The Immortal Game · 1851
94% of club players play Kg2 here — and it throws away 3.6 pawns
rnb1k1nr/p2p1ppp/3B4/1p1NPN1P/6P1/3P1Q2/P1P5/q4Kb1 w kq - 0 2094% of players rated around 1500 play Kg2
in this position. It is the natural move, and it is not the best one.
| Move | Played by | Evaluation |
|---|---|---|
Kg2 the reflex | 94% of 1500-rated humans | -166 centipawns |
Ke2 the move | 5% | +199 centipawns |
The difference is 3.6 pawns — a fork (hits: rook, 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 94% 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.