It’s an issue of how the games are evaluated. At most skill levels a human being slowly outplayed is trading blunders from a computer’s perspective.

For a 1400 a game where an 800 crushed a 500 is most likely a comedy of errors. For a GM that 1400 crushing a 1100 will similarly be filled with missed opportunities. And for a top chess engine on significant depth, most games are practically a slapstick comedy because the best of the best represent such a small fraction of overall players.

I don't think that's true. Speaking as someone sub-1000 rated who plays lots of other people in the same region, the computer evals don't typically show a series of blunders. 1 or 2 blunders per game is common, but blunder-less games are also not uncommon. Just lots and lots of suboptimal but not terrible moves.

If you’re rated 800 online and making 1-2 blunders per game playing blitz, that seems low and it still adds up to 2-4 in a given game.

If you mean longer time controls then that’s definitely helping, but most games are 5 minutes or less simply because players are going to be able to fit far more such games per day. Similarly the average rating is quite low simply because everyone starts terrible and most people quit relatively quickly.

I'm talking about daily/correspondence games.

Ok, 1-2 blunders are more believable in that context, and uhh ouch. Anyway, it’s still an extreme edge case which says nothing about most games.

My point was that it's not an extreme edge case, it's quite common, even at the 700-1000 chess.com ELO level.

Someone dying in a car accident is frequent/common as in happening several times a day, but it’s still an extreme edge case in terms of the average trip.

If we’re talking about the average game you simply need to look at all time controls to get an accurate understanding not pick an uncommon example and arbitrarily suggest it’s representative of the general case.

Do you have better data, or are you just being an asshole?

> Do you have better data, or are you just being an asshole?

Last I checked, 55% of games on chess.com are 5 minutes or less if that’s what you’re asking. But at this point I’m just done with this conversation.

Also, average account ELO was ~800 not sure if that’s active or just not banned.

I meant number of blunders per game at low ELOs. I stand by my estimation that even at 800, even a 5 minute game would have a median blunder count of 1 or 2. Which is hardly a constant stream of blunders, which is what I was trying to point out.

I looked at a sampling and it was more like 5-6 per game it’s high variance some where much better or worse. But I didn’t find any summary statistics.

They may be referring to sub-1000 online rated. An 800 FIDE rated player is going to wipe the floor with an 800 chess.com rated player.

If anything that reinforces my point that low-rated players aren't losing in a series of constant blunders.

If you’re 800 FIDE rated over the board you’re not going to be 800 online. You’ll be way above that. I haven’t played in years but I was beating 1200 rated players online as a total beginner. The ratings are not comparable.

A sub-1000 online rated player is frankly a very poor, total beginner at chess, not an enthusiastic club player.

No argument there, but that has nothing to do with my point that novices at chess aren't just playing constant blunders when playing each other.

Minimum FIDE rating is 1400, so you really cannot be 800 FIDE. Also the gap between online and FIDE ratings is closer than people think.

That’s not correct, as of 2022:

They only publish numbers above 1000, but they still come up with a number before deciding to not publish it. https://www.fide.com/docs/regulations/FIDE%20Rating%20Regula...

Not all clubs follow those rules exactly, but you still need to track sub 1000 to know when people cross it.

It is since new rating regulations, which are in effect as of 2024: https://handbook.fide.com/chapter/B022024

See 7.1.2. Ratings aren't tracked by clubs even when players are under this cutoff - all games for rating are submitted to FIDE.

Which only came into effect on March 1 2024, so people still have sub 1400 FIDE rankings from 2024.

They don't - ratings of everyone under 2000 got increased, according to formula: player rating + 0.4 * (2000 - player rating).

So everyone now has rating above 1400, except if their rating fell under in meantime, in which case they will be removed from next rating list.

I would go with the definition of a blunder as a move that you instantly recognize as wrong once you see the response. So the definition is relative to your own skill level.

It's at least partly a property of the game itself. If the game is tossing a coin, first to 100 heads wins, then the win probability will not take major swings. If you have a game where the person in a worse position has many opportunities to recover, win probability does not swing so much.

That’s position-dependent. In one case you might be in a totally closed position where there’s no obvious way forward and your position gradually deteriorates. In another case you might be in an ultra-sharp, open position where you miss some crazy sacrifice combination that leads to mate-in-10.

The first example is clearly a strategic defeat and the second a tactical defeat. But calling it a “blunder” to miss the sacrifice in such a sharp position feels unfair. You might have been walking a tightrope for a long time to reach that point and then made one little slip any grandmaster could be expected to make.

I once watched a volleyball game between my high school’s vaunted multi-time state champion team and a small private school. It was a perfect example of no blunders vs. gradual deterioration. Our team played an aggressive style that would test the opponent’s physical ability and mental toughness. The small private school played no-mistakes, all defense, and no offense. They would dig up everything in bounds and return the ball. They only scored when our team hit the ball out of bounds. That game took four hours, and the only reason the small team lost was depth: they only had one substitute. Eventually, they wore out and just couldn't physically perform.

However isn't it essentially saying 'You can do everything right and lose, but it's pretty rare compared to making lots of mistakes and winning.'?