Tengen Statistics

    Keywords: Opening

Illich: I have made some simple research using database at [ext] gobase.org - concerning tengen as first move:

Games starting with tengen: 60
Black wins: 28
Winning percentage: 47%

-> so this doesn't look very good.
But... when counting only games which were played 1990 or later, it is 15 black wins and only 9 black losses (winning percentage 62.5%). So I guess modern players know how to use it.

But note two things:

  • The database might be skewed towards games where tengen was a winning move, because it is more interesting and "worth writing down". When I asked Jan van der Steen, he thinks that the database is quite representative.
  • There are not too many tengen games so it is maybe not statistically significant.

Enjoy...


binky? It seems there are a good many myths about the disadvantages of tengen openings. Those include:

  • it is not traditional
  • there is little study of it
  • loss of sente
  • loss of komi advantage
  • no advantage for white
  • there is no territory in the centre
  • it leads to complex games
  • don't understand it

Also i find playing white against 5 & 7 stone handicaps harder than 4 & 6 stone handicaps respectively, maybe because i don't really understand how to counter a tengen opening.

It would be interesting to see the statistics on:

  • white W2 tengen opening
  • white W1 tengen opening against 2, 3, 4, 6, & 8 stone handicap games
  • 5, 7 and 9 stone handicap games (tengen given to Black)

The changes in statistics over time (decade upon decade) may reflect times when tengen opening study was popular.


Calvin: I processed the KGS high-dan game collections from 2000-2003 with Kombilo, where there where 81 tengen games. Black wins 38.3% of the time. This is compared to black winning 38.1% of the time in the entire game set of 15100 games. (The collection contains a number of even games where white is ranked higher than black, so it's important to account for this.) 81 is a small sample, and there are few players who open on tengen often, but this at least suggests that there is not an obvious decline in win rates among high-dan amateurs playing friendly games when opening on Tengen.


Dieter: Thanks for the information. Statistically, this means there is no reason to believe opening on tengen is inferior to corner play. So, while the minor differences are statistically insignificant, that very fact is quite significant.

DaveSigaty: The kicker in here is that Mok Chin-seok, one of the Korean young stars, took up tengen recently. In the GoGoD CD collection he is listed starting 5 games in 2001 with tengen and winning all 5. The two collections are a little different (the latest CD has only 20 tengen games since 1990 and 43 overall) but I think both are dominated by a few players. Yamashita Keigo is included with 8 games since 1990 on the CD, winning 5 and losing 3. The "rest of the world" did manage 4 wins to 3 losses (1 left unfinished) though.

John Fairbairn: Eh? Or have you found another bug in Kombilo, Dave? The latest edition had 83 tengen games and my own collection, which will be included in the next edition has 90. There's quite a range of young Chinese pros who play it.

Dave I think this is just a reflection of how much work you are doing on GoGoD. I posted the numbers in May 2002. Keep it up! :-)

Andre Engels: I have some more from the 'rest of the world' - getting to 9 wins, 5 losses for the period since 1990.

John F. Latest stats from GoGoD (summer 2003): 94 games, of which Black won 50%, White 47.9%% (not all even, of course - some at no komi). But since 1990 there have been 34 games with Black scoring 21-12 (one unfinished), AND all bar one at komi. Even the no-komi game Black won by more than enough. These games cover C, J, K and are not monopolised by any one player. In short, this reinforces the point made about Black now knowing how to use it. Incidentally, there are also games where Black plays tengen on move 3 or 5 (about another 24 in the period from 1990).

This is a copy of the living page "Tengen Statistics" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2005 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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