Most popular chess openings and win rates

What are the most popular chess openings?

The table ranks opening families by games played and gives White's score. Where a score differs from the all-opening average of 51.9% by a clear gap, the last column says so; the others show no clear difference.

Which openings do players choose at each rating?

The most played opening families change with the level. Each rating band has its own page with the full table.

How often does White win in chess?

White won 49.7% of these games, 4.3% were drawn and Black won 46.0%. White's score, wins plus half the draws, is 51.9%.

How were these opening statistics measured?

The tallies come from the Lichess open database. They cover rated Blitz, Rapid and Classical games played on 1 September 2026 (UTC) that ended by a normal result or on time, between players rated within 100 points of each other: 1,619,715 games with a named opening. Bullet games are left out because the clock decides too many of them. Each game is placed by the name of its Opening header, and a family is the part of the name before the first colon.

White's score is wins plus half the draws, divided by the games. The margin is the half-width of a 95 percent interval around that score. A gap from an average counts as clear only when it is larger than the margin and at least 1 point, because a very large sample can make a tiny gap larger than its margin without making it matter. Games are banded by the lower of the two ratings, and the 100-point gap limit stops a rating window from making an opening look better than it is. An opening needs at least 1,500 games to be reported. The numbers describe one day of play at these ratings, not every game of the opening.