The Double Bishop Sacrifice · 1889
50% of club players play Rf3 here — and it throws away 7.5 pawns
r4rk1/1b2bpp1/ppq1p3/2ppB2Q/5P2/1P2P3/P1PP2PP/R4RK1 w - - 1 1750% of players rated around 1500 play Rf3
in this position. It is the natural move, and it is not the best one.
| Move | Played by | Evaluation |
|---|---|---|
Rf3 the reflex | 50% of 1500-rated humans | -277 centipawns |
Bxg7 the move | 2% | +470 centipawns |
The difference is 7.5 pawns — 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 50% 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.