> "To find out how similar chess openings actually are to each other—meaning in real game behavior—we drew on the wisdom of the crowd," Giordano De Marzo of the

> "To find out how similar chess openings actually are to each other—meaning in real game behavior—we drew on the wisdom of the crowd," Giordano De Marzo of the Complexity Science Hub and the Centro Ricerche Enrico Fermi (CREF) explains. The researchers analyzed 3,746,135 chess games, 18,253 players and 988 different openings from the chess platform Lichess and observed who plays which opening games. If several players choose two specific opening games over and over again, it stands to reason that they will be similar. Opening games that are so popular that they occur together with most others were excluded. That seems... like bad logic? I can play, for example, King's Gambit and English Opening as white. These two do _NOT_ play the same at all. King's gambit is an obscure way to make sure that the game ends quickly, and is what I play when I'm somewhat impatient and/or am trying to force an error (either from myself or my opponent). While English Opening is what I play when I'm more relaxed and willing to play a longer game of positional chess. I'm not sure if its even "Blitz" vs "Non-Blitz" chess. Its more about what I'm feeling like. I learned these two openings because they're so different. I'm also a relative beginner, so I don't have the brain power to learn many openings, so I've been mostly just sticking with these two. --------- I think there were lots of similarities between English and Queen's opening, for example. But I don't bother with studying Queens opening because its too similar to English. When I'm only playing like 2 or 3 openings, I aim for very different openings, not similar ones.