Best By Test (part five)

ONE of the most intriguing of the Sicilian statistics is the success of the Alapin, ie 2.c3.
Its percentage score of 49% is nothing special, although it equals the score of 2.Nc3 and is only two percentage points behind 2.Nf3.
But 2.c3's rating performance of +40 is well clear of the field, in particular leading 2.Nf3 by 19 points and 2.Nc3 by 27 points.
Here I want to look at 2.c3's success, from a statistical viewpoint, in its 2,662 appearances in games played last year in ChessBase's 2020 Mega database (I will ignore moves occurring less than one percent of the time).

Table 13: Popularity Of Black Moves After 1.e4 c5 2.c3
Move.....Number Of Times Played
2...Nf6....................979
2...d5......................947
2...d6......................211
2...e6......................181
2...g6......................164
2...Nc6.....................93
2...e5........................53

I am not surprised at the modern popularity of 2...Nf6 and 2...d5, but I was not expecting 2...e6 to be less popular than 2...d6.

Table 14: Black Second Moves By Percentage Score (tie broken by frequency of appearance)
Move....................Score
2...Nf6..................56%
2...d5....................51%
2...e5....................49%
2...d6....................46%
2...e6....................43%
2...g6....................43%
2...Nc6.................32%

What is interesting here is that the moves' percentage scores, with the exception of 2...e5, are in the same order as the number of times they are played.

Table 15: Black Second Moves By Rating Performance
Move.............Rating Performance
2...d5....................-20
2...e5....................-34
2...Nc6.................-38
2...Nf6..................-40
2...e6....................-65
2...g6....................-65
2...d6....................-75

Table 15 shakes things up, in particular with the poor performances of the third-and-fourth most-popular moves, 2...d6 and 2...e6.
The move 2...e5 confirms the relative success of its percentage score, but this is from a small sample size.
It is striking how poorly 2...g6 does, both percentage-wise and in rating performance.
(To be continued)