Best Chess Openings for Beginners, by Win Rate

Published 2026-08-12 · data refreshed 2026-08-12.

“Best opening for beginners” gets asked constantly and answered mostly with opinion. This page answers a narrower, checkable version of the question: among the 10 openings this site tracks, which ones actually score best for the side that plays them at 1400-1600, based on real Lichess games?

This is not a claim that these are the only good openings for beginners, or that a higher score here means “easier to learn” — it means players in this rating band who reached this exact position won more often with this piece configuration than with the others on this list. Style, how much you enjoy a position, and how much time you want to spend on theory all matter too, and none of those are measurable from a database.

Ranked by score at 1400-1600

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Openings ranked by score at 1400-1600
#	Opening	Side	Games	Score
1	Scotch Game	white	21.6M	55.6%
2	Queen's Gambit	white	40.3M	55.2%
3	London System	white	23.4M	54.0%
4	Ruy Lopez	white	27.8M	53.3%
5	Italian Game	white	57.6M	52.7%
6	Caro-Kann Defense	black	36.5M	51.0%
7	Sicilian Defense	black	89.8M	50.8%
8	French Defense	black	53.4M	50.2%
9	King's Indian Defense	black	3.7M	50.1%
10	Scandinavian Defense	black	54.5M	48.7%

Why a “score” isn’t the whole story

Score here means the standard chess scoring convention (a win counts 1, a draw counts 0.5) as a percentage, for the side whose opening this is, from real games at this rating band. A high score can partly reflect that a line is comfortable and hard to go wrong in, rather than that it’s objectively strongest — which is arguably a better property for a beginner’s first opening than raw engine strength would be anyway.

Go deeper

Every opening in the table above links to its own page with a full rating-band breakdown, common mistakes at this level, and real recent games. See the full openings comparison → for all four rating bands side by side.