Do any Chess960 starting positions contain forced wins for White?

Hi guys,

I was playing a Chess960 position, and I was struck by how some positions generate early attacking opportunities for white that are impossible for black to prevent on the first move.  (For example, the first move white pushes a pawn forward, revealing a pawn square the white queen can attack and take that's not possible for black to respond to and defend during the first move).

Given that these very early weaknesses can exist for black in some Chess960 positions, is it possible for there to be a flaw in Chess960 in that some of the positions generated actually contain advantages for White that are strong enough to guarantee wins?

This could become a major problem if Chess960 picks up popularity.  Just imagine a championship game where the position generated is one with a forced win for White.  Not very fair for whoever ends up as Black in that position.  It may lead to the need to remove certain positions from Chess960 if it's deemed they are unfairly strong for white from the get go.

What do you guys think?

Does the question have its source in the Chess.com polls?

Hmm.. well giving some thought to this further, it appears that theoretically any hanging pawn created from a first move by white could be stopped by black pushing a pawn up by one.  However, though, such a defensive necessity by black could create initial weaknesses in the pawn structure that could create longer term weaknesses for black.  (For example, the pawn black needs to push locks in both the queen/bishops natural diagonal).

All of this complicated too by the symmetrical nature of Chess960 positions, any hanging pawn for black also exists for white, though I think black still lacks the tempo to exploit such weaknesses like white could.  If you notice in the normal chess setup, there are no pawns that are initially completely undefended by at least one piece at the start (even the weak f7 square is still protected by the king).

For the future viability of Chess960 I think it would be really necessary for such an analysis of all the positions to be made---starting by first looking at positions that generate immediately undefended pawns based on the setup of the pieces.  It's quite possible that any such weaknesses could only end up being small positional weaknesses that lack forced wins unless one had a very deep opening analysis of that specific Chess960 position, which, given the difficulty in doing that with Chess960, may make such positional weaknesses not too relevant for competitive play.  (But that's assuming conditions in Chess960 where players will lack the ability to deeply analyze a given Chess960 position before playing.  That may not always be the case.)

I think that if Chess960 stands any chance of seriously taking off to replace standard chess, the possibility for potential long term weaknesses to exist from certain Chess960 positions should be explored to see how seriously they could affect the game. 

I know there is a lot of speculation about this topic.  When last I looked into it, though, there was no record of Chess960 positions that had a huge advantage for white. 

I'm curious which start positions you've seen that display this property?

computerchess.org.uk has been running computer tournaments in Chess 960, and have 107,100 games recorded. The best opening for white appears to be NBRKBRNQ, with a white score of 66.3%. In that position white can attack black's undefended b-pawn with g3 or g4, and black's only way to save the pawn is c6.

There are several positions where white's score is down in the low 40s. And this is computer play, so it's not clear how this translates to human play.

So far it hasn't been proven that any starting position in chess960 has a "major" advantage for white over black. German GM Huebner have tested them all on Fritz, and none came to be of significance.

However, Nakamura said there might be subtle positional advantage in certain starting positions that needs white to play a flawless game in order to convert them into a substantial advantage.

The chairman of the Japanese Chess Federation suggested declaring a player to win a match if he managed to win it by white and managed to avoid the loss with the very same position playing black.

I have encountered great difficulty with black while having two weak squares to defend. A good tactical player can really shred you fast. I have also found that if you lose the initiative and have the same two weaknesses, you can be steamrolled just as quickly.

This is part of what I love about 960. It really keeps you on your toes and forces you to consider every facet of chess, without any of the familiar crutches.

Certainly not a forced win: as you state, you can always push a pawn. But yes, advantages certainly vary. 

Chess.com 960 tournaments have nullified this though, as you play each opponent as black and white with the same start. I don't know how OTB 960 tourneys go, but if they use the same format, this has no overall effect (except for lower level play, as the first person to be white might exploit something that the black player simply didn't see).

So, if you play single games, yes, sometimes being black comes with a larger disadvantage than being black in normal chess (see ironic_begar's comment), so stick with chess.com tournaments.

I think in practical terms, we can use engine to find out which starting position(s) produces "quick" forced win ,say, mate in 50-100 so those positions can be filtered out from tournament. Those which are "unresolved" can be kept for human play until play results or theory find them too biased towards white.

keep in mind that even if white were to forcibly win a pawn out of the opening, it will almost always give black something in return, notice in the two knights defense of the italian game- Ng5 wins a pawn by force, yet mysteriously this isn't at all common at the top level, hmmm... grabbing pawns in the opening is not necessarily even desirable (example: poisoned pawn variations of many opening systems sacrificing the b2 pawn)  

Can you post an example please?

FYI, my forum challenge tries to explore this question with proposed difficult 960 opening positions...