Gambits by the numbers
What the board says when a gambit gets its name.
A gambit gives up material, usually a pawn, for time or space. In the list, 1,284 line names contain the word Gambit. At the moment the name is reached, one side is behind on material in 685 of them; in the other 599 the material is level, either because nothing has been taken yet or because the balance has been restored within the named moves.
Counting material, not judging it
On this site material is simple arithmetic: pawns count 1, knights and bishops 3, rooks 5 and queens 9. A line in which White has given a pawn therefore ends 38 to 39; King’s Gambit Accepted, 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4, is the plainest case in the list. That is a count of what is on the board, not an assessment of who stands better.
Who sacrifices
White is the side behind in 494 gambit lines, Black in 191. The gap is almost always small. In 605 lines the difference is a single pawn, and only 80 gambit lines end with a gap of two pawn units or more. The chart below counts every gambit line by the balance at its last named move, with level lines at the top.
- level599
- White +1173
- Black +1432
- White +210
- Black +235
- White +33
- Black +316
- White +43
- Black +48
- White +51
- Black +62
- White +81
- Black +91
Gambits that end level
A level count in a gambit line is common. The Queen’s Gambit is the clearest case: of its 275 lines in the list, 193 end with equal material. 1.d4 d5 2.c4 offers the c-pawn, and 211 of those 275 lines carry the word Declined in their name. The name keeps the word Gambit even when nothing has been sacrificed by the end of the line.
Accepted and declined
Many gambit names carry a second word that says what Black did with the offer. In the list, 298 gambit lines have Accepted in their name and 305 have Declined. The board agrees with the words most of the time, but not always. Among the accepted lines, 49 end with level material: within the named moves the balance has been restored. Among the declined lines, 91 end with one side ahead on the count. A name describes the decision taken at one moment, while the count describes the board at the last named move.
Where the gambits are
By volume, C has the most gambit lines (511), then D (359), A (240), B (155) and E (19). The opening names with most gambit lines are Queen’s Gambit (275), King’s Gambit (191), Italian Game (85), Sicilian Defense (70), Blackmar-Diemer Gambit (49). The King’s Gambit accounts for 191 of the gambit lines in volume C, and the Queen’s Gambit for 275 of those in D.
Gambits as a share of each volume
Raw counts favour the big volumes, so it helps to look at shares. Gambit lines make up 56% of volume D, 41% of C, 29% of A, 20% of B and only 5% of E. Volume D’s high figure comes largely from the name Queen’s Gambit itself, which every line of that family carries whether or not material changes hands. By White’s first move, 668 gambit lines start 1.e4 and 489 start 1.d4; the rest are spread over 16 other first moves.
The side that is behind also varies by volume. In volume C, White is the one behind in 271 gambit lines and Black in 69; in volume B the split is 59 to 33, and in D 108 to 35. Only in volume A is it nearly even, at 53 to 52.
The biggest imbalances
Material gaps larger than a couple of pawns are rare at the end of a named line, and not all of them are gambits. These are the widest in the list:
The top of the table is held by the King’s Gambit, with White 9 pawn units behind. Not every imbalance comes from a gambit: 268 lines without the word Gambit in their name also end with unequal material, and in 123 of them the last named move is a capture that has not yet been answered.
Using this on a code page
Every code page states the material at the end of its reference line, and the table of lines marks each line where one side is ahead (for example “White +1”). The code with the most such lines is D00, where 47 of its 72 lines end with one side ahead; next come C33 (41) and B21 (33).
Sources
Opening names and move sequences: lichess-org/chess-openings (CC0), retrieved 2026-10-28. All counts replayed and computed by ecocodes with python-chess; definitions on How to read a code page.