What can 100,000 chess players tell us about improvement?

The role of memorizing chess openings in achieving mastery has long been debated. This study attempts to prove a relation between exposure to different phases of a chess game and the change in skill over the course of a year. Using the lichess open database, the researcher analyzed game lengths and changes in elo over a one year period for accounts ranging from beginner to advanced. The method isolates length of chess games from the elo measurement to allow for tracking of persistent variables over the period of the year. This allows for the examination of a player’s tendency towards longer or shorter games, which was compared to their change in skill over the year. Contrary to my hypothesis, the results suggest a near zero correlation between length tendency and change in elo relative to peers.