EloCoach Experiments
Real games. Real engines. AI coaching tested against the board.
We ran EloCoach on the recent rated blitz and rapid games of titled players and streamers, on Chess.com and Lichess, and published the coach’s reviews exactly as the app wrote them. Every engine number sits beside the claim it supports. If you find something wrong, tell us and we’ll publish the correction.
How the reviews were made
- Stockfish 19 at depth 12 analysed every move, on a phone, the way the app does.
- Maia-3, a model trained to play like humans at a given rating, estimated how hard each move was to find. Above 2600 it reads moves as a 2600 player would.
- One coach call per game wrote the review. Two coaches with different methods, EloCoach and Apollo, reviewed every game.
- A script checked every “piece on square” claim against the positions in the game, and we read every flagged claim by hand.
The run, in numbers
- Games
- 162
- 117 Chess.com · 45 Lichess
- Coach reviews
- 324
- 2 coaches
- Engine time per game
- 18.7 s
- median, on the phone
- Review time
- 22.1 s
- median, EloCoach (Apollo 30.1 s)
- Board claims checked
- 2,001
- Real errors found
- 4
The errors we found
- A fork described as hitting "the king on h1" when the king was on g2.
- A fork described as hitting "the king on h1" when the king was on g1.
- A knight on e5 said to defend c3, which a knight on e5 can never reach.
- A reference to a pawn on e6 that was never there.
Those games are not featured below. Elite players on Lichess play almost only bullet, so few of their games met the blitz-or-rapid rule.
Featured reviews
We feature 9 of the 162 games, chosen for variety: wins and losses, tactics and endgames, both coaches and both sites. Every number above covers all 162.
drnykterstein · Lichess · blitz · win · reviewed by EloCoach
You spent fifty moves defending an objectively lost rook endgame before squeezing blood from a stone.
gmbenjaminfinegold · Chess.com · blitz · draw · reviewed by EloCoach
You had a forced mate in six on move 41, traded queens instead, and later shook hands on a threefold repetition in a position where Black was completely paralyzed.
ericrosen · Lichess · blitz · win · reviewed by Apollo
The game demonstrates the penalty for neglecting king safety.
gothamchess · Chess.com · blitz · loss · reviewed by EloCoach
You outplayed a near-3000 opponent through the sharpest complications of the game, only to bleed the half-point away in a four-second panic scramble.
annamaja · Chess.com · blitz · win · reviewed by EloCoach
This was a wild, high-wire brawl that should have been put away within fifteen moves, ultimately decided on move 26 when Black greedily grabbed the c2-pawn and walked straight into a fatal pin.
gmbenjaminbok · Chess.com · blitz · win · reviewed by Apollo
The game was effectively decided when Black's tactical attempt on move 38 neglected the undefended rook on b8, though the foundation was laid on moves 21 through 25, where White secured sufficient long-term compensation to absorb Black's pressure.
adriananikolova · Chess.com · blitz · draw · reviewed by EloCoach
You survived a wild, double-edged slugfest that swung from lost to drawn, plunged back into dead lost, and escaped only because your opponent panicked at the doorstep.
nemsko · Chess.com · blitz · draw · reviewed by EloCoach
You won a clean central pawn right out of the opening, allowed Black to generate vicious queenside counterplay, survived three direct refutations in a wild time scramble, and then threw away the win on move 41 by capturing a poisoned pawn instead of delivering a decisive check.
chessbrah · Chess.com · blitz · win · reviewed by Apollo
The game was won on the clock, but the board was decided on move 45.
Are you one of these players? We’ll remove your games on request, no questions asked: [email protected].