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The Internet’s second favorite chess website recently released their newest feature: Insights.
There is a ton of information here. Chess.com gives us data around move accuracy, results vs different opposition, even time-of-day and day-of-week stats. Let’s break it all down and learn how we can plug our weaknesses.
Insights Overview Section
The overview section of insights gives us data on a few areas of our game. Let’s go over each one.
Average Accuracy
My average accuracy has stayed very consistent over the past 3 months- Not varying too far from the mean.
It’s interesting that my average accuracy isn’t drastically different in wins and losses. 83.7 for wins and 75.1 for losses. It’s good to see that I’m consistent! It’s also wild that my accuracy isn’t all that different from NM Matt Jensen’s accuracy, his shows 80.57 in a recent youtube video. I’m also just a few points behind IM Levy Rozman, who is at 82.52. This is probably explained away because it is harder to play at a higher accuracy against more difficult opposition.
If you are improving player, you’ll want to see this go up overtime, but very slightly. Aim for 1-2% points over a long period of time.
Accuracy by Move Number
This is one of my favorite data points. I think we can find some serious weaknesses in our game by analyzing accuracy by move number.
As you can see, my openings are pretty good, middle games are a bit rocky and I get stronger in the endgame. I have found this to be generally true. I train openings quite a bit and am very comfortable there. Middlegames, right now, are a big weakness of mine. Let’s see if my openings are any better or worse based on which pieces I have.
Pretty similar, but there is more variance with the black pieces. This probably means my black openings aren’t as consistent as my white openings. This makes sense since I’ve recently switched black openings to the Caro-Kann, which started off a bit shaky. I also don’t have a great repertoire vs d4, and need to get something in place. Maybe I should study our own slav course…
How do my stats compare to similarly rated players? Let’s find out!
Surprisingly, I’m much more accurate than opposing players across nearly all aspects of the game. So why am I not higher rated? Oh yeah, time management.
If there’s one place for you to focus on to find weaknesses, it has to be accuracy by move number. Check to see your stats. Are your openings, middlegames or endgames the weakest compared to your peers? Start improving there.
Results by Opponent Rating
This shouldn’t be anything groundbreaking. The weaker your opponents are the better you should score against them, and vice versa. My graph is very aesthetically pleasing.
Make sure you’re winning games at a good clip vs lower rated players. If you’re playing higher rated players very well you will gain rating by getting better and beating worse opposition.
Game Results
The game results section aims to show you how your games are won or lost. I’ll be comparing myself to players of a similar rating. I don’t have a reference point to what the numbers would mean standalone.
Games Won
I’m winning by checkmate and resignation at a slightly higher rate than similar players. I suspect this is primarily due to not winning by timeout, however. This is more evidence to what my findings above: I’m bad at time management. Not winning by timeout means that I’m not flagging my opponents. These insights are analyzing my blitz games, so the clock is a huge weapon.
What do these stats say about your time management?
Games Lost
This is wild! I’m losing over 1/3 of my games because I run out of time! I really, really need to play faster. I should also probably let my opponent checkmate me more often. And don’t abandon games, people.
Are you resigning too often? Try to play games out as much as you can!
Game Shapes
Game shapes tell you which sorts of games you end up with. The categories are “giveaway” where someone blunders and loses the game. There’s also balanced, sharp, intents and many others.
Results by Game Shape
I want to focus first on “Giveaway” where I lose 55% of games and only win 40% of games. This is telling me that I have catastrophic, game-ending blunders more often than my opponents. It’s almost impossible to improve while blundering like this, so I definitely need to plug this.
Secondly, look at my stats for wild and sharp. I’m doing terrible in these games. This is likely an indication that I need to get better at tactics and handle positions I’m unfamiliar with. Let’s check my accuracy in these game types.
Accuracy by Game Shape
As I suspected, my worst accuracies are in wild and sharp games. I think this is likely true across the board, since these games are harder to play accurately in. Danny Rensch’s insights show that he’s the least accurate in these same game types, but also these categories are some of his best win percentages.
Game Phases
Game phases will tell you how well you play each phase (opening, middlegame, and endgame) of a full game of chess. I’m once again going to compare myself to similar players for a point of reference.
Games Ending
There isn’t anything too valuable here for my stats, in my opinion. It looks like I don’t win or lose in the opening too often and can win in the middlegame a bit more. Maybe that’s because I resign less and force my opponents to beat me.
Accuracy by Game Phase
I’m very consistent with my peers in accuracy by game phase. Look out for weaknesses here in your own games. I see to be slightly lower in accuracy here, which clashes with the accuracy line graph in the overview section. I’m curious to know why.
Are there any big gaps for you here compared to your peers? Plug those weaknesses.
Results for Games
Curiously, my openings are worse than my peers, though I’m not entirely sure why. I do consider openings a strong suit for me. I’m glad to be slightly better in middlegame and endgame results.
Careful not to put too much stock into areas with little data.
Tactics
I love that tactics made it into insights. This section is good to glance at and take a quick look at how sharp your game is. Once you hit a certain rating you should know these tactical themes, and would very likely spot each of these tactics if in a puzzle. This section is broken down into each motif, but I will show just a few. I am so curious about how my tactics compare to my opponents. Let’s take a look!
Fork
I’m not great here. I definitely wouldn’t consider this a weakness of mine, but these data don’t look promising. Gotta watch those pawn forks!
Review positions where you are missing forks.
Checkmates
I’m also doing quite well here! I’m pretty average at finding checkmate in 2+, but I’m better than my peers in Mate in 1’s. I hypothesize that the mate in 1’s are lower across the board since there are many mate in 1’s in completely winning endgames. It’s easier to premove a slower mate in many cases.
Are your missed checkmates in endgames with many winning continuations, or are you missing knockouts?
Hanging Pieces
I really, really, really need to improve here. No excuse for hanging so many pieces! It’s awesome that you can click the chessboard button to the side of the screen to see examples.
Free Pieces
Finally some good news! I am able to capture free pieces at a consistently higher rate than my peers. Hopefully this continues.
How well do you scan the board for hanging pieces?
And More!
Chess.com has even more insights that I’m not going to cover, as I’m sure you’re all exhausted at this point. They give you data for what happens when you castle, time of day, day of the week, and where your opponents are from. If you want to view these insights, or any insights, go to chess.com/insights.
Takeaways
I have three main takeaways from my own insights.
1- I need to play faster. I consistently have a better accuracy across every aspect of the game compared to my peers. The only reason I’m not higher rated is my time management. This is also evidenced by the fact that I lose on time very often (over 1/3 of my games!), and rarely win on time.
2- I need to improve my tactics. Tactics still determine most of my games. I can see that I’m still missing many basic tactics, as evidenced in my tactics section. Improving in this area will go a very long way.
3- I need to cut down on blunders. Easy said than done, right? I’m consistently throwing away games that I have a better position because of a bad blunder.
Chess Celebrity Insights
Chess.com provides us with the insights of some of our favorite players to use as a reference. Here are a few:
- Hikaru Nakamura
- Chessbrah AKA Eric Hansen
- GothamChess
- Alexandra Botez
- Daniel Naroditsky
- Anna Rudolf
- Danny Rensch
And our very own Matt Jensen!
Conclusion
Chess.com’s insights are really, well, insightful. It confirmed what I suspected: I play too slow. I think that’s my biggest weakness and takeaway. They should add an insight for time management, I think that would really help highlight others’ weaknesses as well. It’s fun to see all the data laid out in a neat way.
