Best By Test (part two)

WE saw in table three (part one of Best By Test) how 1.e4 performs at a very creditable +20 rating points, easily beating third-placed 1.c4 by six points, but being an equal number of points behind 1.d4.
Here I want to look at why this is so.
Black has 20 legal replies to 1.e4, and 18 of those appear in the 238,275 games from 2019 in ChessBase's 2020 Mega database.
The two missing replies are 1...b5, which drops a pawn to 2.Bxb5, and ... can you guess?
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The other missing reply is 1...h5, although some other replies appear only a handful of times, including 1...Nh6 (once), 1...f6 (five times) and 1...g5 (eight times).
As before I will only deal here with moves that occur at least 0.1% of the time.

Table Four: Popularity Of Black Replies To 1.e4
Move.....Number Of Times Played
1...c5...................45,756
1...e5...................29,593
1...e6...................14,187
1...c6...................10,096
1...d6....................4,782
1...d5....................3,751
1...g6....................3,187
1...Nf6..................1,784
1...Nc6.....................640
1...b6........................463

No surprise to see 1...c5 topping the list - it is so dominant it outnumbers the next two most-popular moves, 1...e5 and 1...e6, combined.
I was, however, mildly surprised to see 1...d6 ahead of 1...d5 and to see how unpopular 1...Nf6 is.
Table five shows how well Black does percentage-wise, and there is a surprise winner - at least I doubt if many people will have guessed it - in the shape of 1...g6.

Table Five: Black Replies By Percentage Score (ties broken by frequency of appearance)
Move........Score
1...g6.........51%
1...c5.........50%
1...Nf6.......49%
1...c6..........48%
1...Nc6.......48%
1...e6..........47%
1...d6..........47%
1...d5..........45%
1...e5..........44%
1...b6..........42%

I also doubt if all that many people will be surprised to find 1...c5 doing so well, but the poor score of 1...e5 is, to me certainly, a shock.
But, as I warned in part one, it can be misleading to look at percentages in isolation.

Table Six: Black Replies By Rating Performance (ties broken by frequency of appearance)
Move.........Rating Performance
1...e6.....................-10
1...d5.....................-18
1...c5.....................-19
1...c6.....................-19
1...e5.....................-28
1...d6.....................-41
1...Nf6...................-44
1...g6.....................-57
1...b6.....................-70
1...Nc6..................-71

Table six shows 1...g6, the winner when it comes to percentage scores, plummets when moves are ranked by rating performance.
Two other front-runners percentage-wise, 1...Nf6 and 1...Nc6, also do badly rating-wise.
But 1...c5, which came second in percentage score, also does reasonably well rating-wise, although by no means as well as I thought it would.
Some French Defence devotees may have expected to see the success of 1...e6, although I suspect even they will be surprised 1...e6 comes close, statistically, to giving equality.
(To be continued)