Queen's Pawn Game: Modern Defense
A40 1. d4 g6
White scores 52.7% here across 4,990 club games — but the 1.7% who answer c3 score 46.5%, 6 points worse.
What White actually plays here
Across 4,990 games from a Lichess-derived book of club play, White scores 52.7% in this position. These are the replies people choose, and how each one works out.
| Reply | Games | Share | White scores | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| c4 | 1,385 | 27.8% | 53.6% | holds up |
| Bf4 | 904 | 18.1% | 50.7% | holds up |
| e4 | 807 | 16.2% | 53.0% | holds up |
| Nf3 | 771 | 15.5% | 52.4% | holds up |
| e3 | 369 | 7.4% | 53.4% | holds up |
| Nc3 | 334 | 6.7% | 54.0% | holds up |
| Bg5 | 99 | 2.0% | 56.1% | holds up |
| c3 | 86 | 1.7% | 46.5% | below the line |
| g3 | 47 | 0.9% | 52.1% | holds up |
| b3 | 38 | 0.8% | 56.6% | holds up |
| d5 | 30 | 0.6% | 53.3% | holds up |
| f4 | 26 | 0.5% | 46.2% | below the line |
"Below the line" means the reply scores at least three points worse than the position does overall. Replies played fewer than 25 times are left out: the sample is too small to read.
Is this costing you anything?
A table of averages cannot tell you whether you go wrong here — only your own games can. Opening Leak Lab reads your Chess.com or Lichess archive, finds the decisions you repeat, and checks each one against this book and a bundled Stockfish.