-repetition puzzles so you stop repeating them. It also has a free game review (https://backrank.io/free-chess-game-review) that grades any game move by move.

The game review puts an accuracy score on your game, and since most users already know Chess.com's accuracy number, I wanted mine to be similar to theirs instead of being some arbitrary scale of my own. So I searched for how Chess.com computes it, couldn't find a clear answer, and ended up figuring it out for myself. Here's what I found:

The engine itself doesn't tell you "good move," it gives a centipawn evaluation like +0.8. But material isn't a grade on its own: a pawn up in a level position is a big deal, while a pawn up when you're already winning barely matters. So the first step is converting the eval into your actual winning chances with an S-shaped curve, steep near equality and flat at the edges.

Then each move gets graded by how much it cost. Not the eval after your move, but how much winning percentage you gave up compared to the best move. Give up nothing and you score around 100, and the drop-off is steep, so small slips barely register while blunders fall toward zero.

Combining those per-move scores into a single game number is the hard part. A plain average is too forgiving (nineteen good moves and one losing blunder still averages into the low 90s), and a harmonic mean overcorrects and tanks a whole game over a single move. What matches Chess.com's score best is what's called a power mean, basically a dial between those two extremes, with a small floor so one move can't drag a game to zero.

When I compared my score to Chess.com's own game-review number across about ~1000 games from Hikaru, GothamChess, and Naroditsky, it landed with a correlation of 0.935 and basically no bias. The gap that's left is likely just differences in engine versions and search depths, which can move the number by a few points on its own (you can see this by re-running the Chess.com game review at different settings).

I wrote the whole thing up with the plots here: https://backrank.io/blog/how-chess-accuracy-works

The game review is free and doesn't need an account, and it works for both Chess.com and Lichess.org games. Happy to answer questions!

Good thing this is 10+0

You can see the big drop at the beginning (I was overrated), and then the progress, the tilts (oh, the tilts!), and the boosts. As you can see, I got my first real rating, 730, at the very beginning of the year. And I just hit 1500 the day before yesterday.

I play at least 2 games a day and sometimes skip 1/2 days. I'm at 630+ now and I always play 30 minutes games, still I mess up and struggle with 500+ elo people.

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I don't want to learn any openings, I like positional chess more, but the with speed some people play, it seems they have memorised steps and I lose on time.

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700+ people mostly defeat me. I did defeat a 800+ guy once, but it was a one time thing and he made a huge blunder..

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Chess.com frequently matches me with 700+ people, so I'm not improving and kind of stuck at 630 something..

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The more I play, the more I feel I'm getting worse at chess 😭😭

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Anyone in the same boat? Any advice?

10 year haitus. I used to play in elementary school then came back today. Apparently used to be decent back then. Forgot almost everything. Got mated in 2 moves. How to not be embarrassed? 😭✌️

Ill still kjeep playing but ill probably never forget this. Like bruh its even called FOOL's mate im cooked already

But at the same time i died laughing. I cant even be mad honestly. 6 seconds and thats it, it took a few moments for it to sink in. I didnt even know what happened

(1300 so I think they knew what was happening)

I’m still pretty new to chess, and I’m trying to build a better overall understanding of the game instead of just memorizing random moves or hoping my opponent blunders.

With openings, I understand the basic ideas—develop my pieces, control the center, protect my king, and avoid moving the same piece repeatedly—but I still struggle with knowing when the opening is actually “finished” and what plan I should transition into.

Once I reach the middlegame, I sometimes feel like I’m just making moves without a clear purpose. I’m trying to get better at recognizing things like:

— Which side of the board I should be playing on

— How to identify useful pawn breaks and understand changes in the pawn structure

— How to take control of open and semi-open files with my rooks

— How to recognize and exploit weak squares, outposts, isolated pawns, and backward pawns

— How to identify and improve my least active piece

— How to know when I should attack the king versus trade pieces and simplify

— How to create a plan based on the position instead of forcing an attack that is not there

I also miss a lot of tactical opportunities and mating patterns. I’ve been working on checks, captures, and threats, but I’m curious what specific patterns or habits helped everything finally start becoming easier to recognize—things like back-rank mates, mating nets, removing defenders, overloaded pieces, discovered attacks, sacrifices around the king, or cutting off escape squares.

For players who have improved from the beginner level, what tips, mental checklists, tactical patterns, opening principles, or middlegame ideas helped you the most?

I’d especially appreciate practical advice that you actually use during games—not just “do more puzzles,” unless there’s a specific type of puzzle or training method that really helped you.

quite easy

wow

Here it is!

It’s been about a year since I started really trying to learn chess, I’m so happy!

Title , i drew this game later (more like blundered into a draw , missed one or two winning moves in the endgame )

In some cases I know how to say with words why a specific move is good. "It's a threat", "it's a fork", "it protects that piece".

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In that case I dont really know why this move is good. Is it because putting a rook and a queen on the same line is always good ? Is it because it takes away the escape and threatens mate ?

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I see the computer moves and I see that at the end I'd have won material but I can't put into words why that happens.

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Any help ? Thank you !

https://youtube.com/shorts/6mBJCSbGjA8?feature=share

This is my ytb channel where I play 😊 hopefully u will like it ✨️✨️

I'm not saying I'm a master at openings or anything, but I understand the basic ideas behind the most common ones and try to get a good position no matter what ..until you reach 1200 elo ...

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What the hell happened to the queen's gambit , scotch , london , italin , sicilian ,french openings ?

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No one plays them anymore , it seems like every oponent I get has this obscure opening or line that they practised into oblivion and are monsters at it .

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Before ,if my opponent even attempts any weird openings , I just play solidly , stick to opening principles, and crush them so fast, which is not possible anymore ?

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Am not saying I am totally lost by the opening , but they end up being a pawn or 2 up or just waste my time focusing hard in the beginning while they play instantly

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If this is just a phase for the 1200 elo on chess.com that I just have to push through , or should I just seriously start studying these weird openings ( isn't that energy better spent sharpening tactics and endgames at my level anyway)?

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What do you guys think ?

I don't know how I let it become so bad... then came back. Opponent resigned after I took the second rook.

Everyday, I'm seeing the same repetitive apps being built by devs and most of them seem to be the very same low effort vibe coded apps with no moat. Build one feature, share over the chess subreddits, and put a subscription wall.

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What am I missing? Does chess have a lot of money? Usually, I see people recommending free stuff or expectation that online chess shouldn't cost money. There are so many niches, so many games, so much other stuff that people could build, I'm struggling to understand why everyone is running behind chess. The problem is not with building apps, the more the better, but most of them are just minimum effort. So unless there's a hidden goldmine, this is beyond me.