Look closely at the Chessicous logo and you’ll spot two exclamation marks: !!. In chess notation, that’s the highest compliment a move can get. It means brilliant.
But what actually makes a move brilliant? It isn’t just “a good move” or “the best move”. Brilliant moves have something extra: they surprise you. Here’s what that something is, how annotators and game review tools decide, and two famous games full of them.
What the chess symbols mean
When a game is annotated in a book or online, moves get little punctuation marks:
| Symbol | Meaning |
|---|---|
| !! | Brilliant move |
| ! | Good move |
| !? | Interesting move, worth trying |
| ?! | Dubious move |
| ? | Mistake |
| ?? | Blunder |
These marks are an opinion, not a rule. Different annotators can disagree. But almost everyone agrees on the spirit of !!: a move that is both strong and hard to find, usually because it looks wrong at first glance. If you’re new to notation, our guide on how to read chess notation covers all of these.
What makes a move brilliant?
1. It’s correct
A brilliant move has to actually work. A wild sacrifice that loses isn’t brilliant, it’s just a blunder with confidence. Today, engines like Stockfish let us check whether a sacrifice really holds up.
2. It’s hard to find
The best move in a position is often obvious: recapture a piece, block a check. Nobody gives !! for that. Brilliant moves break the normal rules of thumb, so most players wouldn’t even consider them.
3. It usually gives something up
That’s why most brilliant moves are sacrifices: you give away material on purpose, because what you get back (checkmate, a winning attack, a promoting pawn) is worth more. Our post on chess piece values explains why “points” sometimes don’t matter.
Try one. This is the finish of the most famous short game ever played, which we’ll replay in full below. White is down material but has a beautiful idea.
The queen sacrifice works because it deflects the knight away from d8. Material doesn’t matter once the king is mated.
Famous brilliancy #1: the Opera Game
In 1858, Paul Morphy played this game at the Paris opera house against two opponents consulting together: the Duke of Brunswick and Count Isouard. It’s short, it’s clean, and it’s still used to teach development, open lines and sacrifices.
Look at what Morphy did: he developed fast, opened lines toward the uncastled king, and then gave away a knight, a rook and his queen. At the end he had only a rook and a bishop left, and that was enough. That’s the kind of game that earns a row of exclamation marks.
Famous brilliancy #2: the Immortal Game
The Immortal Game was played in London in 1851 by Adolf Anderssen against Lionel Kieseritzky. It was a casual game, not a tournament one, and modern engines have found improvements for both sides. But it’s still the classic example of romantic, all-out attacking chess: White gives up a bishop, both rooks and the queen, and mates with three minor pieces.
Sacrifices: real ones and fake ones
Not every sacrifice is brilliant. It helps to know the two kinds:
- Sham sacrifices (or “pseudo-sacrifices”) give up material that comes straight back, usually within a couple of moves, often with checkmate or a big material gain. The queen sacrifice in the puzzle above is technically one of these: it forces mate right away.
- Real sacrifices give up material for something long-term, like a lasting attack, a weak enemy king, or a powerful passed pawn. You can’t calculate everything, so you rely on judgment. Exchange sacrifices (a rook for a minor piece) are a common example.
Here’s another classic sham sacrifice you can solve. Black’s king is boxed in by its own pieces:
That pattern is called the smothered mate, and it’s one of the patterns in our post on checkmate patterns every player should know. You can practice more in the Smothered Mate lesson and the sacrifice puzzles.
How Chessicous game review finds brilliant moves
When you run a game through game review, Stockfish checks every move and gives it a label: Brilliant, Great, Best, Excellent, Good, Book, Inaccuracy, Mistake, Miss or Blunder. Here’s how the top two work, in plain terms.
Brilliant (!!)
A move is marked Brilliant when all of these are true:
- It’s the engine’s top choice in the position.
- It’s a sacrifice: the piece you moved (not a pawn) can be captured by something cheaper, or it’s left attacked and undefended.
- After the move, you’re still better according to the engine.
- You weren’t already completely winning, unless the sacrifice forces checkmate. (Throwing a rook at an opponent when you’re up two queens doesn’t count!)
Great (!)
A Great move is the engine’s top choice when it’s also close to being the only good move: the second-best option would have been clearly worse. These are the moves that save a tough position or keep an advantage that would otherwise slip away. They aren’t flashy, but they’re hard to find.
Everything else
Moves that match or nearly match the engine are Best, Excellent or Good. Known opening moves are Book. Moves that lose a little are Inaccuracies, and moves that lose more are Mistakes and Blunders. A Miss is when you were clearly winning and let a big chance slip.
How to find more brilliant moves yourself
Brilliant moves aren’t magic. They come from patterns you’ve seen before. A few habits help:
- Look at every check and capture, even the “silly” ones like giving up your queen. The lesson Checks, Captures, Threats shows how.
- Learn mating patterns. Most queen sacrifices end in a pattern like the back-rank or smothered mate. The Mating Patterns unit covers the classics.
- Solve puzzles daily. Puzzles train you to expect a hidden idea. Start with the daily puzzle or browse all puzzle themes.
- Review your games. Look for the moments where review shows a Great or Brilliant move you missed, and ask why you didn’t consider it.
- Replay famous games. The analysis board lets you paste in any game and step through it with an engine.