Nezhmetdinov's Queen Sacrifice · 1962
65% of club players play Nxf7 here — and it throws away 4.9 pawns
3q2k1/p4r2/3p2p1/1p2r1N1/3BPP2/7R/PPP3PP/5K2 w - - 0 2965% of players rated around 1500 play Nxf7
in this position. It is the natural move, and it is not the best one.
| Move | Played by | Evaluation |
|---|---|---|
Nxf7 the reflex | 65% of 1500-rated humans | -45 centipawns |
Rh8+ the move | 15% | +444 centipawns |
The difference is 4.9 pawns — a fork (hits: rook, 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 65% 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.