Chess Opening Win Rates by Rating

What is in it

For each opening we walk its main line to the final book position and count how the games that reached it finished, separately for each rating band. Every record carries White's win percentage, the draw percentage, Black's win percentage, the size of the sample it came from, and the continuations played most often from that position with their own results.

Coverage by rating band

How to get it

Two endpoints, no key and no account. Both are cacheable for a day and support If-None-Match, so please revalidate rather than re-downloading.

A single record, from the live data:

{
  "id": "alekhine_defense_black",
  "name": "Alekhine Defense (Black)",
  "eco_code": "B02-B05",
  "brackets": {
    "400-600": {
      "games": 98,
      "white_win_pct": 45.9,
      "draw_pct": 6.1,
      "black_win_pct": 48
    }
  }
}

Method and limits

The figures are aggregated from Lichess game data through the same opening heatmaps that power SpeakChess sparring. Two limits are worth stating plainly. Rating bands describe the players in the sample, not the objective merit of a move: a line can score well at 800 and badly at 2200 precisely because it sets problems that only stronger players solve. And samples thin out as you go deeper into a line, so a position with 25 games behind it is a hint, not a verdict — every record ships its games count so you can judge for yourself.

Licence

Published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Use it anywhere, including commercially; credit SpeakChess.

See it in context

Every opening's numbers appear alongside its main line and move-by-move notes on the opening guides.