quality of play index and assessing your strengths and weak

[David Gostelow]

I saw from another thread that some software calculates a quality of play index .

I don't use many features in the software I have , but suppose it must be possible to load all your games into some software and it calculates your strengths and weaknesses . At least to the point what openings you play better or weaker in , what point of the game are your strong or weak point (end game , start of middle game etc)

Has anybody tried this , is it possible. If you have tried to what were the results and was it of benefit

[Ian Thompson]

I don't use many features in the software I have , but suppose it must be possible to load all your games into some software and it calculates your strengths and weaknesses . At least to the point what openings you play better or weaker in , what point of the game are your strong or weak point.

I dare say you might find software that claims to do this. I very much doubt you will find any that really does. Computer analysis is good at telling you when you played a clearly good or bad move. It is not capable of telling you when you chose a good plan and slowly gained a significant advantage, or when you chose a bad plan and drifted into a bad position over several moves.

Just look for computer analysis of games where the assessment changes from, say, "equal" to "clear advantage for White" a few moves later, with no indications of improvements for Black. It probably means Black adopted a bad plan, but no single move was much worse than the best move. When computers can't do that successfully, they're not going to be able to do what you're looking for.