The Gift You Hand Back
Your opponent has just gone wrong and you do not know how. What you do on the very next move decides most of these games.
What the games say
About 45%of 5,559 measured opponent blunders were handed straight back on the next move
Longer thinking was worse, not better. Replies inside two seconds gave it back 37.6% of the time; replies after fifteen seconds gave it back 53.5% of the time. Big gifts of four pawns or more, answered after a long think, were the worst group at 66.7%.
The clock is not the cause. Fast replies are mostly recaptures, which are easy and rarely go wrong. The punishes that need a move nobody forces you to make failed between 50% and 59% of the time whatever the clock said, so what predicts the give-back is the kind of position, not the speed.
This depends on your band. Players rated 1600 and up sat at 31.2%, below the general floor, so read these as ranges for a band rather than one number for everybody.
Two kinds of gift
The piece is sitting on a square you can take. The move is forced on you, which is why it usually goes right.
22% to 37% given backNothing needs taking. The punish is a check, a threat, or a quiet move somewhere else, and no rule of the position insists on it.
50% to 59% given back, at any think timeThe scan, in three questions
- What changed? Name the square their move left and the square it filled. Everything the mistake opened is next to one of those two.
- What is forcing? Checks, captures and threats against the piece that just moved, in that order, before anything quiet.
- What do they answer with? Say their reply out loud before you play. A punish you have not answered yet is the gift going back the other way.
Your own gifts
Reading your games.