A detailed look at LiChess Insights

 Here, I take a good deep look at the Chess Insights analytics provided by LiChess over your analyzed games!

Firstly, accessing the insights .. 

Go to your profile page and then click on the Chess Insights tab towards middle right of the page, just below the ratings progress graph.

This will pop up the home page of chess insights and you will see something like below. It is showing your average centi-pawn loss per move (ACPL - we had seen this when we looked at computer analysis of your games - in earlier blog) against the various time controls of games that you play - bullet, blitz, rapid etc.

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You can see that it shows the drop down at the top for the metric (right now ACPL is selected) by the dimension (right now, variant of time control is selected). You can change both of the these to get different insights. You can also "filter" the game-set for analysis by more parameters (like only your games from White side or only the games that you lost etc).

There are groups of controls available for Filter, Metric or Dimension and lets take a closer look at these.

• SETUP Group

This is called "setup" because this is decided before you even start your game! Under this group, we have 4 controls covering:

1. Date/DateRange - you can select from last 24 hrs going all the way up to last 3 years
2. Chess Variant - This is like bullet, rapid, classical and other variants like crazyhouse, chess960 etc
3. Color - You can choose either White only or Black only or Both colors
4. Opponent strength - based on the rating difference between you and your opponent, the latter is marked as "Much Weaker" or "Weaker" or "Equal" or "Stronger" or "Much Stronger"

• GAME Group

This group has some game characteristics derived from the game like:

1. Opening - You can select one or more of the 500 opening codes from A00 to E99 as per the ECO (Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings)
2. Your castling side - K-side or Q-side or None
3. Opponent's Castling side - K-side, Q-side or None
4. Queen Trade - games where Queens were exchanged or not

• MOVE Group

This group has many details relevant for  each particular move that is played. There are 6 controls here:

1. Game Phase - Is this in the Opening Phase or Middle-Game or EndGame phase
2. Material Balance - Current material balance as sum of values of all pieces and pawns relative to that of your opponent. This is in buckets like Huge (6+) or Massive (3+) or  Big (1+) or slight (0 to 1) or equal
3. Positional Evaluation - Current positional score as evaluated by Stockfish before you make the move. Remember, one pawn is value 1 equal to 100 centi-pawns. This is in buckets like Huge (600+), Massive (350+), Big (175+),  Significant (80+), Slight (25+) or Equal (<25)
4. Piece Moved - Which type of piece is moved - Pawn, Knight, Bishop, Rook, Queen or King
5. Move Time - Time taken for the move
6. Centi-pawn loss - evaluation of the move as to how much loss if any it introduces. This is in buckets from Huge (500+), Massive (200+), Big (100+), Significant (50+), to Slight (25+) to Negligible (<25)

• EVALUATION Group

This group has the measure of the evaluation of your moves or your opponents moves on average. There are 4 controls as:

1. ACPL - Average centi-pawn loss of your moves. Remember, one pawn is value 1 equal to 100 centi-pawns.
2. CPL-Bucket - It is far easier to treat the move as falling under a bucket of ACPL. The buckets are: Huge (500+), Massive (200+), Big (100+), Significant (50+), to Slight (25+) to Negligible (<25)
3. Opportunism - Your efficiency rate of exploiting opponents blunders
4. Luck - Your opponent's tendency to forego punishing your blunders

• GAME Result

This group has features about the end result of the game, how it ended, what was the result and what was the net rating gain (or loss) for you.

1. Game Termination - This can be due to clock-flag, disconnect, resignation, theoretical draw, stalemate or Checkmate
2. Game Result - Win, Draw or Loss
3. Rating Gain - The amount of rating points you win or lose after the game

Wow!! Thats quite a lot of data and analytics at your fingertips. But it takes a while to understand and grasp all of this. This is more for your parents if they are used to analytics in corporate world.

We will stop here today and look at my own analysis using this tool next - going beyond the LC preset insights.  Happy Analyzing!

Lichess Insights for You

 Today, I am going to share another cool feature of LiChess which you can use to systematically improve your game by focussing on key development areas.

The tool is "Chess Insights" and it is available from your profile link, just below the rating trendlines towards your right. Chess Insights utilizes your "analyzed games" and picks various data points from it and uses it to create insights into your game.  

There are many categories of facts, dimensions and metrics covering all aspects of the game. I will discuss the technical details in my next blog post. Today, lets take a quick bite of what is on offer and get hooked to it.

There are a number of pre-set insights that Lichess offers and these may be useful as a great starting point since you can get these at just 1-click without needing to get into too much detail.

• Do I gain more rating points against stronger or weaker opposition ?

This tells you how well you play against players stronger than, equal to or weaker than yourself. If you gain a lot of rating points against stronger opposition across many games (say 20 or more), then you are on the growth path and can improve rapidly. If on the other hand, most of your rating gain comes from players weaker than you, then you have likely hit a plateau and need to make a clear plan for improvement.

For my data, I see that I am gaining rating points against equal or stronger opposition but I have only 1 game against really strong opposition analyzed. So, may be a good sign but need to play more.

• How quickly do I move each piece in bullet or Blitz game?

This insight shows if you have any trouble evaluating moves by some specific pieces vs the others. If so, it will prompt for you to make a much more study of that piece movements, typical moves, maze paths etc to strengthen it.

 In my case, I see that I take relatively longer to move the Queen or the Bishop. This shows that possibly, I have a weakness in quickly evaluating Bishop or Queen moves and the impact. Let me note it down and see if any other insight  re-affirms it.

• What is the win-rate of my favorite openings as White?

This insight tells how you perform in your favorite openings from the white side in general. If in some favorite opening (as in what you most frequently play), if the win-rate is less than 60%, it would point out that you need to learn more about this opening or switch to some other opening. 

My data shows mostly good (>80 win rate) but in Scandinavian opening, I score just about 60% from white side. A point to ponder upon!

• What is the win-rate of my favorite openings as Black?

This is the same insight but from the black side - what is your win rate in your favorite opening as Black.

If you score less than 50% in any frequent opening, that is a call for action to study it in better detail and look at the various plans and defenses in depth.

In my case, I see mostly everything to be ok except a possible weakness as Black while playing the Scotch Game.

• How often do I take advantage of blunders by my opponent in each phase of the game?

This shows how good you are at spotting blunders from your opponents and taking advantage of the opportunities in all 3 phases of the game. Ideal score is 90-95% and acceptable is above 80%.

My score is around 85% or more in Openings, Middle-game as well as endgames. So it is good, but can be bettered.

• When I exchange Queens, how do the games end?

This would show whether you trade Queens too early shying away from a struggle or exchange only when you are expecting a clear win. Any win rate of less than 55% would mean you are trading off without any advantage. 

I have a healthy score of 70-86% when trading Queens which means this is ok for me.

• How well do I move each piece in the opening?

This shows your average centi-pawn-loss in the opening when moving different pieces. Ideally, it should be almost same across all pieces and the value should be low - lower the better. Any value above 40 means you are not finding good moves for that piece.

 In my case, I see a very clear degradation when employing Bishop or Queen moves in the opening. I am distinctly worse off in choosing their moves. 

Combined with the earlier insight on time taken while moving a piece, this shows a re-affirmation that I have a problem with the diagonally moving pieces and I need to work on that visualization, mazes, typical maneuvers etc. Great insight for me to work upon.

That completes a quick round-up of the LiChess Preset insights. Hope you too can use it for your own game and get clues on where to focus next!