How to beat Nelson
Nelson is a intermediate bot on Chess.com, listed at 1300. Here is what the games look like, what usually goes wrong, and how to see exactly where yours did.
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How Nelson plays
Nelson is the bot everyone remembers: he brings his queen out on move two or three and attacks with it for the rest of the game. Against players under about 1000 it works, because every check feels urgent. A review of a loss to Nelson usually shows a string of passive replies to queen moves that were not actually threats, followed by one real threat that was missed.
The plan
Develop with tempo against the queen — knights and pawn moves that attack her while improving your position — and refuse to move the same piece twice to dodge her. When she has to retreat, you are ahead in development and the game is yours.
Review the game you just lost
Bot games on Chess.com have their own address once they are finished: chess.com/game/computer/…. Type rv in front of it — rvchess.com/game/computer/… — and the full review builds itself: accuracy for both sides, every move labelled, and a graph you can click to jump to the moment the game turned. It is free, needs no account, and does not count against Chess.com's daily Game Review.
If you cannot find the address, paste the game's PGN instead. Chess.com's Game Review is limited for free members, so this is also the way to review every bot game rather than one a day.
Which move to look at
Against a intermediate bot the useful move is rarely the last one. Open the review, find the first place the graph tips against you, and ask what Nelson was threatening there. That is the pattern to fix; the final blunder is just where it showed up.
Bot strengths are as Chess.com listed them at the time of writing; the site re-rates and adds bots. This site is not affiliated with Chess.com.