Answers.Body: <p><strong>The most played game: a drawing line</strong></p>
  <p>The most played game in the <a href="https://theweekinchess.com/twic" rel="noreferrer">TWIC</a> database (issues 920 to 1438, containing about 1.8 million tournament games) is the following one, which appears 111 times. I add also a variation of the same (a change in move order) that is the second most played game (87 times). A couple of variations ending a move earlier or a move later also are amongst the most played games, with 38 and 39 repetitions respectively.</p>
  <pre><code>[FEN &quot;&quot;]
  1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 4.O-O Nxe4 5.d4 Nd6 6.dxe5 Nxb5 7.a4 Nbd4 8.
  Nxd4 Nxd4 ( 8...d5 9.exd6 Nxd4 10.Qxd4 Qxd6 11.Qe4+ Qe6 12.Qd4 Qd6 13.Qe4+
  Qe6 14.Qd4 Qd6 {2nd most played game, 87 times} ) 9.Qxd4 d5 10.exd6 Qxd6 
  11.Qe4+ Qe6 12.Qd4 Qd6 13.Qe4+ Qe6 14.Qd4 {15th most played game, 38 times
  } 14...Qd6 {Most played game, 111 times} ( 14...Qd6 15.Qe4+ {14th most 
  played game, 39 times} ) 1/2-1/2
  </code></pre>
  <p><strong>How I found the answer</strong></p>
  <p>In case anyone is interested, I used a custom made script to parse the games in pgn format and extract the movetext section (the section containing the actual moves and result).</p>
  <p>After saving the results as a dataframe in R, I grouped the data by the column movetext (equal games are grouped together), calculated the number of times for each game and sorted in decreasing order:</p>
  <pre><code>    games &lt;- mdata %&gt;% group_by(movetext) %&gt;%
          summarise(n_times = n()) %&gt;% arrange(desc(n_times))
  </code></pre>
  <p>And I only took into account the games where there was at least one move by each of the players. Otherwise, the most played game would be &quot;0-1&quot;, black wins because white didn't show up, followed by &quot;1.e4 1-0&quot;, white wins because black didn't show up.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2022-06-05T14:47:26.433Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2022-06-05T14:47:26.433Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: lodebari
Body: <p>Offhand, I say the Shepherd's Mate. But let us just consider &quot;serious&quot; tournament play. Still, the game must be rather short to be repeated extremely often. Could be a &quot;Will they ever learn&quot; opening trap or a prearranged draw line. Anyone care to research it in a megabase?</p>
  <p>Note that just because Lichess lists 187×10^6 e4 vs. 100×10^6 d4 doesn't mean that an e4 game will be the winner! (By playing always the most often played move on the analysis board, I landed in the Lasker Pelikan Sveshnikov.)</p>
  
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2021-07-12T18:40:13.337Z
Comments.Text: Use "×" instead of "`*`" in SE.
Comments.UserDisplayName: user21820
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2021-07-12T20:28:25.133Z
Comments.Text: That repetition draw in the Zaitsev Ruy Lopez is a good contender. Some spectacular draws like Haupke-Meitner, Vienna 1889 have been repeted many times also...
Comments.UserDisplayName: Evargalo
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2021-07-13T07:15:56.803Z
Comments.Text: @Evargalo: You say :-) (Caught two youth players myself. Me: Oh, Hamppe-Meitner! Them: Who??? <blank stare> Their luck it was none of my business...)
Comments.UserDisplayName: Hauke Reddmann
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2021-07-13T10:19:52.350Z
Comments.Text: [Are there any repeated games between GMs?](https://chess.stackexchange.com/q/29129/7297)
Comments.UserDisplayName: Glorfindel
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2021-07-13T14:47:07.997Z
Comments.Text: @Glorfindel: Judging from Lichess (which, I dunno, might include blitz etc.), this opening draw is somewhat less frequent than the Zaitsev. BTW, Hamppe-Meitner is more than one order of magnitude less frequent. (Maybe because of the fear there is a trick for one side...Stockfish declares it as +10.0, until Nxc6, 0.0.)
Comments.UserDisplayName: Hauke Reddmann
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2021-07-24T03:36:57.840Z
Comments.Text: like the berlin variation where 3 fold occurs.
Comments.UserDisplayName: CognisMantis
Tags: <history><statistics>
Title: The most often played chess game
ThreadText: # The most often played chess game
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2021-07-12)
  
  Offhand, I say the Shepherd's Mate. But let us just consider "serious" tournament play. Still, the game must be rather short to be repeated extremely often. Could be a "Will they ever learn" opening trap or a prearranged draw line. Anyone care to research it in a megabase?
  
  Note that just because Lichess lists 187×10^6 e4 vs. 100×10^6 d4 doesn't mean that an e4 game will be the winner! (By playing always the most often played move on the analysis board, I landed in the Lasker Pelikan Sveshnikov.)
  
  **Tags:** history, statistics
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_1**: Use "×" instead of "`*`" in SE.  
  > **username_2**: That repetition draw in the Zaitsev Ruy Lopez is a good contender. Some spectacular draws like Haupke-Meitner, Vienna 1889 have been repeted many times also...  
  > **username_0**: @username_2: You say :-) (Caught two youth players myself. Me: Oh, Hamppe-Meitner! Them: Who??? <blank stare> Their luck it was none of my business...)  
  > **username_3**: [Are there any repeated games between GMs?](https://chess.stackexchange.com/q/29129/7297)  
  > **username_0**: @username_3: Judging from Lichess (which, I dunno, might include blitz etc.), this opening draw is somewhat less frequent than the Zaitsev. BTW, Hamppe-Meitner is more than one order of magnitude less frequent. (Maybe because of the fear there is a trick for one side...Stockfish declares it as +10.0, until Nxc6, 0.0.)  
  > **username_4**: like the berlin variation where 3 fold occurs.  
  
  ---
  
  ## 1 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_5 on 2022-06-05. Score: 7 | Accepted answer
  
  **The most played game: a drawing line**
  
  The most played game in the [TWIC](https://theweekinchess.com/twic) database (issues 920 to 1438, containing about 1.8 million tournament games) is the following one, which appears 111 times. I add also a variation of the same (a change in move order) that is the second most played game (87 times). A couple of variations ending a move earlier or a move later also are amongst the most played games, with 38 and 39 repetitions respectively.
  
  ```
  [FEN ""]
  1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 4.O-O Nxe4 5.d4 Nd6 6.dxe5 Nxb5 7.a4 Nbd4 8.
  Nxd4 Nxd4 ( 8...d5 9.exd6 Nxd4 10.Qxd4 Qxd6 11.Qe4+ Qe6 12.Qd4 Qd6 13.Qe4+
  Qe6 14.Qd4 Qd6 {2nd most played game, 87 times} ) 9.Qxd4 d5 10.exd6 Qxd6 
  11.Qe4+ Qe6 12.Qd4 Qd6 13.Qe4+ Qe6 14.Qd4 {15th most played game, 38 times
  } 14...Qd6 {Most played game, 111 times} ( 14...Qd6 15.Qe4+ {14th most 
  played game, 39 times} ) 1/2-1/2
  
  ```
  
  **How I found the answer**
  
  In case anyone is interested, I used a custom made script to parse the games in pgn format and extract the movetext section (the section containing the actual moves and result).
  
  After saving the results as a dataframe in R, I grouped the data by the column movetext (equal games are grouped together), calculated the number of times for each game and sorted in decreasing order:
  
  ```
      games <- mdata %>% group_by(movetext) %>%
          summarise(n_times = n()) %>% arrange(desc(n_times))
  
  ```
  
  And I only took into account the games where there was at least one move by each of the players. Otherwise, the most played game would be "0-1", black wins because white didn't show up, followed by "1.e4 1-0", white wins because black didn't show up.
  
  
  ---
  
  