16 February 2013

Proof of Concept with HarryO

HarryO and I are playing our eighth chess960 opening now. We've played so many moves over the last six months that I've lost track of what I've covered on this blog and what remains open. Here's a summary of the games to date.

We started off with a test of Non-random Fischer Random, where the players actively choose the start position (SP) themselves, rather than rely on a random process. We played two games, taking a different color in each game. Links to HarryO's posts, where the moves and running commentary can be found, are marked HO; links to my posts are marked MW.

Although the non-random trials worked well enough, we decided to tackle several specific SPs that appear to push the chess960 concept to its limits. Our methodology involves playing enough moves to determine that Black is not overwhelmed in the opening and emerges with a playable game.

Toward the end of last year, I wrote a post that flagged other problematic SPs: Waving a Yellow Flag. HarryO proposed tackling those and we were off again.

Looks like I still need to cover SP408 and SP749. To date we haven't found any SPs that are hopeless for Black, but that doesn't mean they are easy to play.

1 comment:

HarryO said...

I keep the database of our trials and comments up to date here for anyone that is interested:
http://chess960jungle.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/fischer-bronstein-chess960-research.html

I'm still thinking on my move for the latest trial of the torture test that is SP868 Mark! It's actually incredible how many ways black can fight in this really difficult black SP: http://chess960jungle.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/non-random-chess-960-trial-game-8-sp868.html

I don't want to play the same way I did in some of the other diabolical SP's as white, trying to rush attack and then miss a clever resource black has (which you tend to find pretty well!)

The idea is to try and build up a positional attack where we can infer the state of the game in 20 moves or less, trying to see if the SP has enough resources for black to make the SP interesting and engaging.

Cheers
Harry