Game Explorer is really a cool feature, and what surprises me about it is that there are often moves that are quite unpopular, i.e. far down in the list, that yields victory for the player in turn much more often than the most popular ones!
How come? One reason could be statistical insignificance, but as long as, let's say 100 games have been played like that, it cannot be a coincidenc. Another reason could be that moves unsound against masters can confuse and cause less experienced players to reply with bad moves, and thus leading to victory.
BUT - when Game Explorer is set to Master games, this still happens a lot!! Look at white's opening move Na3, the so called Sodium Attack (Na=Sodium, clever!) - it leads to white victory 90% of the times, in out of 90 played games!! Why is not Na3 the most common opening move then? What is wrong here? Did I miss something?
Moving on - for black, if e4 was moved by white, h6 or Nh6 are the most promising moves for black!
Does this mean that all what we thought were the most clever moves are actually inferior to some odd but good moves that very few people have made? Will it change the way we play chess?? Just look at some of those Sodium Attack - they are something else!
To be honest, I'm not sure that 90 games is enough to say it's anything but a statistical anomolay. But, I do agree that the percetnage is high enough to make it an interesting discussion topic. Perhaps one of the reasons that those moves have had some success is that the player sitting across the table from them was "gamed" by their opponent. By that I mean perhaps the very fact that they played that move and instanly put the game out of theory messed with something in their head, and while they were trying to recover, their opponent came on strong.
The reality is, stuff like that is part of chess. Chess, especially OTB live chess, is as much about psycholgy and intimidation as anything else.
I think that since Na3 is played (in general) by players of lower ratings, the opening doesn't matter so much because the game is generally decided by blunders at that level. Maybe there's even a trap in the Sodium Attack that a beginner might easily fall for, I don't know.
Also if you're referring to the Master games, perhaps the large amount of wins for white are caused by Masters playing patzers in simultaneous displays and wanting to show off a bit by winning with an obscure opening.
Just a couple of ideas.
When you see guys like Kasparov and Kramnik putting it in their repertoire (1. Na3), you will know that the move packs some sting. Until then, understand that it is played by someone who knows the move well enough to pull some tricks out against even masters, but not against people at the top level. Don't get me wrong, the move is fine - but you have given up some of your initiative to play a move that isn't claiming the most aggressive stake at the center. Opening with a center pawn, or even fighting for the center from the flanks (1. Nf3, 1. c4) is a bit more aggressive. Now, against 1. e4 c5, people have used 2. Na3. It is a good move, staking claim to b5, and still allowing White to develop his pawn chain of c3-d4. If you play 1. Na3, what about 1...e5? He threatens to double your pawns, and now you need to play 2. b3. After 2...d5, he has the lion's share of the center, and you will be playing to weaken his center.
Another thing to consider is that if you mess with the opening explorer and you play a move that is not listed, sometimes you go into an alternate set of stats. For instance, I was researching a variation of the French called the Fingerslip (e4 e6 d4 d5 Nc3 Bb4 Bd2) and looked into the variation I chose, playing to try to hold onto the e-pawn, regardless of consequences. So I played BxN, and the only thing it shows is bxB. However, my opponent played BxB. So I put that move in manually, and it started to show matches with that move. :-). By the way, my match is going well. My opponent played less aggressive than he could, and I am about to finally consolidate my position with a pawn wall e4 f5 g6 h7, putting all my pawns on a different color than his bishop :-).
Larry Evans's book 'new ideas in chess' - not to be confused with Reti's 'Modern i. i. c.' - 40 years or so ago called 1.Na6 and 1.Nh6 'openings of the 21st century.' Unfortunately i lost my copy 25 years ago (it is out of print i think), and i don't remember the analysis he gave...
Well, there's something you have to consider when you look at any statistic that's THAT high. That is, if the opening was really so strong as to win 90% of the time, more people WOULD play it, and chess would stop being a game.
Also, just saying that it's a master game doesn't really mean much. GMs still play FMs, in tournaments and things, and with a few exceptions, they clean house. I did some research on a few different websites, particularly chessgames.com. On chessgames, every game that was played 1. Na3 was won by white. There were only eight, and I glanced through all of them. See, the 'masters' that were getting beaten by this move were people like Sandor Horvath, rated 2001, who clearly got thrown by the very first move, and the people that were winning were people like the well -known uncommon opening specialist Gerard Welling, who is rated close to 2400 and studies such things. If it had been Nakamura or Kramnik or Magnus on the black side of the board, first of all, they would have almost certainly won against those openings, and second of all, their opponent would have probably been too intimidated to even try.
Yeah. There are hundreds of thousands of games beginning 1.e4 c5. 100 games is nothing compared to that - even 1000 games is a fairly small sample.
Well, I didn't say that it became statistically significant to prove that it's a good opening. I only said it was probably not a coincidence, but there may be many reasons for those 90%. brettwith2ts might be on it, namely that it's such an odd move that it might only be played when you know you play pretty much better than your oppontent, thus resulting in victories.
Similar mechanics probably messes with much of the statistics on the Game Explorer! Some games are played more by even players, some by fools, some by superior players...
I'll second that.
Clownfish> Indeed, but I thought that players on master leverl wouldn't fall off their chairs so easily! ;) 90% of them lost to the Sodium attack!!
The chess.com Games Explorer "Master Games" option displays some games where neither player is a master. If you limit the search to 1.Na3 games between players 2300+ there are only two games... one finished 0-1 and the other finished 1/2-1/2.
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