Opening guide

Scandinavian Defense (B01) — win rates at club level

1.e4 d5, playing as black — data from 58,033,434 Lichess blitz & rapid games at 1600-1800.

The position

Position after 1.e4 d5. Open this line on Lichess → · Scandinavian Defense on Lichess

How it scores at your rating

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Win/draw/loss rate by rating band
Rating bandGamesWhite / draw / BlackScore for black
1600-1800 58,033,434 48.5% / 4.3% / 47.2% 49.4%
1400-1600 54,507,816 49.3% / 3.9% / 46.8% 48.7%
1800-2000 46,991,797 48.2% / 4.8% / 47.0% 49.4%
2000+ 25,950,108 48.0% / 5.8% / 46.2% 49.1%

What white actually plays next

Top replies at 1600-1800:

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Most common replies at 1600-1800
MoveGamesPlayedWin / draw / loss
exd5 43,551,551 75.0% 49.0% / 4.4% / 46.6%
e5 7,118,389 12.3% 47.8% / 3.8% / 48.4%
Nf3 (Zukertort Opening: Tennison Gambit) 3,286,810 5.7% 47.1% / 3.8% / 49.1%
Nc3 1,478,176 2.5% 47.9% / 3.9% / 48.2%
d4 (Blackmar-Diemer Gambit) 921,785 1.6% 48.8% / 3.5% / 47.6%
d3 489,759 0.8% 43.2% / 5.6% / 51.2%

Common mistakes at 1600-1800

No move at this band is both common and clearly low-scoring — players at this rating aren’t making an obvious mistake here.

Model games

Real games from the Lichess masters database.

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Master games in this line
WhiteBlackResultYearGame
Caruana, F. (2805) Carlsen, M. (2876) ½-½ 2015 View game
Caruana, F. (2801) Carlsen, M. (2877) 0-1 2014 View game
Caruana, F. (2808) Carlsen, M. (2857) ½-½ 2016 View game
Vachier Lagrave, M. (2780) Carlsen, M. (2872) ½-½ 2019 View game
Nepomniachtchi, I. (2773) Carlsen, M. (2870) 0-1 2019 View game

Recent club games in this line

Recent rated games at 1600-1800 — not model games, just what actually happens at that rating.

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Recent games in this line
WhiteBlackResultYearGame
Aliette81 (1781) Black7Knight (1786) 0-1 2026 View game
mjdowney (1674) p4r_e4 (1595) 0-1 2026 View game
miskom53 (1748) Mahmoud4444l (1738) 1-0 2026 View game
agastyagopalika (1570) ChessPl095 (1656) 0-1 2026 View game

Build a repertoire from here

See the full move tree for players in your rating band: 1600-1800 repertoire explorer (black) →

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