Best opening?

What is the best opening for everyone? I think that for white, it is the king's indian. How about you? like 1. e4 e5

I love the Italian game, it's the best.

isn't 1.e4 with the highest percentage? It's the most logical one to me as well

I like the guioco piano. it is sssssssooooooooooo interesting, an always leads to an exciting game. however, if I were to need to get my rating up (like I do now), I would do a more reliable opening.

I disagree.

But you disagree about the Italian game.  StupidDrip95 are you pulling our collective leg?

I like it just fine, the gioucco piano is very interesting.  I also like the gioucco pianmissimo as well.  In addition, you can play Evans Gambit or the Italian Gambit depending on your mood.  The Italian has been my main weapon for years and continues to be my best opening.

The "sssssssooooooooooo" is a dead giveaway for bad sarcasm.

I am not pulling your leg!!

I don't like the italian b/c of trapping the bishop out there. maybe I have just not had any success with it. I AM NOT BEING SARCASTIC!!

If white will allow it, I'll always play the French as black.

My favorite as white is the Scotch

Guioco Piano is a good opening for novices.

Wait a minute, that makes me a novice.

I loooove the latvian as black and the ponziani as white...try them out!

It's difficult to say which first move is the best, but it's possible if we allow certain assumptions to be made. We also need some kind of definition for what the best opening is. The best opening could be

a) the first move which leads to the best position for white

or b) the first move which has the best results for white.

Given that it would be impossible to determine which move leads to, objectively, the best position (for a variety of reasons), let's define the best move as b) the move that has the best results for white.

Without a master database of all games of chess ever played, in order to solve the problem, we have to make the assumption that some smaller database can provide a suitable representation of whatever a master database would look like. I'm going to go ahead and pick chess.com's database (which, inconveniently, is rather small - but what can you do).

If we'd stop here and we looked at the database and saw that 1. Na3 has an 80% score for white, we still couldn't say it is the best opening because the 10 database games with that move do not really constitute a statistically relevant sample.

This means we must define what exactly represents a statistically significant (means unlikely to have occured by chance) sample. I'm going to define, for the purposes of answering the question, all samples which represent 5% or less of the database size (<=125000 games of the database's ~2.5 million) as insignificant.

This leaves us with 1. e4 (1,194,068), 1.d4 (910,048) 1. Nf3 (253,252) and 1.c4 (193,198) as possible candidates for the best move.

Below are listed each move's database results (which is win% + draw%/2):

1. e4 54.35%

1. d4 56.00%

1. Nf3 55.95%

1. c4 56.25%

We could conclude that 1. c4 is the best move, but given the limitations of this answer (in the form of assumptions made earlier, such as the relevancy of the sample database), I think it is more sensible to say that 1. d4, 1. Nf3 and 1. c4 are the best moves without any important difference. It's also worthwhile to note that it's only possible to reach this conclusion if we make the further assumption that all opening moves which were found to be insufficiently represented in the database are not the best moves.

So there's your answer, StupidDrip95. 1. d4, 1. Nf3 and 1. c4 are the best openings "for everyone." Stay away from 1. e4 though, look at that worthless 54.35%, anyone still playing 1. e4 after reading this post is utterly foolish (including Bobby Fischer's ghost).

Comedy option: 1. Na3 is the best opening move with 80% score for white

Comedy option#2: Your mom's the best opening

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If instead of "which is the best opening for everyone" you meant "which is your favorite opening":

I really like the caro-kann as black and I like playing the white side of a ruy lopez!

Queens Gambit or Queens Indian

I'm pretty sure you can't NOT be sarcastic if  you say that... Whether you mean it or not D-=

KID and dragon

My favorite to play so far as white has been the Italian game though when black plays well it can get challenging.  I think I do better with d4 as white but it's less fun.  As black the Budapest is my favorite against d4 and e5 against e4.

e4