What Is a Good Accuracy on Chess.com? Scores by Rating, Explained

Updated October 2026 · 8 min read · Every position checked with Stockfish

Accuracy is the number you see first after Game Review, so it's natural to wonder whether yours is any good. The trouble is that the same score can mean very different things depending on the game. This guide explains what the score measures, how to read it for your rating, why one game can mislead you, and a practical routine to push your average up.

1. Know what the accuracy score actually measures

Chess.com's accuracy compares every move you played with what a strong engine would have played, then turns the gap into a score from 0 to 100. Chess.com describes this as its CAPS system. Lichess does something similar but builds its score from how much your winning chances drop after each move.

Three things follow from this:

• It measures move quality, not result. You can score highly and lose, or score poorly and win because your opponent blundered last.
• Big mistakes hurt far more than small ones. One hung queen can cost more than ten slightly passive moves.
• It is not your rating. Your rating moves only with results (Chess.com uses the Glicko system). Accuracy is a diagnostic, not a target in itself.

2. Read your score against your rating and your opponent

Chess.com doesn't hand you a fixed 'good' number for each rating, and individual games vary enormously. Treat these as rough working bands for club and online players, not official figures:

• Below about 70: usually at least one serious blunder, often a hung piece or missed tactic.
• 70s: a normal, playable game at club level. Mistakes happened but nothing catastrophic, or one error was recovered.
• 80s: a good, clean game for most players under 1800.
• 90 and above: excellent in a long, complicated game. In a short or one-sided game it may just mean the position was easy.

So is 80 accuracy good? For most players in the 600–1800 range, yes. But the more useful comparison is with your opponent in the same game. Both players faced the same position type and the same time control, so whoever scored higher usually played better that day.

The most useful comparison of all is with your own average. If your rapid average sits in the low 70s, a run of games in the high 70s is real progress, whatever a streamer's screen says.

3. Don't trust a single game's number

Individual scores swing for reasons that have little to do with skill:

• Short games. If your opponent collapses early, you play a few obvious moves and score very high.
• One-sided positions. Once you're a rook up, many moves are 'accurate' because almost anything wins.
• Time scrambles. Ten fast moves at the end of a blitz game can drag a decent game down.
• Simple vs complex positions. Quiet symmetrical positions are easier to play accurately than sharp ones.

Look at this miniature. Black's whole game is decided by one natural-looking developing move:

And here is a classic trap where one greedy capture ends the game in seven moves:

In both cases, the loser's accuracy is mostly a verdict on a single move. That's why you average across many games before drawing conclusions.

4. Find what is actually dragging your average down

Take your last 20 games in one time control and note three things for each: your accuracy, the number of blunders, and the move where the first blunder happened. Patterns appear quickly:

• If most low scores contain a blunder, your problem is tactical safety, not strategy.
• If blunders cluster after move 25 or in the last minute, it's time management or fatigue.
• If you're losing accuracy in the first ten moves, it's opening familiarity.

You don't need to study every move. Our guide on how to analyse your chess games shows how to do this in minutes per game.

How Chessy helps: connect your Chess.com or Lichess username and Chessy imports and analyses your games automatically, then shows your accuracy over time, blunder rate, and the move numbers and times of day where your results drop.

5. Raise accuracy by cutting blunders first

Because big mistakes cost so much, removing one blunder per game lifts your average far more than polishing quiet moves. Build a short check before every move:

• What did my opponent's last move threaten? Checks, captures, attacks on undefended pieces.
• What does my move leave undefended? Look at the square you're leaving, not just the one you're going to.
• Is there a forcing move for me? Checks and captures first.

Practise it in ordinary positions like this one, where Black has just given check and White must choose how to respond:

If hanging pieces are your main leak, work through how to stop hanging pieces. Then drill the exact mistakes you make: puzzles built from your own games train the patterns you actually miss.

6. Fix the time and opening leaks

Once blunders drop, the next gains come from two places.

Time. Accuracy often collapses when you're low on the clock. Play slightly faster in the opening, where you know the moves, so you have time for the critical middlegame. If your blitz accuracy is far below your rapid accuracy, play more rapid for a while.

Openings. Pick one opening as White and one defence against each of White's two main first moves (the king's pawn and the queen's pawn), and learn the first eight to ten moves with the ideas behind them. Fewer early inaccuracies means fewer bad positions to defend.

How Chessy helps: the weekly AI coaching report summarises what improved and what leaked, and the openings library lets you practise lines on the board.

7. Track the trend, not the game

Check your rolling average every couple of weeks, separately for each time control. A steady climb of a few points over a month is meaningful progress. If your accuracy rises but your rating doesn't, you're probably playing cleaner but still losing to one late blunder per game, so look at where in the game those mistakes happen. If you've been stuck for a while, see how to break a chess rating plateau.

Common mistakes

• Comparing yourself to top players' scores. Strong players often post very high accuracy, but they play different positions against different opponents. Your benchmark is your own average and your opponent in the same game.
• Mixing time controls. Bullet, blitz and rapid scores aren't comparable. Track each one separately or you'll misread your progress.
• Chasing the number instead of the result. Playing ultra-safe, passive moves to protect your accuracy can cost you winning chances. Play good chess; the score follows.
• Reading one game as proof. A 92 in a 15-move win or a 58 in a time scramble tells you little. Draw conclusions from 20 or more games.
• Reviewing without changing anything. Looking at red moves after every game feels productive but changes nothing unless you note the pattern and train it.

FAQ

A good accuracy score is simply one that's moving in the right direction. Stop judging single games, track your average per time control, and spend your effort removing the one or two blunders that decide most of your games. The number, and your rating, will follow.

Sources

• Chess.com Support: What is Accuracy? — How Chess.com calculates its accuracy score
• Lichess: how accuracy is computed — Comparison with Lichess's win-percentage-based accuracy
• Wikipedia: Glicko rating system — Why rating depends on results, not accuracy
• Wikipedia: Blunder (chess) — Definition of blunders and their impact