TY  - JOUR
A1  - Blasius, Bernd
A1  - Toenjes, Ralf
T1  - Zipf's Law in the popularity distribution of chess openings
N2  - We perform a quantitative analysis of extensive chess databases and show that the frequencies of opening moves are distributed according to a power law with an exponent that increases linearly with the game depth, whereas the pooled distribution of all opening weights follows Zipf's law with universal exponent. We propose a simple stochastic process that is able to capture the observed playing statistics and show that the Zipf law arises from the self-similar nature of the game tree of chess. Thus, in the case of hierarchical fragmentation the scaling is truly universal and independent of a particular generating mechanism. Our findings are of relevance in general processes with composite decisions.
Y1  - 2009
UR  - https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/31585
UR  - http://prl.aps.org/
SN  - 0031-9007
ER  -