chesstoteles – chess as a school of thought

four ways through the openings

From the starting position to the variation.

Click your way move by move to the side variation, see how the openings belong together, browse all positions as diagrams or replay every variation on the board.

Tree

Opening tree

Every variation hangs on the position it comes from. The size of the dots shows how much lies behind a move.

Net

Opening net

Volumes, ECO groups, openings and first moves in one picture. So you see which paths lead to the same opening.

Diagrams

All 3,815 variations as position pictures, with jump marks to every ECO group.

Board

The book at the board

Every variation to replay, plus the subvariations that continue.

your own games

Your games. Your openings.

Load your own PGN file and see your games in the opening tree, in the net, as diagrams, in the statistics and at the board – they stay in your browser.

A PGN file with a chessboard in a golden archway, linked to small files with pieces and game notes

My files

Load a PGN file of up to 20 MB – choose it or drop it in.
On every page under “Choose a game collection” as your own file 📄 – like a collection of the site.
Kept in your browser only: nothing is uploaded, every file can be removed at any time.
Your progress too: take it along as a backup file and load it on any device – and chesstoteles as an app, offline as well. All under Settings ⚙︎.

Compare

Same moves: games that begin the same – until their ways part.
Direct games, meeting points of the repertoires, every opening in detail and the balance side by side.
The move tree at the board: what one chooses – and how the other fared with it.

what the numbers reveal

What the numbers reveal
about openings.

Eight views of the world of openings – from the ECO table and from the collections of 1,509 players, from Anderssen to Carlsen: which openings they played, how the games ended, how their repertoire changed over the decades and whom they met most often.

Every volume has 100 codes, but not equally many variations

A

817Flank openings · Ø 8.2 variations per code

B

772Semi-open games · Ø 7.7 variations per code

C

1,250Open games · Ø 12.5 variations per code

D

614Closed games · Ø 6.1 variations per code

E

362Indian defences · Ø 3.6 variations per code

1,149,391games in the collections of 1,509 players,

18world champions and 1,491 other players,

1560–2022period of the games,

How many variations every group has

Inside the five volumes, outside the largest opening families – from the 3,815 ECO openings. Tap a ring to highlight it.

To the statistics →

the five volumes of the ECO

A to E, a hundred codes each.

Every opening belongs to one of five volumes. The bar shows the share of all 3,815 variations, a click opens the tree with this volume.

A

Flank openings

English, Dutch, Benoni and everything without 1.e4 or the classical 1.d4 d5.

A00–A99817 B

Semi-open games

Sicilian, Caro-Kann, Pirc, Alekhine: 1.e4 without e5 as the answer.

B00–B99772 C

Open games

1.e4 e5 with the Ruy Lopez, the Italian and gambits, plus the French.

C00–C991,250 D

Closed games

1.d4 d5 with the Queen's Gambit and the Slav, plus the Grünfeld.

D00–D99614 E

Indian defences

Nimzo-, Queen's and King's Indian: the centre from afar.

E00–E99362

1.e4 e5 · Kasparov – Karpov, WCh 1986

The first moves of the greats.

Seven famous games and the openings they began with. Every board shows the position after the opening and, at the push of a button, the moment that made the game famous. View all games →

1851 · LondonC33 · King's Gambit

Adolf Anderssen – Lionel Kieseritzky

The Immortal Game

1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.♗c4 ♕h4+ 4.♔f1

Anderssen sacrifices a bishop, both rooks and finally the queen and mates on move 23 with three minor pieces.

1 - 023 movesSacrifices: ♕ ♖ ♖ ♗

Replay the game →King's Gambit in the book →All games with C33 →

1852 · BerlinC52 · Evans Gambit

Anderssen – Dufresne

1.e4 e5 2.♘f3 ♘c6 3.♗c4 ♗c5 4.b4 ♗xb4 5.c3

The Evergreen: a firework of attack after a pawn sacrifice.

1 - 024 moves

To the game →

1858 · ParisC41 · Philidor Defense

Morphy – Braunschweig & Isouard

1.e4 e5 2.♘f3 d6 3.d4 ♗g4

The Opera Game: mate on move 17, in the middle of a performance.

1 - 017 moves

To the game →

1907 · ŁódźD32 · Tarrasch Defense

Rotlewi – Rubinstein

1.d4 d5 2.♘f3 e6 3.e3 c5 4.c4 ♘c6

Rubinstein's Immortal: Black sacrifices queen and rook, 25…♖h3 decides.

0 - 125 moves

To the game →

1938 · AVROE40 · Nimzo-Indian Defense

Botvinnik – Capablanca

1.d4 ♘f6 2.c4 e6 3.♘c3 ♗b4 4.e3 d5

The future world champion beats the former one – with the famous bishop sacrifice 30.♗a3!

1 - 041 moves

To the game →

1972 · ReykjavíkD59 · Queen's Gambit Declined

Fischer – Spassky

1.c4 e6 2.♘f3 d5 3.d4 ♘f6 4.♘c3 ♗e7

Game 6 of the world championship match. Spassky applauds his opponent.

1 - 041 moves

To the game →

1999 · Wijk aan ZeeB07 · Pirc Defense

Kasparov – Topalov

1.e4 d6 2.d4 ♘f6 3.♘c3 g6 4.♗e3 ♗g7

Kasparov's Immortal: the black king is hunted across the whole board.

1 - 044 moves

To the game →

tournaments and matches

Who played whom. Round by round.

The games of the collections sorted by tournament – 17,701 tournaments from 1620 to 2022, each with its games on the board.

A golden cup with laurels on steps, on either side a tournament bracket of players leading to it

Tournaments

Search 17,701 tournaments – filter by era, mean rating, candidates and olympiads.
Standings and cross table where all the games are there – every result leads to its game.
The games round by round – every tournament also in the collection picker of every page.

A white and a black king before a globe of moves and notation, pieces in golden circles at the sides

World championships

64 matches for the world championship: champion and challenger, the winner with the crown.
Game by game – light fields with White, dark ones with Black; a click leads to the game.
For example Reykjavik 1972: Spassky against Fischer in 21 games.

learn and practise

From understanding to playing.

Short opening courses from the games of strong players, checked and explained by Stockfish – and a training in which you play their lines from memory.

→ Learning studio

The learning studio

18 opening courses for White and Black: the variations strong players chose, traps, model games and an explanation of every move.

→

Training

The training

Play the lines of a course from memory – from both sides, on two boards. The site remembers what you know: lines come again when they are due, your weak spots at a glance, the week as an overview.

1886 to today · 18 world champions

What the greats played.

The most frequent opening of every world champion, with White and with Black – from 32,681 games. The colour stripe shows the change of fashion over almost 140 years: from the Ruy Lopez and the Queen's Gambit to the Sicilian. The name opens the statistics, the opening the book with exactly these games. Of these, 5,579 games from The Week in Chess (TWIC), 2012–2022 – marked “from TWIC” with the world champions below.