Mistake versus inaccuracy

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LaSalleStreet

What is the difference between these two moves?

KeSetoKaiba

Blunder (??), Mistake (?), Innaccuracy (?!) and also "Missed Win" are all computer definitions in a very technical sense. All of them are however many "centipawns" behind ("worse) than the "best" move the computer evaluates. 

In human terms, these are all basically just errors with Blunder being the most severe. A Mistake is just slightly worse in evaluation than an Innaccuracy. 

Feel free to message me if you want a few more specifics in a conversation about centipawns and how computers "think" different from human players, but basically Mistake is just slightly worse than Innaccurate. An Innacuracy is a very small difference which sometimes the computer even sees later as not a bad move (once it analyzes on a deeper depth).

dannyhume
What are the centi-pawn numeric values for blunder, mistake, and inaccuracy, anyone know? Chess Tempo has blunder at 1.8 pawns (180 centi-pawns).

Are the values different on this site?
KeSetoKaiba
dannyhume wrote:
What are the centi-pawn numeric values for blunder, mistake, and inaccuracy, anyone know? Chess Tempo has blunder at 1.8 pawns (180 centi-pawns).

Are the values different on this site?

I saw the exact values somewhere, but that was years ago. The centipawn evaluation doesn't change by site, it changes by engine doing the evaluating (Stockfish "thinks" differently than AlphaZero, or Lc0, or Komodo...you get the idea). 

Engines (chess computers) can't think in patterns like humans can, so they must evaluate EVERYTHING and calculate far to try and accurately determine the best way to continue. Once the computer does this (different engines have slightly different ways of evaluating the best move and position values), then it compares all other moves to the "best move" and assigns the variations values. 

At least for Stockfish, an close estimate for Innaccuracy is half a pawn to a pawn worse than "best" move. 1-2 pawns worse is Mistake and worse than this is a Blunder. This is just an estimate though, the actual values were decimal-somethings but I'm rounding for simplicity. 

Just to give an idea of how technical this process is, the value of "centipawn" is 100th of a single pawn (hence, "centi" prefix)