# Opening Lines Arena

> Kaggle's Opening Lines Arena has models write the opening of a novel for 50 premises in 10 genres, and people vote for the better opening.

Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/benchmarks/opening-lines-arena

- Category: [external](/external)
- Last updated: Latest evaluation November 9, 2026

Evaluation results published by [Kaggle](https://www.kaggle.com/benchmarks/kaggle/opening-lines-arena). undefined

A response qualifies if it is plain text of 20 to 300 words with no profanity. Kaggle shows two anonymous outputs for the same prompt and a person picks the better one. The Arena column is the relative rating Kaggle fits to those votes, published with an interval; it is not a percentage.

The rating moves as votes arrive, and Kaggle publishes no confidence level for its interval. Rows with few votes have wide intervals, so neighbouring models are often not separable. Voters are self-selected Kaggle visitors. The board declares no license; we keep published aggregates with attribution and no task or output contents.

A rating gap smaller than the two rows' intervals is not a reliable difference.

- [Kaggle arena leaderboard](https://www.kaggle.com/benchmarks/kaggle/opening-lines-arena)
- [Published leaderboard data](https://www.kaggle.com/api/v1/benchmarks/kaggle/opening-lines-arena/leaderboard)

## About Opening Lines Arena

- Year: 2026
- Tasks: 50 novel openings: 10 genres with 5 premises each, rated by human votes
- Format: Relative rating fitted to human pairwise votes
- Difficulty: Fiction writing

A response qualifies if it is plain text of 20 to 300 words with no profanity. Kaggle shows two anonymous outputs for the same prompt and a person picks the better one. The Arena column is the relative rating Kaggle fits to those votes, published with an interval; it is not a percentage. These results are display-only and do not enter overall or category rankings.

Opening Lines Arena is currently displayed on BenchLM for reference, but it is excluded from the weighted scoring formula.

## Leaderboard (16 source rows)

| Rank | Model | Configuration | Creator | Score |
|------|-------|---------------|---------|-------|
| 1 | [GPT-6 Astra](https://www.kaggle.com/benchmarks/kaggle/opening-lines-arena) | Max Reasoning; 8 votes; ±217; Evaluated 2026-11-09 | — | 1613 |
| 2 | [GPT-5.6 Terra](https://www.kaggle.com/benchmarks/kaggle/opening-lines-arena) | GPT 5.6 Terra Max Reasoning; 9 votes; ±211; Evaluated 2026-11-09 | — | 1602 |
| 3 | [Grok 4.7](https://www.kaggle.com/benchmarks/kaggle/opening-lines-arena) | Xhigh Reasoning; 7 votes; ±220; Evaluated 2026-11-09 | — | 1596 |
| 4 | [GPT-5.6 Sol](https://www.kaggle.com/benchmarks/kaggle/opening-lines-arena) | Max Reasoning; 5 votes; ±239; Evaluated 2026-11-09 | — | 1576 |
| 5 | [GPT-5.5](https://www.kaggle.com/benchmarks/kaggle/opening-lines-arena) |  GPT-5.5 High Reasoning; 9 votes; ±206; Evaluated 2026-11-09 | — | 1567 |
| 6 | [GPT-5.2](https://www.kaggle.com/benchmarks/kaggle/opening-lines-arena) | Xhigh Reasoning; 7 votes; ±220; Evaluated 2026-11-09 | — | 1559 |
| 7 | [GPT-5.6 Terra](https://www.kaggle.com/benchmarks/kaggle/opening-lines-arena) | High Reasoning; 7 votes; ±217; Evaluated 2026-11-09 | — | 1550 |
| 8 | [Gemini 4 Argon](https://www.kaggle.com/benchmarks/kaggle/opening-lines-arena) | High Reasoning; 6 votes; ±227; Evaluated 2026-11-09 | — | 1519 |
| 9 | [GPT-6 Luna](https://www.kaggle.com/benchmarks/kaggle/opening-lines-arena) | Max Reasoning; 13 votes; ±182; Evaluated 2026-11-09 | — | 1515 |
| 10 | [GLM-5.3](https://www.kaggle.com/benchmarks/kaggle/opening-lines-arena) | Max Reasoning; 9 votes; ±204; Evaluated 2026-11-09 | — | 1455 |
| 11 | [Kimi K3](https://www.kaggle.com/benchmarks/kaggle/opening-lines-arena) | Max Reasoning; 5 votes; ±239; Evaluated 2026-11-09 | — | 1450 |
| 12 | [Claude Opus 5.5](https://www.kaggle.com/benchmarks/kaggle/opening-lines-arena) | Max Reasoning; 13 votes; ±188; Evaluated 2026-11-09 | — | 1447 |
| 13 | [Claude Sonnet 5.5](https://www.kaggle.com/benchmarks/kaggle/opening-lines-arena) | Max Reasoning; 12 votes; ±190; Evaluated 2026-11-09 | — | 1425 |
| 14 | [GPT-6.1 Sol](https://www.kaggle.com/benchmarks/kaggle/opening-lines-arena) | Max Reasoning; 9 votes; ±208; Evaluated 2026-11-09 | — | 1416 |
| 15 | [Gemini 3.8 Flash](https://www.kaggle.com/benchmarks/kaggle/opening-lines-arena) | High Reasoning; 5 votes; ±247; Evaluated 2026-11-09 | — | 1392 |
| 16 | [GPT-5](https://www.kaggle.com/benchmarks/kaggle/opening-lines-arena) | High Reasoning; 5 votes; ±250; Evaluated 2026-11-09 | — | 1328 |

## FAQ

### What does Opening Lines Arena measure?

Kaggle's Opening Lines Arena has models write the opening of a novel for 50 premises in 10 genres, and people vote for the better opening.

### Which source row has the highest reported Opening Lines Arena value?

GPT-6 Astra has the highest reported Opening Lines Arena value at 1613. A rating gap smaller than the two rows' intervals is not a reliable difference.

### How many models are evaluated on Opening Lines Arena?

The Latest evaluation November 9, 2026 contains 16 AI models.

### Does Opening Lines Arena affect BenchLM's overall score?

Not directly. Opening Lines Arena is still displayed on BenchLM for reference, but it is excluded from the weighted scoring formula.