King's pawn opening [ e4 ] not played at high levels!

Why is the e4 opening not played at higher levels, which is most of the time used by moderate or low rated players. I have rarely seen games of GM's and other high rated players using the king's pawn opening. Why is it so? Is it because it is explored a lot or any other reason. This thing irritates me cause i use it always.

It's out of style. Right now lots of line have been thought as theorized to a draw. There's nothing wrong with it though

i think i disagree with this. i think it's not used as much at higher levels because white does not want to contend with various sicilian lines which score quite well for black.

probably moreso Petrov causing the fear.. the GMs know they need to win with white, and its just not happening enough in those lines for them.

it will come back into style bigtime eventually.

1.e4 is played at a high level, not just as much as d4.

Which makes it out of style, with people prefering not to face certain lines.

It is just a fashion and certainly not because they are afraid of some forced draw

The assumption is probably true; but, before I buy into the assumption, does anyone have the facts, i.e., the statistics, say over the past five years of GM games, showing the preponderance of d4 over e4 openings?  And for that matter c4 and others such as the Polish?   If true, it would be interesting to see the trend over time of opening preference plotted by year over the past 25 years.

Nanana. The main reason is that e4 openings are alot more forced and more easy to prep nasty surprises. d4 openings are much more transposition friendly then e4 openings, so you can't prep as many forced lines. This is what I've heard is the reason for d4 being slightly more popular at the highest level.

I think the sicilian defense against e4 is why white doesn't play it

You think it's better to face the slav? :-)

OK, let's confuse ourselves with some data. I keep a comprehensive database of all the games that are made available through TWIC (The Week in Chess). I made a smaller database of all the games played where BOTH players were 2500+, from the year 2002 till today. That's some 66,000+ games. Looking at the numbers of games where White begins with 1.e4 and 1.d4, the story (with numbers rounded off) looks as follows:

1.e4 ... 30,600 games (53%)

1.d4 ... 27,200 games (47%)

So, the myth about 1.e4 being less popular amongst the GM ratings area is dispelled, I would say - at least over the past 8 years.

Now, what about the last 2 or 3 years? I make a subset of that last database and examined it and discovered amongst the roughly 11600 games in which BOTH players were 2500+, the following results:

1.e4 ... 5000 games (50%)

1.d4 ... 5000 games (50%)

So, this leads us to believe that there might indeed be a shift from 1.e4 to 1.d4, but the two are still pretty much about even amongst the elite of chess.

Again, the choice of chess openings at the higher levels is highly fashionable, moving quickly as lines and openings come in and out of fashion. To some extent this also occurs at the lower levels, but I'd guess that club chess openings simply lag behind the pros by some months or years.

Hope this adds some spirit to the current thread.

Enjoy,

DrawMaster

What about 2700+?

Last three years, BOTH players 2700+ (this limits the data tremendously), we see the following:

Total games: roughly 1000

1.e4 ... 450 (49.3%)

1.d4 ... 463 (50.7%)

Roughly the same as from the 2500+ games.

Thanks for bringing some statistics into the mix. What most players are talking about is the Top 10 players shift where most people only see their games. The top ten play alot different than just 2700+ players because they do not need to win tournments to make big money so their openings can be very different than 2700+ who need to win each game to win money. John Watson talked about this in his opening book 4.

The fewer the number of players considered, and the higher the rating, the more innovation going on, so averages and trends have less meaning. Personal creativity means more. So, you see folk like Anand hauling out the passé Lasker's Defense, or Kasparov using the Evan's Gambit. Anyone who's watching the top few and trying to decide on their own repertoire based on the games of these few could be misguided in his/her quest - not being able to see behind to the analysis of these giants. But it can be fun to keep up with the 'big boys' and each of us gets - in the end - to decide which openings we want to play and which we choose to sneer at.

Thank you for your replies, I personally think it is not played as it is highly analyzed or it may be some other reason. I should learn some opening of queen pawn soon.

I looked at chessbase finally and saw the same, a little more e4 than d4 both at 2500+ and 2700+.  2700+ limits it to 37 players currently.  I doubt the top 10 are different.  Shirov, Radjabov, and Grishchuck certainly play e4.  Carlsen just played the King's Gambit.

Seems i can carry on with my King's pawn opening. 

2700+ and top ten are quite different. The top ten can have black defenses that have the point of getting a draw retaining their rating, and make their money of apperance fees. 2700+ make their money on winning tournments and their repretiore is usually more diverse and aggresive for that reason.