Magnus Carlsen is the current world chess champion. He’s also become quite the entrepreneur, with a variety of companies falling under the “Play Magnus” banner, including Chessable (which I really should use more), a couple of apps, and Aimchess.
Aimchess claims to utilize analytics from a player’s own games to create personalized training programs. Since I tend toward the geeky side anyway, and am still finding it a little more difficult than I’d like to create my own statistics from Chessbase, I decided to try Aimchess premium for a couple of months to see if it’s any good.
Now I’ve played correspondence chess and over-the-board chess, but lately, time has only allowed me to play the occasional rapid (10 minute) game; I know that I’m too slow to do well in bullet and blitz!
So here’s what I see when I ask Aimchess to look at my “all games” statistics from chess.com:
There are all sorts of statistics to make the chess geek (especially the quantitative type) swoon. First, there’s the actual rating. Mine went up in fits and starts, dropped, rose again, and then has plummeted. The next box shows that there are 1,083 games in the data set (I’ve played more than that, so I’m guessing that Aimchess only takes the most recent 1,000 or so games). That sounds like a lot, but if you consider most games are only about 10-12 minutes, it’s really not that many. I’ve won 550, drew 51, and lost 482. Not bad, but not great… yet the rating has plummeted. Let’s see if the other boxes can tell us why.
The next box is “advantage capitalization,” or in other words, how good you are at converting advantages. I’m not sure why it was at 0% for a while, then went up to 90% (also not accurate), before settling around 70%. In other words, about average for somebody of my rating. That’s legitimately useful information. It’s nice to know that part of my problem is that I’m not always winning in winning positions. That gives me something to work on.
The next box is “opening,” or how often you gain an advantage in the opening. And I generally do OK here. In fact, my top 5 openings by frequency are all ones where I have an advantage, and “have an above average winning percentage.” Then why do I still lose?
Well, it’s not because of tactics, or at least I don’t think so. The box says -13% for tactics, but compared to what? Should I be at 75%? I’m not sure, because here’s what the details say:
Comparison with opponents:
Well done! You make less tactical mistakes on average than your opponents 🙂Comparison with peers:
You blunder less often than most players in your rating range. Crushing it!
So maybe I’m not failing at tactics. Or maybe I am, and Aimchess doesn’t know it, or doesn’t want to tell me.
Maybe it’s my time management. The box says -42%, so I should be ahead on the clock 100% of the time? Well, I’m not Magnus or Hikaru Nakamura, so that’s never going to happen. But here’s what Aimchess tells me:
Your time management is impressive. You were ahead on the clock for 58% of your moves. Strong clock management can put your opponents in time pressure and help you win more frequently. Just make sure that you don’t move too fast and miss tactical opportunities!
So far, I’m doing really good, right? Yet my rapid rating dropped below 1200 on chess.com 🤦🏻♂️. So let’s check out the last two boxes: resourcefulness and endgame.
Resourcefulness is how often you pull out a victory when you’re behind. I’m at 30%, average for my rating.
Maybe it’s the endgame that is my weakness… here’s what Aimchess tells me:
Overall
You are quite strong in the endgame! You manage to win a higher percentage of endgames than most players in your rating range.
Equal Endgames
You often lose endgames to your opponents when you should have equal winning chances.
Endgames with advantage
When you get an endgame advantage, it’s game over! You convert your endgame advantages into wins more often than most players in your rating range.
Endgames with disadvantage
You’re quite resourceful! You survive endgames where you are at a disadvantage more often than most players in your rating range.
In other words… who knows? 🤷🏻♂️
That said, I do find it interesting that Aimchess gives me problems based on the mistakes I’ve made in games, which is legitimately helpful. They’ll show me the actual position where I messed up, and how I should have moved differently.
Now the UI could use a little bit of work… and it would be interesting to run some correlations on how external stress in my life relate to ratings drops/increases. But even though all of the statistics may not be worthwhile as of yet, it appears that they’re on the road to developing something that can be truly useful.