PART 1 • Opening choices at a glance
Chess King ' s GigaKing database, which consists of nearly five million games, has been merged together into a single tree. Here in the standard position for a chess game, we see a list of the moves White has played in the games from GigaKing. We see that the move 1. e4 was played in more than 2 million games from GigaKing. The move 1. d4 appears in more than a million and a half games, and so on. As we make opening moves and“ step through” the moves of the tree, we ' ll see the display change; for example, after we make the move 1. e4, we ' ll see:
... which are Black’ s replies to 1. e4. In this particular display, the moves are ranked in order of popularity; we learn from the tree that the move 1... c5( the Sicilian Defense) is by far the most popular reply to the move 1. e4.
What other things can we learn from a chess tree? Different chess programs will provide different information, but most will show you the success rate of every move. After 1... c5 we see a success percentage of 49 %. This does not mean that Black wins 49 % of the games in which the Sicilian is played. The number refers to the percentage of the available points which were earned by the moving side. When you win a tournament game, you score a point in the standings, but when you draw a game you score just half a point( you split that point with your opponent). Your chess program will look at the games and do some simple bean counting – since the Sicilian was played 997,888 times in the GigaKing database, and since it ' s Black ' s move in this position, Chess King totals Black ' s wins, totals half the number of draws( since they score half a point), adds both numbers together, divides that sum by the total number of Sicilian
112 chessking. com