The reading room
The club blog.
Editorials and deep dives, each one grounded in the same statistics that power the site.
Best Chess Openings for Beginners (Ranked by Win Rate)
Ranked on the two axes a beginner actually pays for: score in the 600 rating band, and how many named lines you would have to learn to play it properly.
August 10, 2026
The Best Chess Openings for 1000 Elo (What the Data Says)
The 1000 band is the largest sample we have, 14 million games, and it is where several openings that worked below 1000 quietly stop working.
August 10, 2026
Blunder Rate: How Often Chess Players Blunder at Every Rating
A blunder rate measured across 97,740 Lichess games, band by band, with the method and its limits written out in full.
August 10, 2026
Chess Opening Win Rates: What 50 Million Games Actually Show
Fifty million rapid and blitz games, 314 opening lines, four rating bands. What the numbers say, and the three ways they mislead people.
August 10, 2026
Chess Opening Tier List: Every Major Opening Ranked by Rating Band
S through D grades for 314 opening lines, computed separately for White and Black and separately for four rating bands, with the formula printed so you can check it.
August 10, 2026
The Best Chess Openings, Ranked by Data
We ranked 314 opening lines across 49.8 million games, separately for White and Black, inside four rating bands. The winner is not the one you were told.
August 10, 2026