Score by opening and variation
Every figure is labeled for what it measures: "Your score: 26%", "Played in 19 games", "Reached in 62% of your games". No bare percentages whose denominator you have to guess.
Opening Lab
Find the Exact Branch Where Your Opening Results Drop
Follow your results beyond the opening name, find the branch where performance begins to fall, and prepare a practical alternative for your rating and time control.
Opening Lab is free No account needed to explore · Chess.com and Lichess
- No Chess.com or Lichess password — a public username is all it needs.
- The learning platform is free — AI Move Explanation and Meta-Coach are an optional membership.
- Every recommendation comes from your own games and Stockfish analysis.
- Score counts a win as 1 point and a draw as ½.
- Every percentage carries the number of games behind it, so three games read as three games.
- Then follow the tree down to the reply where your score actually separates.
Video
A Three-Minute Tour of Opening Lab
Opening Lab starts from your own games and follows one opening down its branches until it reaches the move where your results fall away — then shows you what players at your rating actually do from that position, with the engine evaluation beside it.
The tour below walks through that: finding the branch, reading your record against everyone else’s, and saving a reply as a repertoire line you can rehearse. The board is free to open and needs no account, so you can follow along in another tab.
See Your Real Opening Performance
Before it recommends anything, Opening Lab reports your own record — with labels that say exactly what each number counts.
White and Black kept apart
Repertoire problems are color-specific. A line you are comfortable meeting is not the same as a line you are comfortable playing, and the two records are never merged.
One account at a time
If you play under several Chess.com or Lichess handles, filter to one. A serious rapid account and a casual blitz account produce different repertoire evidence.
Filtered by time control
Bullet, blitz, rapid, classical and correspondence can be selected independently, because a line that is fine at 15+10 may be unplayable at 3+0.
Two Answers About the Same Position
"You score badly in the Italian Game" is not something you can act on. The Italian is a tree, and your record is almost never uniform across it — so exploration walks the branches you actually reach and stops where your score separates from what the position is worth.
- Engine, on the left: this position is worth +0.2 at depth 26. That is soundness.
- Human results, on the right: c3 is played in 29% of 13 million games and scores 52%. That is practical difficulty.
- The two are shown side by side and never merged — a line can score well for humans and still be unsound.
Find Practical Alternatives
Exploration searches human continuations for the rating range and time control you choose, and uses Stockfish to tell a playable practical weapon from an objectively losing trap.
Three sources, clearly separated
Compare the same position against your own games, the Lichess database filtered to your rating range and speeds, or Masters games. Which one you are looking at is always on screen.
What opponents actually play
Each reply carries how often it is played at your level, so preparation time goes to the moves you will meet rather than the moves theory considers critical.
Why each move is here
Every candidate says what put it on the list — an engine top choice, or a move that is simply common in practice at this level. A move is never called "best" only because humans score well with it.
Punishable mistakes
Replies that are frequently played but inaccurate are flagged with the concrete way to meet them, which is where most practical points at club level come from.
Choose the Kind of Line You Want
Exploration starts from an explicit question — which opponents, which speeds, and how much objective ground you are willing to give up — and every line that comes back carries those terms with it.
- 1. State the question: objectively strong, or practical against this rating band?
- 2. Read the answer: practical score, opponent mistake rate, and objective cost, kept apart.
- 3. Keep what you chose, with the reason it was recommended attached to it.
The Full Opening Lab Workspace
The same screen intact, at a width where the repertoire column and the explore controls are readable. Tap it to enlarge.
- The middle column is the line you are building and the recall cue you will need three weeks from now.
Keep It as a Repertoire, Then Rehearse It
Exploration that is not saved is exploration you will repeat. Decisions you make in the Lab become a repertoire with practice attached.
Recall cues, not just move orders
Attach the reason you chose a move to the move itself. The cue is what you will need three weeks later; the move order is not the hard part.
Only the decisions that are due
Practice surfaces what is slipping rather than replaying the whole repertoire, and tracks first-attempt accuracy separately from eventual accuracy.
Repertoire and sparring
Repertoire mode checks recall along the lines you saved. Sparring plays on past the end of your preparation, which is where preparation usually fails.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does "Your score: 26%" mean?
It is your score as a fraction of the points available in that position — a win counts one, a draw counts a half. It is shown next to the number of games behind it, because 26% over four games and 26% over ninety games mean very different things.
Where do the numbers come from?
Three places, always labeled so you know which one you are reading. Your own record comes from the Chess.com and Lichess games you imported. What players at your level actually do comes from the Lichess opening database, filtered to the rating range and time control you pick. Masters games are there as a third view. Engine evaluations come from Stockfish and are separate from all of it.
Is a high human score the same as a good move?
No, and Opening Lab never merges the two. A human score says how players in a rating band did from this position with a clock running — practical difficulty. An engine evaluation says what the position is worth under deep search — soundness. The disagreements are the informative part: a line that scores well and evaluates as equal is a practical weapon; one that scores well and evaluates as losing is a trap that works until it does not.
Do I need an account to use it?
Opening Lab is free, all of it. You can explore the board without logging in at all, including the comparison against other players and the engine evaluation. A free account is needed for the parts that have to remember something — your own opening statistics and the repertoire you save. That is a login, not a payment.
Does it handle transpositions?
Yes. If you reach the same position by a different move order, Opening Lab knows it is the same position — your preparation and your record follow the position, not the sequence of moves. Backing up to try another move order never loses the work you have already done.
Why show Masters games at all if I am rated 1400?
As a second opinion on whether a line is really sound, not as a guide to what you should play. If a line vanishes completely at master level while scoring well in your rating band, that usually means it works because the refutation is hard to find — worth knowing before you build a repertoire on it.
Start With the Opening You Score Worst In
Open the board and explore it now, or import your games and let Opening Lab rank your openings by result, then follow the worst one down to the move where the trouble actually starts. Both are free.