What do the different "game shapes" actually mean? Sharp, balanced, intense, etc.

What do the different "game shapes" actually mean? Sharp, balanced, intense, etc.   Are there rankings of these?

Sharp means a position in which the primary considerations are tactical. That is, a position in which detailed and accurate calculation is essential.

A balanced position is one in which both sides are about equal. I also usually think of balanced positions being positions in which neither side has particularly obvious weaknesses or strengths and/or the weaknesses and strengths of one side are the same as the other side.

A closed position is one in which the pieces (i.e., queens, rooks, bishops, and knights) have relatively limited scope of movement; usually because many pawns are on the board.

A open position is the opposite of a closed position.

These terms, and others, describe the nature of the position, and none are better or worse than the rest.

Can someone explain the difference between intense and wild? To me, both sound like games full of blunders and atrocities against chess on both sides.

The description for intense seriously irritates me. What does it mean it was a serious game!?

Yes, the descriptions are very irritating. For example, what is the difference between smooth and balanced.

Smooth means your opponent never had a chance. You started +.5 and slowly got up to +100. Balanced means that it was near 0.0 the entire time, no one missed much, and then finally someone eeked out a win from a drawn position. Or it was a draw.

This all has to do with Stockfish's analytical evaluation board, and what it looked like over the course of your games from start to finish. If you look at your Insights and hover your mouse over the circle chart, it actually tells you. Although I would like it if during the game analysis, Stockfish tells me what kind of game I played.

Giveaway: One player was winning, but then gave it away. (For example, you had a mate in one, missed it, and now your opponent has a mate in one.)

Balanced: Neither player had an advantage. (An example is: both players play a perfect opening that was so perfect, the game ended in a draw where position and material were equal.)

Smooth: One player took the advantage and never let go. (One player made one slip up, and the other player's position just got better and better from then on.)

Sharp: A back and forth game where both players had chances. (One player made mistakes that cost them material or position, but made a comeback because the other player also made mistakes that cost THEM position and material.)

Sudden: A close game that was lost by a mistake. (A close game until about mid-game, but one player blundered checkmate, and the other player seized that opportunity immediately.)

Intense: "That was a serious game!" (lol I don't know what this means, but judging by the icon's representation of the evaluation bar, it looks like both players making a few mistakes across the game, but not many.)

Wild: A chaotic game where both players had many chances to win. (These players are either goofing around, or don't know how to play chess [me included, as I have played 136 wild games!!] where forced mate was missed multiple times by one or both players.)

Drawish: are the positions where there are zero chances of attack, or an inevitable stalemate /or repetitive checks. And are the most boring positions in the game, stockfish give them 0.0 eval. If it was 0.1 then it's not a drawish because there's at least chance for any side and no repetitive checks.

It's not Stockfish giving the information exactly but the code written to give meaning to the engine evaluations.

Game Review got rid of them and I believe the next version of the Insights code will as well.

Sharp simply means there are a lot of threads, and most likely at least one of the kings is in danger. Its even sharper when both kings are in danger and the two attacks have turned into a race of who can checkmate their opponent first.

Balanced means neither side has an advantage. Also, the position is probably not too sharp, because the sharper a position gets, the less easy it is to evaluate. Though in the time of modern computer chess programs like Stockfish the very concept of not knowing how the position evaluates has a bit vanished from chess.

I would not agree that balanced means that there are no weaknesses. It only means the sum of the severity of the weaknesses of one side is equal to the severity of the weaknesses on the other side. For example maybe one side has the bishop pair, but it also has an isolated center pawn to deal with, and maybe the other side has a great outpost for their knight.

I dont know what intense is supposed to mean. AFAIK thats not a common way to qualify a position. It probably just means sharp. Or it refers to the whole way a player is playing, and that then probably means he never lets go, never gives his opponent a pause, and keeps attacking all the time.

And the engine chess.com uses to evaluate moves is Stockfish, right?

Crappy: Most games played by Wits-end.

As far as I'm aware, yes, though at all one point it was Komodo.