Steinitz's Combination · 1895
73% of club players play Rxc8+ here — and it throws away 4.4 pawns
r1r1k3/pp1qn2p/5pp1/3p2N1/6Q1/8/PP3PPP/2R1R1K1 w - - 2 2273% of players rated around 1500 play Rxc8+
in this position. It is the natural move, and it is not the best one.
| Move | Played by | Evaluation |
|---|---|---|
Rxc8+ the reflex | 73% of 1500-rated humans | +29 centipawns |
Rxe7+ the move | 2% | +470 centipawns |
The difference is 4.4 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 73% 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.