Good moves and bad moves

From a game-theoretic perspective, there are three kinds of move: a good move is either checkmate, or a move which forces your opponent to make a bad move. A bad move is one which allows the opponent to make a good move. All other moves are indifferent.

So, in a typical game between top players, how many suboptimal moves (ie not good when good is available, unforced bad moves) occur? In theory one is sufficient, or none if chess is a 'win for white/black' from the start.

Acolyte,
What I understand of good moves is that they either improve your position by material and/or positionally or tie down your opponent not allowing him to free his game or attack you.
In a game these type of moves are not many, but rest of the moves are part of a plan which lead to the above effective good moves and in turn win or save the game.
So none of the moves are indifferent. Waiting moves are also part of a plan leading to your objective and even blunders are not indifferent as they do exactly the opposite of the above.

Except for checkmate, you're defining good moves in terms of bad moves, and bad moves in terms of good moves. Your defining them circularly. You need an independent definition for one of them.

There was an interesting write-up about this in a recent Chess Life.

I *think* it was by Andrew Soltis (could be wrong). Basically, he broke down a bunch of GM games into "opening book", "forced move", perhaps one other category, and then "they got to choose". There were surprisingly few moves where the GM actually had to decide between alternatives.