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The Chess Opening Metagame - Pt 2

The Chess Opening Metagame - Pt 2

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In the second part of this series, I will show you another way to use chess openings data to your advantage.

In this day and age, the amount of data available has skyrocketed, and chess is no exception. But data is now more difficult to understand due to its huge volume. So what is the best way to use your game data to your advantage? One good way is to check your results with different chess openings. My favorite way is to load my online games using OpeningTree. All you have to do is type in your Chess.com username and filter your games as you like. Here is a screenshot of what I face when I play 1.e4 as white.

What conclusions can we draw here?

  1. Most of my opponents play the Sicilian defense
  2. My results against the French and Pirc defense are worse than expected
  3. I generally do well against offbeat openings on the rare occasions I face them

Now to develop the improvement plan based on this.

  1. Spend the most study time on the Sicilian defense, since I am most likely to see it in my games
  2. Also, study the French and Pirc defense well, since  I could make more significant gains by learning these better. They should not be scoring better than the Sicilian (especially the Pirc!)
  3. It is a waste of time to study offbeat openings in general. They rarely occur, and even then it is easy to deal with them with minimal knowledge

You can see the value of statistics when you are trying to adapt to the opening metagame. And this was only one example. You could also check your statistics as black, or look deeper into sub variations of the Sicilian Defense.

Finally, I want to point out some common pitfalls to avoid.

  • Using a small sample size. Anyone can drop a game or two to even something like 1. a4. But this doesn't mean anything over 2 games due to variance. My rule of thumb is there need to be 20 games in an opening to draw conclusions.
  • Using old data. For example, I currently perform worse against the French defense. But if I study it in depth, I would start performing better. However, if I use all my old games in the sample instead of my most recent results, it will look like my study hasn't paid off.

Now you have an easy way to use statistics to boost your opening results. Let me know how this works for you!