The Longest Championship Game · 2021
45% of club players play Rg5 here — and it throws away 4.8 pawns
4k3/8/4P1q1/5R1N/5P1K/8/8/8 w - - 1 13445% of players rated around 1500 play Rg5
in this position. It is the natural move, and it is not the best one.
| Move | Played by | Evaluation |
|---|---|---|
Rg5 the reflex | 45% of 1500-rated humans | +37 centipawns |
Rf7 the move | 2% | +513 centipawns |
The difference is 4.8 pawns — a fork (hits: queen, king).
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 45% 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.