The Peruvian Immortal · 1934
63% of club players play Bd1 here — and it throws away 6.9 pawns
2kr2nr/pp1n1ppp/2p1p3/8/1P1P1B2/2N2Q1P/1PP1BPP1/q3K2R w K - 0 1263% of players rated around 1500 play Bd1
in this position. It is the natural move, and it is not the best one.
| Move | Played by | Evaluation |
|---|---|---|
Bd1 the reflex | 63% of 1500-rated humans | -83 centipawns |
Kd2 the move | 2% | +611 centipawns |
The difference is 6.9 pawns — a discovered attack on the queen.
How this was checked
The evaluations are Stockfish. The human percentages are
Maia, a neural network trained on millions of human games and
conditioned on rating — so 63% of players around 1500
is a measurement of what people
actually do, not an estimate of what they might. Any tactical motif named above is verified against
the board geometry rather than described.
Paste a chess.com game you played and ChessCast makes a 10-20 minute coaching podcast about it — two hosts on the audio, and a board that moves in lock-step so you can watch the moment it turned. Every claim is checked against Stockfish before it is spoken.