The Evergreen Game · 1852
33% of club players play Bb5+ here — and it misses a forced mate in 2
1r4r1/pbpknp1p/1b3P2/8/8/B1PB1q2/P4PPP/3R2K1 w - - 0 2233% of players rated around 1500 play Bb5+
in this position. It is the natural move, and it is not the best one.
| Move | Played by | Evaluation |
|---|---|---|
Bb5+ the reflex | 33% of 1500-rated humans | mate in 13 |
Bf5+ the move | 31% | mate in 2 and it is mate |
The move is Bf5+, which forces mate in 2. The reflex does not — it leaves an ordinary position. — a back-rank mate threat.
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 33% 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.