Unorthodox Openings vs 17 Engines
I was curious how engines handled some unorthodox openings. So I had 17 engines compete in a 3-game round-robin with SCID vs. PC. Sadly, there wasn't anything too interesting; as expected, Stockfish 16 won, followed by Berserk and ShashChess (a modified Stockfish version implementing some ideas from Best Play: A New Method for Discovering the Strongest Move). Setup was simple; I made a book for them to play from with all openings from Unorthodox Openings by Joel Benjamin and Eric Schiller 1987 in "The Good" Section with a few others that I've stumbled across over the years. A link to all the games played is here, and at the end of this post. https://www.chess.com/c/2rQwtispr
Probably the most interesting game was Gull 3 ~3192 drawing Stockfish 16 ~3536 playing Indian Game: East Indian, Seirawan Attack. This is initiated by White after the moves. 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 E6 3. Bg5. The line in the book goes 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Bg5 h6 4. Bh4 Bb4+ 5. Nd2. That is the line shown in the book, taken from the game Seirawan, Yasser (2605) vs. Andersson, Ulf (2640), 1983. After Nd2, in this game, the engines start thinking for themselves; however, Stockfish actually follows the game, with ... Ne4, and Gull is the one that leaves the referenced game first with Qd3. I suppose I find it interesting because Gull is a weaker engine (300+ elo difference). Yet the best line stockfish could find was still a draw. Which is how the reference game ended.
The next game is maybe a little more interesting as these two engines have a fairly sizable ELO gap: ShashChess 22 ~3497 vs. Ghost ~2651, which ended in a draw. The opening line given to the engines goes: 1. b3 e5 2. Bb2 Nc6 * a Nimzowitsch-Larsen Attack Shashchess opted to continue with 3. e3, and the game followed book moves until move 5. Here Stockfish suggests 5... Bc5. Ghost decided to trade right away with ... Nxd4, followed by Bxd4. The game here is still equal according to the game review; this seems confirmed by stockfish running on my computer. This stays consistent as a draw until move 13, where Ghost goes Be5. Game Review Stockfish claims a +0.21 advantage White, while Stockfish running on my computer claims only a +0.07 advantage. The Highest advantage Game Review claims is +0.88 after move 27 Stockfish on my computer claims +0.20. Here is the game.
I had two more games I am just going to place here. Critter ~3150 vs. Igel ~3483 in a Réti Opening: Dutch, Deferred Lisitsyn Gambit 1/2-1/2 Book ends after 1. Nf3 f5 2. d3 Nf6 3. e4 Move aftwards are soley up to the engines.
Finally Gull 3 ~ 3192 vs. Xiphos ~ 3317 in a Polish Opening: Bugayev Attack 1/2-1/2. Book ends after 1. b4 e5 2. a3 and moves afterwards up soley to the engines.
I found it interesting that even some lower-rated engines were able to get draws with the higher-rated engines. In most cases, the openings gave one side a slight advantage over the others. I did put all 408 games in a library collection. That can be found here if you're interested in seeing any of the games played. Sadly, for the weakest engines I have, Dreamer doesn't seem to like following the provided book; I'm guessing it's just a programming quirk. Minnow will follow the opening book, but it's far too weak to actually compete with any other engine aside from Dreamer. Which it managed 2 draws against, even though it is a weaker engine, by estimate probably 100–150 elo based off of my own testing as I wasn't able to find anything official on it. However, some of its games may be useful for learning.
https://www.chess.com/c/2rQwtispr
Tournament Cross Table:
