Which opening traps do players under 1400 fall for most? Ranked by games the trap actually won, Scholar's Mate is first with 22 wins in every 10,000 games, and the Fried Liver is second with 11. After that, no trap wins more than 6 in 10,000. We checked 981,466 Lichess games under 1400.
The ranking
"Games won" counts games where the player who set the trap won by checkmate or resignation within five moves of the defender's mistake (ten moves for the Fried Liver and Stafford). Games lost on time are not counted.
| Rank | Trap | Set up in every 10,000 games | Defender fell for it | Games won in every 10,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Scholar's Mate, by White | 269 | 9.6% | 22.2 |
| 2 | Fried Liver Attack | 82 | 50.3% | 11.2 |
| 3 | Scholar's Mate, by Black (aimed at f2) | 52 | 12.2% | 5.7 |
| 4 | Reverse Fool's Mate (Black's f and g pawns moved) | 3.7 | all (self-inflicted) | 1.6 |
| 5 | Blackburne Shilling | 22 | 10.0% | 1.5 |
| 6 | Fishing Pole | 6.5 | 50.7% | 1.1 |
| 7 | Fool's Mate pattern (White's f and g pawns moved) | 2.8 | all (self-inflicted) | 0.9 |
| 8 | Légal's Mate | 3.3 | 59.2% | 0.7 |
| 9 | Petrov Copycat | 10 | 8.2% | 0.4 |
| 10 | Stafford Gambit | 11 | 5.7% | 0.3 |
Next on the list is the Englund Gambit queen trap at 0.3, and the Damiano Defence trap at 0.15.
Three things the ranking shows
- One family does most of the damage. Scholar's Mate by White and by Black add up to about 28 wins in 10,000 games. The other seven traps in the table together win about 6.
- The Fried Liver fools the most people. Half of the defenders who face 4.Ng5 go wrong. It wins fewer games than Scholar's Mate only because it is set up less often.
- Famous traps are rare and rarely work. The Blackburne Shilling, the Fishing Pole and the Stafford are set up in 6 to 22 of every 10,000 games, and the defender falls for them in 6% to 51%. Their names are far better known than their results.
How the same traps change with rating
| Trap: set up per 10,000 games · defender fell | Under 1000 | 1000–1399 | 1400–1799 | 1800+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scholar's Mate (White) | 409 · 17% | 230 · 6% | 107 · 4% | 28 · 3% |
| Fried Liver | 80 · 53% | 82 · 49% | 44 · 34% | 27 · 14% |
| Blackburne Shilling | 12 · 7% | 25 · 10% | 20 · 5% | 7 · 2% |
| Fishing Pole | 3 · 67% | 7 · 49% | 8 · 30% | 5 · 19% |
Scholar's Mate disappears quickly. By 1800 it is set up once in 360 games. The Fried Liver stays in use longer, because defending it needs knowledge and not only care.
What to learn first
- Guard f7 (and f2). It stops the top and third traps. Our Scholar's Mate guide has the moves.
- Learn the Fried Liver defence after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.Ng5 d5 5.exd5: play 5...Na5, not 5...Nxd5. See how to stop the Fried Liver.
- Do not spend weeks on the rest. They are rare. Practise each once, in the Trap Lab, and move on.
How we measured it
- Data: 3,062,092 rated Lichess rapid and blitz games from September 2026 (CC0), 78 evenly spaced slices covering the whole month. Rating bands use the average of the two players' ratings; both are within 200 points. The under-1400 group is 981,466 games.
- Detection: by position with the python-chess library, so a trap reached by a different move order still counts. The exact definitions are in our full study.
- Limits: all ages (Lichess does not publish ages); one month; Lichess ratings run higher than Chess.com's at the low end. A trap with fewer than 300 attempts is shown as an anecdote in the full study.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most common chess trap under 1400? Scholar's Mate. White sets it up in about 269 of every 10,000 games under 1400 and wins about 22 of them.
Which trap fools the most people? The Fried Liver. About half of defenders who face 4.Ng5 go wrong, 50% under 1400.
Do chess traps work? Only a few. Under 1400, apart from Scholar's Mate and the Fried Liver, no trap wins more than 6 games in 10,000.
Want your child to learn the defences that matter, not 40 named traps? Book a free 30-minute trial class with our FIDE-rated coaches, or try the free Trap Lab.
