3-Check Chess: Any defense against 1. e4 ?

I recently started dabbling with 3-check chess which is fun, and I wonder now is there any defense at all against 1. e4?

The common answer to 1. e4  seems to be 1. .. e6 which is a good move, but often white gets much more space in the center as a result, and ultimately wins the game quite often. Of course black can move the knights in the first move but this tends to lead to similar positions with just a different move order.

Thoughts?

3-check starts like +4 or smth for white

According to lichess:

Standard: +0.3

Crazyhouse: +2.9

Chess960: Varies lol

KOTH: +0.9

Three-Check: +3.7

Antichess: +1.6

Atomic: +1.8

Horde: +1.1 (but i think this one is off)

Racing Kings: +0.3

I lost a game after 1.. e5 because I thought it is a must win for white in just a few moves (and usually it is!). With perfect play, however, black can defend for some time at least.

lmao can we mute orion already

his only purpose is to make big letters in random colors

On Lichess I found this line which looks interesting. It looks a bit like the Closed Sicilian Defense.

Yes, White has rather too big an advantage in Three Check. As mentioned in post #3, it's something like +3.7 (although when I looked it came up as +3.0, I guess it depends on how long you leave it to think).

I prefer combining Three Check with Chess 960, although at the current time the opportunities to play this are rather limited. Most starting positions will reduce White's advantage, some of them drastically. See Yigor's post earlier this year (and my comment there too): https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-variants/fischer960-3-check-evaluations-and-best-1st-moves

And here's an old post discussing what computer numbers such as +3.0 mean: https://www.chess.com/forum/view/game-analysis/what-do-those-numbers-mean-when-your-analyzing-your-game

Oh ok so that is pawns. 3-4 pawns seems a very strong advantage indeed. That said I noticed that playing as black against newbies that are strong at classic chess is very, very difficult. So at least for humans that number makes sense. Would be interesting if 3-check is a forced win for the engines.

The Chess 960 thread is very interesting!

Very interesting!

I haven't played KOTH enough to be sure but since the king cannot really move to the center early in the game it should not make much of a difference compared to regular chess.