STUDY: https://lichess.org/study/30VwW7Ah/
I downloaded your last 50 games, banged them through the computer analysis, and did some sums.
- THE ANALYSIS. The game analysis compares the players’ chosen moves with the likely best moves. Deviations from the best moves are put into three categories: inaccuracies, mistakes, and blunders. To change the expected game result, I’d say you need either just one blunder, two or three mistakes, or a good sprinkle of inaccuracies. But that’s the expected game result against perfect play from the opponent — against an imperfect opponent, you might get the chance to make several blunders in a game without losing, because your opponent is also making mistakes. [While you are making blunders in most games, it’s probably not worth worrying about mistakes and certainly not inaccuracies.]
- THE BOT. At any point in a chess game, you might have 30 moves available. The best of these will maintain or improve your position, while the worst might lose a piece, or worse. As I understand it, the Lichess AI bots at different levels might be programmed to (a) avoid the top-rated move (or moves) available, either often or all the time, and also (b) at random moments, throw in one of the much lower-ranked moves, that are mistakes or blunders. [This means that occasionally when you make a capture, the bot will fail to make the obvious recapture.]
- THE SUMS. Games: 50. Moves: 2105. Results: W7 D5 L38. Blunders: SFD1958 319; LichessAI3 267. Rate of blunders per move: SFD1958 15%; Lichess AI3 13%. Most blunders in one game: SFD1958: 23; Lichess AI3: 22 (game 45 in the study).
“…sometimes I don’t lose, and for the life of me I can’t figure out what I did different.”
No, I can’t either! I looked closely at your six wins and a few losses, without spotting much.
One view of what is going on is that it’s random(*), and you don’t do anything different in the games that you win. Alternatively, you might be more careful sometimes, and that’s when you win.
Do you always play without distractions? With full concentration? Is it possible that you are more careful in your winning games? [And if you don’t know that, then I can’t tell that.]
If that’s not the key to your wins, I think it’s just that the bot is coming up with more and bigger mistakes earlier than you are in some games, through the workings of chance.
One argument to say it’s just chance is that your overall blunders-per-move rate in all your games is 15%, and in the games you win it is a similar 11%. But it could be a bit lower, so that’s when you win? 7 games is not enough to draw very robust conclusions.
If you want to win a few more games:
- Make more captures! Every so often you can expect your opponent not to recapture and you will go a piece ahead. Also some moves it makes are bluffs, they are not really safe
- Have a peek at some of the computer analysis — make sure you understand why each of your blunders were blunders — and what move you should have played. That could do a lot to improve your understanding of the games and give you ideas for next time. [Spoiler alert — lots of missed take-a-piece-for-nothing and lots of missed attackers-outnumber-defenders and plenty of missed forced checkmates.]
- There’s some exercises you can do which will probably reduce your error rate.
https://devonjuniorchess.co.uk/wp/drdaveexeter/2025/12/25/blunderproofing-your-chess/ - But if you’re enjoying what you’re doing, carry on!
(*) Suppose you’re playing a game with two dice. If you get a six on the yellow die, you get damage, and then you roll the red die to see how much damage you get from 1-6. So, every 6 turns, you might expect to pick up 3-4 points of damage. Keep rolling. Your opponent does the same. You get damage, your opponent gets damage, sometimes you get more damage hits in a row, sometimes they do. If you have 12 points of damage more than your opponent, you lose. If you use the same dice, you should expect to win half of the games.
But maybe your opponent cheats, and has biased dice — their yellow die is less likely than yours to show a six — maybe 1/8. So, you now expect to lose more than you win. But you won’t lose all of them: if you’re lucky, your opponent will accumulate their 12 points of damage before you do.
That may be what is going on with you and Lichess AI3. You have a chance of making a blunder on every move, and given long enough, you will probably make enough big blunders to lose, but maybe your opponent won’t take advantage of the chances you give them, or they will make a blunder. In some games, your opponent finds enough big blunders to get a lost game before you do. But it’s mostly a matter of chance.