The Best First Move in Chess

There is no single objectively best first move in chess: 1. e4, 1. d4, 1. c4, and 1. Nf3 are all completely sound, all played at world championship level, and all score within about a percentage point of each other in master databases. Any grandmaster who tells you otherwise is selling you a repertoire. What I can tell you, as a coach, is which first move you should play — and for beginners the answer is 1. e4, not because it wins more, but because it teaches more. This guide explains what each serious first move actually leads to, what the statistics honestly say, and why the "best" move depends on who is asking.

The Honest Grandmaster Answer: There Isn't One

Chess engines have settled this question about as thoroughly as it can be settled. Give a modern engine the starting position and it evaluates the top first moves — e4, d4, c4, Nf3 — within a few hundredths of a pawn of each other. At the very top of human chess, the same four moves rotate through world championship matches depending on preparation and taste, not merit. Magnus Carlsen has opened with all of them, sometimes in the same event.

The reason is simple once you see it: the starting position is balanced enough that no single move extracts a decisive advantage. White's first move earns a small head start — one tempo of development — and every sound first move converts that head start into a slightly different kind of position. The choice between them is a choice of style and battlefield, not a choice between strong and weak.

So when a student asks me "what's the best first move?", I hear a different question underneath: which first move is best for me, right now, at my level? That question has a real answer, and we'll get to it. But first you should understand what each move is actually trying to do, because a first move is not a trick — it's a declaration of intent.

What Every Good First Move Has in Common

Before comparing the candidates, look at what they share, because this is the actual lesson of move one. The classical opening principles — fight for the center, develop your pieces, castle quickly — are not arbitrary rules; they describe what winning first moves have in common. The four main moves all do at least one of these things:

• 1. e4 and 1. d4 stake a direct claim in the center with a pawn and open lines for the bishops and queen.
• 1. Nf3 develops a piece toward the center and controls the key squares e5 and d5 without committing a central pawn yet.
• 1. c4 controls the central square d5 from the flank and prepares a flexible pawn structure.

Contrast that with a move like 1. h4, which does none of these things: no central influence, no development, no preparation for castling. That's the whole framework. A first move is good to the extent that it advances the opening's three jobs, and the four main moves are simply the four most efficient ways to start those jobs.

1. e4 — The Open Game and the Classical Tradition

Bobby Fischer famously called 1. e4 "best by test," and while modern engines politely disagree that it stands above the rest, it remains the most played first move in history at every level below the elite. The pawn grabs a share of the center, and — this is the point beginners underrate — it instantly opens the diagonals for the queen and the f1-bishop. White can often castle by move four or five.

What does it lead to? If Black answers symmetrically with 1...e5, you get the great classical battlegrounds: the Italian Game after 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4, or the Ruy Lopez after 3. Bb5 — open positions, fast development, early contact between the armies. If Black fights back asymmetrically, the most important reply is 1...c5, the Sicilian Defense, which trades symmetry for a counterattacking imbalance and produces the sharpest mainstream chess there is. Solid players choose 1...e6 (the French) or 1...c6 (the Caro-Kann), keeping the position closed a while longer.

The character across all of these: open lines, early tactics, concrete play. Games after 1. e4 tend to reach a crisis sooner. Mistakes are punished faster and more visibly — which sounds like a drawback and is actually, for a learner, the best feature on the menu.

1. d4 — The Professional's Workhorse

1. d4 makes the same central claim one file over, with one structural difference that colors everything: the d4-pawn is defended by the queen from the start, while an e4-pawn stands unprotected. That small fact makes White's center harder to attack head-on, and it steers the game toward slower maneuvering battles where plans matter more than immediate tactics.

The main event after 1. d4 d5 is 2. c4 — the Queen's Gambit, which is not really a gambit at all, since White regains the pawn whenever necessary. It has been the backbone of world championship chess for over a century. Black's most ambitious alternative is to allow White the center and attack it later with pieces: the King's Indian Defense and its cousins, where Black castles behind a fianchetto and launches a counterstrike. And at club level, millions of players reach 1. d4 positions through the London System, a setup-based approach that develops the same pieces to the same squares against almost anything Black does.

The character: strategic, structural, patient. If 1. e4 games are decided by who calculates better in a crisis, 1. d4 games are more often decided by who understood the pawn structure — which, as the author of a book on exactly that subject, I admit is a battlefield I'm fond of.

1. c4 and 1. Nf3 — The Flexible Family

The English Opening (1. c4) and the Reti (1. Nf3) are the moves of players who want to choose the battlefield after seeing Black's setup. Both control central squares indirectly, both usually involve a kingside fianchetto, and both are famous for transposition — the same position reached through a different move order. A game beginning 1. Nf3 d5 2. d4 is simply a Queen's Gambit that arrived through the side door, and strong players use these move orders precisely to dodge an opponent's favorite defenses.

Make no mistake about their strength: 1. c4 and 1. Nf3 score as well as anything in master play, and world champions from Botvinnik to Carlsen have leaned on them. But their virtue — flexibility — is exactly what makes them a poor first choice for a developing player. To profit from keeping your options open, you must understand all the positions you might transpose into. That's a luxury for later. First learn one battlefield well; then flexibility becomes a weapon instead of a fog.

What the Statistics Actually Say

Since "best first move" is often really a statistics question, here is the honest summary of what large game databases show, in round numbers:

• White wins more than Black regardless of first move. Across millions of games, White scores roughly 54–56 percent (counting draws as half). The first-move advantage is real but modest — about the value of that single extra tempo.
• The four main moves score within about a point of each other. In master databases, 1. d4, 1. c4, and 1. Nf3 typically edge out 1. e4 by a fraction of a percent — mostly because 1. e4 players face the Sicilian, the best-scoring defense in chess. Nothing in that gap survives contact with the more important variable: how well you know the resulting positions.
• Popularity is not strength. 1. e4 is the most played first move overall; 1. d4 has often been more common at elite level. That tells you about fashion and preparation trends, not objective merit.
• Draw rates differ more than win rates. 1. e4 e5 mainlines and 1. Nf3 systems drift toward more draws at high level; sharp Sicilians and King's Indians produce more decisive games. If you want a fight, the opening influences how the game ends more than who wins it.

The statistical bottom line is liberating: the first move costs you nothing either way. Choose on educational value and enjoyment, and spend the energy you saved on tactics — a daily session in the puzzle trainer will do more for your results than a lifetime of first-move optimization.

What About the Other Sixteen Moves?

White has twenty legal first moves, and honesty requires admitting the other sixteen are not all terrible. A second tier — 1. g3, 1. b3, 1. f4, 1. Nc3 — is fully playable and occasionally appears even in grandmaster games. They develop something or influence the center somehow; they simply do it a little less efficiently, conceding White's small head start to reach less-charted territory.

Then there is the genuinely bad basement. 1. f3 is my nomination for worst first move: it occupies the knight's best square, weakens the king's diagonal, and develops nothing — a move with three drawbacks and zero benefits. 1. g4 competes for the title by tossing a pawn forward while ripping open the kingside White will want to castle toward. Engines rank both clearly last, and the reasoning matters more than the ranking: they violate every principle at once. Moves like 1. b4 or 1. a3 live in between — offbeat surprise weapons that are worse than the main moves but not losing, played to drag opponents out of preparation. You may meet them; you should not imitate them.

My Recommendation for Beginners: 1. e4, and Here's Why

If you're starting out, play 1. e4 — and play it every single game. Three reasons, in order of importance:

1. Open positions teach chess fastest. After 1. e4 the pieces come out early, threats appear by move five, and tactical patterns — pins, forks, discovered attacks — occur at a rate no closed opening matches. Below 1600, games are decided by tactics, so you want the opening that generates the most tactical education per game.
2. Cause and effect are visible. When you fall behind in development after 1. e4, something bad happens to you soon, and the loss teaches the lesson. In slower systems, mistakes hide for twenty moves and the feedback loop breaks.
3. The classical repertoire scales. 1. e4 followed by the Italian Game gives you sound positions you can keep playing to 2000 and beyond, deepening rather than replacing your knowledge. I've laid out the full starter repertoire in my guide to the best chess openings for beginners.

Two warnings to attach. First, commit: switching first moves every week resets your learning each time, because the pattern library you're building is position-specific. Pick 1. e4, keep it for months, and let repetition do its work. Second, learn ideas before memorizing lines — at beginner level your opponent leaves known theory by move five anyway, and understanding why the moves are played travels to every position, while memorized sequences work only in the one position you memorized. My guide on how to learn chess openings covers that method, and the structured courses in opening training are built around it — ideas first, move-by-move drilling second, so the opening becomes something you understand rather than something you recite.

When should you consider switching? When you've genuinely outgrown the first battlefield — usually well past 1600 — and want the strategic education that 1. d4 provides, or the move-order finesse of 1. Nf3. That's not an upgrade from a worse move to a better one. It's a second language, learned after the first one is fluent.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is 1. e4 or 1. d4 better?

Neither, objectively — engines and master statistics put them essentially level, and both have been world championship mainstays for a century. They lead to different kinds of chess: 1. e4 toward open, tactical positions and 1. d4 toward closed, strategic ones. Beginners should choose 1. e4 for its educational value; the switch to 1. d4, if it ever comes, is a matter of taste and development as a player.

What is the best first move for Black?

Black doesn't choose a first move in a vacuum — the reply depends on White's move. Against 1. e4, the classical 1...e5 and the counterattacking 1...c5 (Sicilian) are the two biggest scoring and most principled replies; against 1. d4, 1...d5 and 1...Nf6 are the equivalents. For beginners I recommend the symmetrical, classical replies — 1...e5 and 1...d5 — for the same reason I recommend 1. e4: they teach open, principled chess.

What is the worst first move in chess?

1. f3 and 1. g4 compete for the bottom, and engines agree they're the only first moves that hand Black a real edge. 1. f3 takes the best square from the g1-knight, weakens the king, and develops nothing; 1. g4 weakens the kingside even more violently. Even so, "worst" is relative — neither move loses by force, which says something about how much margin the starting position contains.

Do grandmasters ever play offbeat first moves like 1. b4 or 1. Nc3?

Occasionally, almost always as a surprise weapon in faster time controls, where dragging an opponent out of preparation is worth a small concession. In classical games with everything at stake, professionals overwhelmingly stick to e4, d4, c4, and Nf3. The lesson for improvers is that even the players strong enough to get away with offbeat moves treat them as spice, not diet.

Should I play the same first move every game?

Yes, for years, not weeks. Opening skill is a library of position-specific patterns, and every game you start with the same move deposits into the same library; alternating first moves splits your experience across battlefields and slows everything down. Add a second first move when your results, not your boredom, tell you the first one has been mastered.