Viable Openings
Compare legal move orders through White’s third move with the openings people played on Lichess.
A line qualifies when every move stays within the allowed loss from the mover’s best legal choice and every position stays inside the evaluation band. Both sliders use pawns. A ply is one move by one player.
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Percentages use all legal possibilities at the indicated ply. A move order counts as played when a game followed that exact sequence. A position counts if a game reached it by any move order at the same ply.
Move orders that meet both filters
Evaluations come from the repertoire database. Stockfish 19 filled missing scores at 100,000 nodes per position. Win percentages use its full-material model. Game counts cover rated, non-tournament standard games on Lichess from January 2013 through July 2026, excluding known bots.
How far does the tree grow at the widest settings?
Maximum move loss 1.00 pawn · evaluation band ±1.00. Counts are exact through ply 5. Plies 6–8 use 256 sampled continuations from qualifying five-ply move orders.
| Ply | Surviving move orders | Share of all legal orders | Sampling interval |
|---|
| Ply | Positions needing scores | 95% sampling interval | Estimated engine time |
|---|
Ply 6 has an exact count of outstanding evaluations. Plies 7 and 8 use 64 sampled walks, weighting each missing position by the number of qualifying routes to it and accounting for earlier fills. Times cover additional engine work at each ply.