Serious Chess Question #2: White's Advantage

Hi everybody, 

Welcome to the serious chess questions series. This is part 2. If you missed part 1, here's a link: https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/serious-chess-question

Today, I wish to explore the first move advantage in chess. As many of you know, in classical chess, white has an advantage over black. Therefore, white wins more often than black in classical chess games. 

This got me thinking while I was playing the 3 check variant here. I wondered, does white have an advantage in all variants as well? 

I compiled a list of known variants which will be seen below. Please discuss which side has the advantage. You may also add other variants if you see fit. 

1. Chess 960

2. King of the Hill 

3. 3 Check 

4. Crazy House 

Strange that a chess thread that actually discusses chess gets no attention on this site. 

Well this is actually a serious question. The general reason white is a bit better is that you want to increase your relative piece activity quickly in the opening. When you have extra turns, you get to improve your piece/pawn positioning, and either increase your activity or decrease your opponent's activity. Typically, you have many options, so you're not in zugzwang at the beginning of the game - so moves are "good". 

(1) In classical chess, if white "passed" the first move, and did something useless, then it would be (nearly) equivalent to white switching sides, say 1.h3. We know that a useless move isn't as good for white as a move that's useful, like 1.e4, so by this logic, black must have some (very slight) disadvantage. But obviously black isn't that much worse.

(2) In Chess 960, the same logic applies. However, depending on piece positioning, the first move advantage can be much better for white than in classical. Black pretty much always has at least the slight disadvantage as in classical, because white can always develop a knight or activate a bishop, etc. But sometimes white will be able to make some threats on move 1, and gain more than just a tiny edge.

(3) I think King of the Hill is pretty much classical chess, with one small rule added in to punish lazy players who think they can move their king in early on. 

(4) In 3 check, white is probably winning theoretically. I made a thread about this earlier on. It's because when white can activate pieces quickly with 1.e4, and black is forced to "defend" right away, not able to play a lot of moves, like 1...e5 (which isn't good for black.)

(5) Crazyhouse it's probably not as a big an advantage as in 3 check, but bigger advantage than in classical, since the game is a lot of sharper.

Thank you for the answer. I wonder if there is a variant where the advantage is theoretically eliminated for white.

Perhaps suicide chess? Not implemented on this site... very often in suicide chess you don't want to make moves.

Is it also called anti chess sometimes? I heard 1.e4 was losing in that variant!

What thread is that. This one discusses chess variants.  And it's strange no one answered for two hours during the middle of the night in the Americas and very early morning in Europe?

There's no need for rudeness. 

 hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

 again the discussion is one sided.  Cherub is doing all the work for you by answering your question and all you do is ask and say thank you kind sir.  This isn't a discussion.  This is a Q&A.  Instead of calling this a discussion.  Think in your head how many questions you want to ask, and entitle it Q&A, because that is all your going to get unless you dumbfound me by coming up with possible answers to those questions you will come up with so that you can "discuss the answers."  

You seem to be under some delusion that you are our chess coach giving us "insightful" things to think about and discuss...  Ah, I take that part back.  I recall a time where I wrote something similar, though, I wasn't trying to give myself the title of chess coach, some though I was, those that strawman and hijacked my post and twisted everything I said into what they wanted to argue about.  

So, V, I see that you like to play the part of the proctor, or, forum leader.  That's nice, but, all I should say, more tactfully, is this, please, do some work on your own, so that it doesn't look like you actually think you are a big name in chess, because others might mistake you for a future world champ.  It's nice to ask questions, just don't call it a discussion if you are not going to do any work on your own and give us actually something to discuss, rather than just answer on our own, with no feed back from you but, oh, thats great thanks!  Next?  It seems pretty sophomoric to me, this concept, the way you are doing it, simply because you are not a forum director of any kind, have no real experience with this sort of stuff, and aren't very good at chess at all.  

I hope you don't take offence.  Maybe I'm wrong, maybe you aren't attempting to troll in a lot of what you write, but I doubt that, very much.  Anyway, you keep being you, so know I can ignore your posts so I don't waste any more of my time in the future.  Personally I think in your quest to think up of good topics to Q&A to the next possible victim you lost sight on the fact that the people who play all those chess variants and are at least as good as I am in chess, already all know the answer, and the ones that don't, won't understand the answer even if it was told to them, most likely.  I like Cherubs answers though.  Easy to understand for even the newb.  I think the credit for this thread goes to Cherub, not you, but at the same time, now that everything has already been answered, what is more to discuss?  

V, if you want to discuss something and get better pick some games that you don't know why you losts and annotate them and post them on chess.com, don't do this silly waste of bandwidth stuff.  I don't think most people care about this stuff anyways, but that is just my opinion...

I respect your opinion. Next time I'll be more cautious in what I post. I don't want to upset you. 

I backpedaled a bit to be more tactful.

oh you are funny arn't you LOL

I made addition to my comment, I hope you read it so you understand more about where I am coming from.

It's all understood. I see where you're coming from. I did find it hurtful when you called me a "troll" and the readers of my material "victims". But this is your opinion which is fine. I hope you just avoid my threads in the future, for I really don't want to quarrel with you. 

I really appreciated these questions!   I haven't played 3-check much, and then only on lichess,  But it would surprise me a bit if there were a forced win for white in 3-check.  

As for atomic -- which you didn't ask about -- I'm currently in the top 80 on lichess in the atomic variant -- and White most definitely has a very strong advantage in that variant.  The openings are really trappy and Black has to be extremely careful in many respects.  That said, the variant is absolutely fascinating IMHO. 

The reason I found your post is because I got curious about Crazyhouse.  I've never consciously tried to improve my Crazyhouse game the way I've done with Atomic.  But I love the variant.  And it wouldn't surprise me if its 'sharpness' and 'tactical-ness' gives to White a distinct advantage, maybe a bit more than in classical chess.  I bet there are computer programs out there which could calculate, say on chess.com or lichess.org,  winning percentages for White in each of the variants and classical chess.  This would be fascinating to see.