What Opening Should You Play According To Science - White

This is the second of a two part blog post.  The first article can be found here.

This blog is a little trickier, of course.  The side with the white pieces has a tiny little advantage to start the game, and that provides a ton of flexibility. That said, I've run some stats again.  This time we're looking at games where white was 2700+ (aka SuperGM), black was a master but under 2400, and white won.

My expectation (again) is that white will avoid highly theoretical lines and will try to get black thinking as soon as possible.

In the name of making this data manageable, I've only chosen the most popular move for white.  That means we will only focus on 1. e4, although 1. d4 is nearly as common in SuperGM play.  I've also limited branching to black's first move or this blog would be enormous.

1. e4 c5

1. e4 e5

1. e4 e6

1. e4 c6

Conclusion

It looks to me like SuperGMs who want to play for a win against lower rated opponents tend to stick to the absolute mainlines when playing white (meaning my hypothesis was very wrong).  The notable deviations were in the Caro Kann, where white almost always chose the Advance variation, and the Ruy Lopez, where white often avoided the Marshall Gambit.

I'd like to hear what you think about this data. Let me know in the comments if you'd like to see the same sort of blog, but for 1.d4.