Frequently Asked Questions

Patterns get clearer with more data. 10 games can surface something real, but it can also surface a fluke. When you add more games, the system may detect new patterns or reorder your weaknesses based on how often they appear and how much they cost you.

Your earlier results weren’t wrong — they were just based on a smaller sample. This is exactly why the paid reports cover 50 or 100 games.

The free report analyzes your last 10 games — enough to spot a pattern, not always enough to confirm one. The $3 paid report covers your last 50 games; the $7 report covers your last 100. You can also upload a PGN file to analyze any specific batch of games you choose.

The free report (10 games) names your #1 mistake type, explains why it keeps happening, and gives you a 7-day fix plan. It’s a real diagnosis — but based on a small sample.

The $3 report (50 games) confirms whether the pattern is real across a larger sample, adds three real game examples showing exactly where it happened, and includes a PDF you can study from.

The $7 report (100 games) does all of that plus gives you a targeted fix course — drills built specifically around your #1 mistake type, not generic tactics puzzles.

Yes. This is one of the most common patterns Blackbox catches. If you’re regularly reaching a winning position and then losing it, the analysis flags when the advantage was achieved, when it disappeared, and what type of mistake caused the collapse — across all your games, not just one.

No — it analyzes all your games. Losses tend to show the clearest signals, but wins matter too. A mistake you made in a game you won is still a mistake — your opponent just didn’t punish it. Blackbox catches those too.

Yes. Enter your username to analyze your most recent games automatically, or export a specific set of games from Chess.com or Lichess as a PGN file and upload that instead. Want only your Black games? Export those, upload the PGN, done.

Lichess and Chess.com analyze one game at a time and show you which moves were mistakes. That’s useful — but it doesn’t tell you which mistakes you keep making across all your games, or which ones are actually costing you the most.

Blackbox looks across your whole game history, groups your mistakes by type, and ranks them by severity. The output isn’t “you blundered on move 23” — it’s “your #1 rating leak is X, here’s why it keeps happening, and here’s where it showed up in your games.”

Because fixing one real thing beats half-fixing five things. Most players already know they have multiple weaknesses — the problem is not knowing which one to work on first.

Blackbox ranks your mistake patterns by severity and builds your fix plan around the #1 leak. Once that improves, the next one becomes the focus.

No — but it does something coaches rarely do: analyze a large batch of your games to find what you repeatedly get wrong. A good coach can do this, but it takes time and costs accordingly.

Blackbox does the diagnostic part automatically. Some players use it on its own; others use it to come to coaching sessions with a clearer sense of what to work on.

Payments are handled entirely by Stripe — the same provider used by Amazon, Google, and most major apps. Blackbox never sees or stores your card details.

Stripe also supports Google Pay and Apple Pay, so you can pay without typing a card number at all. PayPal is not currently supported.

Submitting your games takes about 60 seconds. Analysis runs automatically and your report is saved — you can come back to it whenever you have time.

The fix course is short by design. The goal is targeted practice, not hours of study.

Use the contact link and describe what you’re seeing. Support goes directly to a human — not a bot — and paid users are prioritized. If the analysis is factually incorrect, we’ll refund you.