The number next to each candidate move provides an indication of the popularity of each move. By default, this number shows the number of times the position after the move was reached in the database. Because this count is based on the resulting position, and not the actual move, this means that the count is aware of transpositions, and will also include the number of times the resulting position was reached via other moves. If you wish to see the count for only the moves that were played in the current position, and ignore transpositions into the subsequent position, then you can change the explorer stats settings from Resulting Position to Actual Moves. This is discussed in more detail in the Explorer Stats Options section of the user guide.

The other columns in the opening explorer show the date the move was last played (or the resulting position reached, depending on the Explorer Stats setting), the average and maximum rating of the player playing the move, as well as the performance rating of the move. The performance rating uses the USCF tournament performance rating calculation, and provides a rating for a move based on the rating of the opponents of the player who played the move, and the number of times the game ended up won or lost after the move. If the performance rating is higher than the average rating of players who played the move, the performance rating is displayed in green, and if it is below the average rating, it will be displayed in red. The colours can be used to see moves that lead to positions where the players of the move perform above or below their average rating.

These values show the respective outcomes for games where each move was played (or each resulting position arrived at). The bars allow the relative outcomes to be seen at a glance.

By default, Game Database subsets (2200+, SuperGM+ etc) and game searches (both advanced and quick search) impact the games used to generate the statistics for the Opening Explorer. So for example if you specify the database subset as SuperGM+ then the Opening Explorer will only include games where both players were rated 2700+. You may also want to look at recent theory in a line, and specify a date search criteria to include only games played recently. It is also possible to specify a player's name to view the opening repertoire of that player. To make this useful, you probably want to look at one colour at a time (otherwise the opening stats will include moves played by the player's opponents). For example, specifying Piece Colour as white will only have games where the specified player played with the white pieces, so all white move stats will be from the player's point of view, and all black move stats will be from the opponent's point of view. It is also possible to specify an opponent name to view the types of openings played between particular opponents, a Piece Colour setting should also be used here so that each colour's moves are attributed to only one of the players, rather than showing a mix of choices across different games.

By default, opening explorer statistics for each move are based on analyzing the position that is reached after the relevant move is made. This allows stats to account for transpositions into the resulting position from other lines. There may be times at which this is not the desired behaviour, and you would prefer to see the stats based only on the instances in which the relevant move was played in the current position. To do this you can choose the Actual Moves option from the Explorer Stats option selector. To return to the default behaviour choose Resulting Position.

Related openings shows a list of the openings that contain the current position. This display is transposition aware, so it will show openings that contain the current position, even if the move sequence in the move list is different from the opening's actual move sequence. As the number of openings can be very large for some positions, it is suggested you only have this panel open when needed, as downloading the information can slow down other operations.