ChessGrader / Guides / What is a good accuracy?
What is a good accuracy in chess?
A good accuracy depends on your rating and the time control — there is no single number. As a headline range: 70–80% is solid for club players, 80–90% is strong, and 90%+ in a slow game is master territory.
That's the short answer. For most players rated 1000–1600, anything in the 70s is a perfectly good game, and a game in the 80s usually means you played well or your opponent made it easy. Below is the longer answer: what typical accuracy looks like at each rating band, why the number swings so much from game to game, and why chasing it is mostly a waste of your time.
Typical accuracy by rating
These ranges are honest approximations pulled from public community data — self-reported stats, published game samples, and site aggregates. They are not lab measurements, and they assume rapid-to-classical time controls. In bullet, everyone's numbers drop.
| Rating | Typical accuracy | What it looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Under 1000 | ~55–70% | Several mistakes per game, occasional hung pieces |
| 1000–1600 | ~70–80% | Fewer blunders, but critical moments still go wrong |
| 1600–2000 | ~80–90% | Clean games with one or two real errors |
| Masters / GMs | 90%+ in slower games | Near-engine play in quiet positions |
One game above or below your band means nothing. A trend across twenty games means something.
Why accuracy swings wildly from game to game
Accuracy measures how closely your moves matched the engine's, weighted by how much each deviation cost. That makes it extremely sensitive to what kind of game you played:
- Forced sequences inflate it. If your opponent walks into a line where every one of your moves is a forced recapture or an obvious check, you rack up "best move" after "best move" without doing anything hard.
- One-sided games inflate it. When you're up a queen, almost everything wins, so almost nothing you play loses meaningful win probability. Crushing a much weaker opponent routinely produces 90%+ accuracy that says little about your strength.
- Sharp, balanced games deflate it. A long, tense struggle against an equal opponent has many moments where only one or two moves hold. Even strong players score in the 70s in games like that — and those are often their best games.
A 95% in a 12-move miniature and a 78% in a 60-move grind are not comparable numbers. The grind was probably the better game.
How accuracy is actually computed
Every accuracy score starts with centipawn loss: the engine evaluates the position before and after your move, and the difference is what your move cost. ChessGrader uses Lichess's documented method — each move's loss is fed through an exponential-decay curve (103.1668·e^(−0.04354·drop) − 3.1669), and the game score combines a volatility-weighted average (sharp phases count more than dead-equal shuffling) with a harmonic mean, so one catastrophe isn't averaged away by thirty easy moves.
Every formula, threshold, and engine setting is published on the methodology page. If your number looks wrong, you can check the math.
Why the same game scores differently on different sites
Paste one game into Chess.com, Lichess, and ChessGrader and you'll get three accuracy numbers a few points apart. All three use Stockfish, but they differ on search depth, on how centipawn loss maps to a per-move score, and on how per-move scores combine into a game score. Chess.com's exact formula is proprietary; Lichess's and ChessGrader's are published. Differences of a couple of points are normal and don't mean any of the tools is broken — it means accuracy is a modeling choice, not a physical constant.
Why chasing the number is a trap
Accuracy is an output, not an input. You can't practice "being more accurate" — you can only fix the specific things that cost you win probability. The productive loop looks like this:
- Review the game and find the two or three moves that actually lost the most.
- Ask what you were thinking at each one — didn't see it, saw it and misjudged it, or rushed.
- Fix the pattern (tactics for the first, evaluation for the second, clock discipline for the third).
Do that for a few months and your accuracy rises on its own, as a side effect. Players who fixate on the score instead tend to play passively — trading everything off to avoid mistakes — which produces pretty numbers and stalled ratings. A structured game-analysis habit beats staring at the percentage.
Rule of thumb: track your blunder count per game, not your accuracy. Getting from two blunders per game to one will do more for your rating than any accuracy target.
Frequently asked questions
Is 80% accuracy good in chess?
For most players, yes. 80% is roughly the top of the typical range for club players rated 1000-1600 and normal for players rated 1600-2000 in rapid or classical games. Context matters though: 80% in a sharp, balanced game is a strong result, while 80% while crushing a much weaker opponent is unremarkable.
Why is my accuracy sometimes higher in bullet than in rapid?
Usually because bullet games are shorter and more one-sided. If your opponent blunders early, most of your remaining moves are easy and score well, inflating the average. Over a large sample, almost everyone is less accurate in faster time controls — single games are just noisy.
Does high accuracy mean I played like a grandmaster?
No. Grandmasters average 90%+ in slower games against strong opposition, which is much harder than scoring 90%+ in a game your opponent lost quickly. Accuracy measures how closely you matched the engine given the positions you faced; easy positions produce high scores at any skill level.
Can accuracy scores detect cheating?
Not on their own. A single high-accuracy game is normal and proves nothing, since forced sequences and one-sided games routinely produce 90%+ scores for honest players. Real cheat detection looks at statistical patterns across many games, move timing, and agreement with engine choices in hard positions. Never accuse someone based on one accuracy number.
What accuracy do grandmasters get?
Typically 90% or higher in classical games, sometimes approaching the high 90s in clean wins. In blitz and bullet their accuracy drops like everyone else, often into the 80s. Even world-class players score in the 70s occasionally in long, complicated fights.
Why does ChessGrader give me a different accuracy than chess.com?
Chess.com's accuracy formula is proprietary, so no other tool can reproduce it exactly. ChessGrader uses Lichess's fully documented method and publishes every formula on its methodology page. Differences of a couple of points between sites are normal for the same game.
Does accuracy matter more than rating?
No. Rating measures results against real opponents, which is what actually matters. Accuracy is a useful diagnostic for individual games, but it is inflated by easy games and deflated by hard ones. Use it to find your worst moves, not as a scoreboard.