| AylerKupp: <<RandomVisitor> So, what is best play after 8...Be6?> Well, that depends. If you are interested in statistics of game results I looked at the ChessTempo database which has a little bit under 1.9M games, of which 6,860 have the position after 8...Be6.
click for larger viewThe top 4 moves when more than 150 games played in terms of White scoring percentage along with the number of games for each move were: 9.Be3 910 59.7%
9.Qe2 921 59.5%
9.Nbd2 2,332 59.2%
9.c3 2,560 54.5%
These represent 98.0% of the 6,860 games played from this position. There doesn't seem to be much to choose between the top 3 moves. But a lot depends on how strong the players are. The ChessTempo database provides a convenient way to filter out games according to the players' ratings. There were 1,596 games when both players are rated 2200+ and the top 4 moves when more than 600 games were played and the number of games with each move were: 9.Qe2 620 59.8%
9.Be3 672 58.3%
9.Nbd2 1,657 57.5%
9.c3 1,511 54.9%
These also represent 98.0% of the 4,549 games played. Not too different from when all games were considered. Finally, there were 105 games played when both players were rated 2700+, and the top 4 moves (only 4 different moves were played at the top level from this position), number of games for each, and White's scoring percentage were: 9.c3 19 65.8%
9.Nbd2 59 61.9%
9.Be3 16 59.4%
9.Qe2 11 59.1%
These represent 100% of the games played. What's interesting is how much greater White's scoring percentage is (perhaps indicating that White's position is inherently much better than Black's <if> you know how to exploit Black's weaknesses and that the two most popular moves are the two which were ranked #3 and #4 when the games involved weaker players. So, pick your strength and your opponent's and statistically speaking you'll know what the best move to play is. But that's just statistically speaking, of course. | 
Kibitzing
