Best 1st moves in ALL 960 Fischer positions

Bemweeks: thanx for the link! If U have any concepts/corrections/ideas/remarks please let me know!

This is why Chess960 sucks. Its all about remembering, like remembering pi or algs for rubiks cube.

I wasn't going to comment, but since you ask...

If your objective is to determine whether all 960 start positions (SPs) are fair to both sides, then I agree with you. If your objective is to determine the absolute best first move in all 960 SPs, then I disagree.

Whatever the motive, you wrote (24th December 2010, 10:51pm), 'Yes, indeed, it's not specifically chess960 engine, so I make the castling manually when I think that it's an appropriate move.' For me, this invalidates your methodology. There are many positions where castling on the first move, either O-O or O-O-O, is as good as any other first move. Furthermore, your approach means that twins (like SP518 RNBQKBNR and SP534 RNBKQBNR, i.e. King and Queen switched) will have identical, mirrored evaluations, so you are really evaluating only 480 SPs. If you think this exercise is worth doing, you should use an engine that understands chess960.

Your observation (4th January 2011, 08:53am) that 'BBQRKRNN (with 2 bishops on 1 side and 2 unprotected pawns on the other) seems to be the most advantageous for white' is interesting (SP864 BBQRKRNN). A good human player would probably avoid castling O-O and steer for castling O-O-O, but engines don't reason like that. Similar reasoning applies to the twin (SP095 NNRKRQBB).

...There are plenty of engines that understand chess960. Why don't you use one of them? - Mark

Bem: I work with what I have on my old Mac OS. Nevertheless, I find that Sigma gives quite reasonable results. Can U suggest any engines that could work on my computer?

I'm more interested in understanding general patterns than in particular estimations in each particular position.

Contrary to your simplistic idea, BKQ is not at all equivalent to BQK. One is dQB and other is vQB position in my terminology.

 Nice, Richard! I hope that U've already signed me up automatically!

NrthrnKnght: any news about your book? I was quite busy, will continue to work a bit on this issue.

For developing peices in chess 960 I would try to stay with opening principles - the same theories from standard chess still apply in chess 960 - try to develop fast, pay attention to space control in the center and flanks, watch for pawn storms, long term strategies and tactics.

Sure though any different configuration of chess pieces changes best moves. For example, if 1.e4 doesn't open the way to the queen or a bishop, it would be, at most, mediocre opening. As U see from my analysis, such moves as 1.b4 may be considered as the best ones, for instance, in BXQXXXXX-games.

Dave_9990: yes, this is the Stairway opening, it opens diagonals to the queen and an adjacent bishop. It appears also in many examples in my first post here.

Wonderful, glad to hear it!

Please, don't ruin 960

I've been playing it for quite little time and even in Standard Chess I'm only a patzer, but I figured that some patterns do repeat themselves quite frequently. For example, once in every 8 games there will be two neighoboring bishops in one corner of the board, in that case b3-c4 may be a good opening, imediately developping the bishops and dominating the center from distance. There might be other patterns that appear regularly that favor one kind of opening over another, I think that's the kind of thing we can call study of openings in Chess960.

 Yes, exactly.

Sounds good

 thanx!

[ ] OP understands how Chess engines work

[ ] Sigma set to 10 plies will accurately generate an opening book

[x] Will get similar results asking your 9 year old cousin

 Thank you for all the work you have done.

Well, it's just a preliminary attempt to have some fun. Nevertheless, it gives reasonable results. Please wait the book by Northern Knight to have a really accurate opening book.

 Thanx, buddy, already 32/960 = 1/30.

Oh I'm not denying that this is not a good idea. I'm just saying that setting a weak little chess engine to 10 ply and letting it run is not the best way to do it.