Automate Chess Meta 25.07.2020
Hello, in this post i will analyse current automate chess meta and show a few games on 1700+ rating. There is a summary in the end if you don't have much time.
Game 1. Classic Conclave vs Conclave, 2 Queens variation
As you can see Classic Conclave is slightly better with white pieces.
White have 2 pieces: bishop and rook instead of the queen. I believe for stockfish in most of the scenarious rook + bishop is better as you can attack queen and force it to leave important squares. You can trade bishop with any piece, on the other hand queen should be traded with queens only.
Game 2. Classic Conclave vs Classic Conclave, 7 bishops variation
Again, Classic Conclave with 6 bishops is better, but it is no so clear as it was played with white pieces. In my opinion 6 bishops' Conclave is better because of the rook instead of bishop + pawn. Rook controls a lot of squares, when 7th bishop most of the time covers same squares as other 3 bishops of the same color.
Game 3. Conclave, 2 Queens variation vs Conclave, 2 Queens variation
This setups looks equal from first glance, but black made a 2 fatal mistakes:
- Placed 4th white bishop instead of 2nd black bishop. This led to a big problems in the middle game, when white had 2 queens + 2 opposite color bishops and black had 2 queens and 2 white bishops.
- Queens was poorly placed. Queens were stuck during whole game. Queen on c8 made first move at move 22. This Queen was useless till that point, at this point game was already lost.
I believe this game could be a draw with a better piece placements.
Game 4. Rook/Bishop Battery vs Improvisation
In this game my opponent wanted to play conclave, but changed his mind after i decided to placed rook against it. Position:
After a few rounds it led to a 1 point surplus on his side and he placed pawn on c3 to spent last point. Of course it is a bad placement but this highlights an important item: plan what pieces you want to place and how much it will cost. Your setup can use 33-34 points, but it should be planned carefully. For example: if my opponent decided to change his setup to another one after he placed 3 bishops, he should count what pieces he can place. If there is an additional pawn in new setup you should place it before anything else as it will "skip" your turn and hide your strategy longer.
Summary:
- Conclave variations dominating Automate Chess scene.
- Classic Conclave with 6 bishops better than Classic Conclave with 7 bishops
- There is a chance to destroy opponents game plan if he wants to play conclave. Place rooks after he placed a few bishop. Before that just place bishop as in Example Game №4.
- A new Conclave variation: Conclave, 2 Queens variation. I will look closely to this one. Need more games to analyse how good it is. At first sight it looks better than Conclave with 7 bishops but slightly worse than Conclave with 6 bishops.
That all, i hope it was helpful. As always i am open for questions, suggestion, new setups and anything else. Maybe i will make a new topic on forum for this one, what do you think? I guess setups also need a few updates.
Here it is, the closest mirror i've had. Still his bishop's placement could've been better. His white bishops was blocked whole game.