On analyzing my games, I found that I usually miss tactics in the opening than during middlegame and endgame. To supplement my study by solving tactical problems based on motifs, it would be helpful if I understand the key motifs I must stress on. Hence the question below.
Based on different tactical motifs like fork, pin, deflection, double-attack, etc. what is the most common tactical motif during the opening phase statistically?
The Lichess categorization of tactical motifs is not bad, but these are not common tactical motifs of the opening phase, in my opinion. They describe motifs which happen in the final phase of the game.
I created a GitHub repository where I have put some CQL scripts which I used to search for the motifs I consider typical in the opening phase. The first twenty moves were considered. I searched in a GM database containing 370,000 games. The database is contained in the repo.
The results are listed in a table, and the matching games can be found in the folder named output.
You can download or fork this repo and play around with those scripts. You can also run them on your own PGN databases.
Happy chess research :-)
On Lichess it's possible to train opening related puzzles:
https://lichess.org/training/opening
Puzzles for other phases of the game are available as well:
https://lichess.org/training/themes
Keep in mind, that the puzzle selection will be only as good as the votes given by Lichess users. Also, as far as I know, it's not possible to select specific openings.
Because of a question by @BCLC in the comments I found this link, where you can download all Lichess puzzles. I made a little table based on all puzzles tagged with "opening". Actual motifs are marked in bold other tags in italic.
Remember, that the statistics will be only as good as the data. Apparently there is one puzzle tagged with "opening" and "rookEndgame".
| Tag | Count | Perc. |
|---|---|---|
| short | 71723 | 74.27% |
| advantage | 58328 | 60.40% |
| crushing | 25978 | 26.90% |
| fork | 20514 | 21.24% |
| long | 11694 | 12.11% |
| oneMove | 11204 | 11.60% |
| mate | 9170 | 9.50% |
| hangingPiece | 8307 | 8.60% |
| discoveredAttack | 8110 | 8.40% |
| kingsideAttack | 7507 | 7.77% |
| pin | 6299 | 6.52% |
| mateIn2 | 4618 | 4.78% |
| trappedPiece | 4150 | 4.30% |
| mateIn1 | 3597 | 3.72% |
| attackingF2F7 | 3451 | 3.57% |
| sacrifice | 3412 | 3.53% |
| equality | 3099 | 3.21% |
| intermezzo | 2842 | 2.94% |
| defensiveMove | 2683 | 2.78% |
| attraction | 2003 | 2.07% |
| veryLong | 1954 | 2.02% |
| deflection | 1952 | 2.02% |
| capturingDefender | 1605 | 1.66% |
| master | 1042 | 1.08% |
| advancedPawn | 1022 | 1.06% |
| clearance | 892 | 0.92% |
| mateIn3 | 784 | 0.81% |
| skewer | 741 | 0.77% |
| exposedKing | 740 | 0.77% |
| quietMove | 582 | 0.60% |
| doubleCheck | 550 | 0.57% |
| interference | 455 | 0.47% |
| queensideAttack | 416 | 0.43% |
| smotheredMate | 393 | 0.41% |
| backRankMate | 212 | 0.22% |
| enPassant | 177 | 0.18% |
| mateIn4 | 120 | 0.12% |
| castling | 110 | 0.11% |
| masterVsMaster | 91 | 0.09% |
| promotion | 89 | 0.09% |
| bodenMate | 57 | 0.06% |
| mateIn5 | 51 | 0.05% |
| xRayAttack | 47 | 0.05% |
| superGM | 35 | 0.04% |
| doubleBishopMate | 28 | 0.03% |
| dovetailMate | 20 | 0.02% |
| underPromotion | 4 | 0.00% |
| anastasiaMate | 3 | 0.00% |
| hookMate | 1 | 0.00% |
| arabianMate | 1 | 0.00% |
| rookEndgame | 1 | 0.00% |
Here is the Kotlin snippet I used to generate the table:
val data = File("lichess_db_puzzle.csv").readText().trim().split('\n')
.map { it.split(',')[7].split(' ') }.filter { it.contains("opening") }.flatten()
.groupingBy { it }.eachCount().toList().sortedByDescending { it.second }
for (i in 1..data.lastIndex) {
val t = if (data[i].first in listOf("advancedPawn", "anastasiaMate", "arabianMate", "attackingF2F7", "attraction", "backRankMate", "bodenMate", "capturingDefender", "clearance", "defensiveMove", "deflection", "discoveredAttack", "doubleBishopMate", "doubleCheck", "dovetailMate", "exposedKing", "fork", "hangingPiece", "hookMate", "interference", "intermezzo", "kingsideAttack", "mate", "mateIn1", "mateIn2", "mateIn3", "mateIn4", "mateIn5", "pin", "promotion", "queensideAttack", "quietMove", "sacrifice", "skewer", "smotheredMate", "trappedPiece", "underPromotion", "xRayAttack", "zugzwang")) "**" else "*"
println("| %-24s | %10s | %11s |".format("${t}${data[i].first}${t}", "${t}${data[i].second}${t}", "${t}${"%.2f".format(100.0 * data[i].second / data[0].second)}%${t}"))
}
During all standard / book openings tactical motifs which win material don't feature. They wouldn't be book openings if they did. That rules out forks, deflections, double attacks, etc. and leaves only pins.
As it happens pins are very common and feature sooner or later in a lot of openings but they only win material if the player with the pinned piece lets something else go wrong. Usually the pinned piece is a knight pinned by a bishop against king or queen and usually the player with the pinned piece has the opportunity to break the pin with a bishop move or force the pinning bishop away with a couple of pawn moves.
I think you are wasting your time looking at tactical motifs in standard openings, i.e. in openings which are played properly. What you really need to do as a priority is look at what tactical motifs you miss in your own games. As a second priority you need to improve your knowledge of the openings you personally play. The openings I play or which are played most often generally are no use to you if you don't play them.
You need to be familiar not just with pages of moves and analysis. Much more useful is to be familiar with the ideas behind the openings you play. You need to be familiar and comfortable with the kinds of positions which arise from those openings and know how to handle them.
That way you are much less likely to make tactical mistakes playing moves that go against the ideas of your favoured openings. That way, too, you are more likely to spot when your opponent makes a move which doesn't "fit in" with the ideas of the opening and which may be some kind of "hope chess" trap. Then you are more likely to avoid falling into it and maybe even taking advantage of your opponent's deviation.
This will not be really an answer to the question that wanted only statistics. This is answer to why you have those errors and how to improve that. Obviously reason is lack of pattern knowledge for tactics typical for openings. Improving it is easy - read books on miniatures - I'll not mention any specific as there are lot of those in different languages. Additionally - you can use some chess database and tools to search for games under 20-25 moves and this way you will get lot of miniatures. Studying miniatures will greatly improve your skills of opening phase of game and show you all the typical errors and good books will explain what would be a good move played instead of error that lead the game to become miniature.
