Paper on human error in chess:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.04956.pdfKind of interesting. The authors use "tablebases" to get lookups for perfect play in chess positions having small numbers of pieces on the board. They analyze a large dataset of games, and attempt to find what factors correlate most strongly with blunders, mostly analyzing three categories:
* Player skill level
* Difficulty of position
* Time available to make moves
Interestingly, even more than skill level, the inherent difficulty of a position was seen to be the most strongly correlated with blunders. There were even "skill-anomalous" positions in which weaker players had fewer errors than those stronger than them. The empirical blunder rate was also shown to be higher in aggregate for players spending more time playing a move. Practically speaking, I suppose it means that in a complicated situation, both players are more prone to making blunders - maybe differences in skill become less noticeable? Not really sure.
A strong part of this analysis is that with the tablebases, the true optimal result is known, so blunders can be confidently categorized. On the other hand, since chess isn't solved for larger numbers of pieces on the board, maybe the analysis is limited to the end of the game.
Not really sure, but I found the article interesting.